The New Normal

[Ripitz]

So you know 2 people who would rather be infected and quarantined with the risk of chronic sickness or death than be vaccinated?
Interesting.

mm

Yes. I’m sure I know more that won’t admit it publicly.

 

[Harvey]

There is more to it than being in good health. Some of it is genetics, and I think some believe that blood type plays a role. (Not positive about that.) Also the AMOUNT of exposure you get seems to affect your bodies ability to fight it.

Maybe I'm not in good health. I feel pretty good. Covid hammered me.

 

[MarzNC]

The vaccine is not experimental.

Reuters | Breaking International News & Views

Find latest news from every corner of the globe at Reuters.com, your online source for breaking international news coverage.

www.reuters.com

What matters to me . . . as someone who worked in a Biostatistics department in the pharma/biotech industry for 15 years . . . is that there was a pre-approved statistical plan, complete enrollment, and the efficacy analysis was done as expected. No trials have been stopped early due to concerns about safety (side effects). What was unusual was that finding 30,000 volunteers to join a double-blinded trial where they were just as likely to get a placebo as the test vaccine didn't take very long. That's partially because the risks for someone who gets COVID-19 are still somewhat unknown, even if they are among the majority who don't have serious symptoms. More importantly the risks to the people around an asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic person may be much greater. Those people could be their family members, co-workers, or good friends.

The evidence that the approved vaccines work are pretty clear for the populations that have >50% vaccination rates, both in the UK and the US. The decrease is not only among the vaccinated people but also for the people around them. If anyone is interested I can dig up the paper published recently that studied thousands of residents in long term care facilities owned and operated by one company.

 

[MarzNC]

There is more to it than being in good health. Some of it is genetics, and I think some believe that blood type plays a role. (Not positive about that.) Also the AMOUNT of exposure you get seems to affect your bodies ability to fight it.

Not only the how much exposure, but also how quickly someone who has minor symptoms realizes it might be worth getting tested. Read far too many stories in March-April 2020 of people who waited a week or two before seeking medical care. Meaning people who were ages 20-45. Presumably many of them believed that only people over 60 or 70 needed to worry about COVID-19.

Unfortunately, there are places where even as the number of detected cases is going down steadily as vaccinations increase, the number of hospitalizations is going up slightly. I'm guessing that most of these people being admitted have not been vaccinated at all. Have to look at county-level data in particular regions to see those trends.

 

[MarzNC]

Yes. I’m sure I know more that won’t admit it publicly.

I've also heard of situations where people who won't admit that they were vaccinated already.

 

[MarzNC]

It’s an exponential growth problem, not a small numbers problem.
Researchers estimate the average infected person infects 3 others. That’s like the magic of compound interest, if the interest rate were 200% every two weeks. Reduce the reinfection rate by 90% by vaccines and the virus dies out. That’s how you get to normal.
You may think you are healthy enough to survive the virus, but you are certainly not healthy enough to avoid infection or spreading it. If you live in CNY you may not know how bad it’s been in NYC fir the last year.

mm

In addition to the concept of exponential growth, what's unusual about COVID-19 is that asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic people who have no idea that they are infected can be contagious. That wasn't true for any of the other more deadly coronaviruses in the last 20 years. SARS and MERS were considered pandemics since multiple countries were involved, but people quickly learned to stay away from anyone with symptoms. SARS-CoV-2 has spread very differently.

The countries that were successful in controlling community spread in 2020 are grappling with community spread. Includes parts of Canada, Taiwan, Singapore, and Australia. There are many reasons that vaccinations were much slower to start in 2021 in those countries. But without vaccines, they would probably have to stayed closed to international travel for years to keep COVID-19 out. Can't get anywhere close to herd immunity without vaccines when very few people have whatever natural immunity recovering from COVID-19 provides.

 

[Campgottagopee]

There is more to it than being in good health. Some of it is genetics, and I think some believe that blood type plays a role. (Not positive about that.) Also the AMOUNT of exposure you get seems to affect your bodies ability to fight it.

Maybe I'm not in good health. I feel pretty good. Covid hammered me.

This is true. Earlier in this thread I told y'all about a buddy of ours who was in ICU for a week with covid. He's in amazing shape and it still whooped his ass.

 

[G.ski]

There is more to it than being in good health. Some of it is genetics, and I think some believe that blood type plays a role. (Not positive about that.) Also the AMOUNT of exposure you get seems to affect your bodies ability to fight it.

Maybe I'm not in good health. I feel pretty good. Covid hammered me.

I agree with your mentioning the amount of exposure being very important. I'm retired. I allow people to be around me by choice that is my biggest advantage.

 

[MarzNC]

CDC put out a brief report about breakthrough infections based on data for Jan-Apr 2021. There were about 10,000 reported, with under 1000 hospitalized. Given that the median age of the 160 people who died was 82, there were probably other medical factors involved than COVID-19. During the last week of the period summarized in the report, there were 355,000 detected cases presumably among people who were not fully vaccinated.

COVID-19 Vaccine Breakthrough Infections Reported to CDC ...

COVID-19 vaccines are a critical tool for controlling the ongoing global pandemic.

www.cdc.gov

" . . .
A total of 10,262 SARS-CoV-2 vaccine breakthrough infections had been reported from 46 U.S. states and territories as of April 30, 2021. Among these cases, 6,446 (63%) occurred in females, and the median patient age was 58 years (interquartile range = 40–74 years). Based on preliminary data, 2,725 (27%) vaccine breakthrough infections were asymptomatic, 995 (10%) patients were known to be hospitalized, and 160 (2%) patients died. Among the 995 hospitalized patients, 289 (29%) were asymptomatic or hospitalized for a reason unrelated to COVID-19. The median age of patients who died was 82 years (interquartile range = 71–89 years); 28 (18%) decedents were asymptomatic or died from a cause unrelated to COVID-19. Sequence data were available from 555 (5%) reported cases, 356 (64%) of which were identified as SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern,§ including B.1.1.7 (199; 56%), B.1.429 (88; 25%), B.1.427 (28; 8%), P.1 (28; 8%), and B.1.351 (13; 4%).

As of April 30, 2021, approximately 101 million persons in the United States had been fully vaccinated against COVID-19.¶ However, during the surveillance period, SARS-CoV-2 transmission continued at high levels in many parts of the country, with approximately 355,000 COVID-19 cases reported nationally during the week of April 24–30, 2021.
. . ."

 

[D.B. Cooper]

Also the AMOUNT of exposure you get seems to affect your bodies ability to fight it.

Yep. Viral load it's called. I don't know about the science to prove it affects you more, but, like exposure to radiation (increased cancer) or millenials (increased selfishness), it makes sense.