Covid-19 News

    Politics, and conflicts of interest have made this a particularly hard pandemic to deal with pragmatically as a society. Seemed so simple in the beginning...follow the science, but quickly we discovered politics had infiltrated the health care sciences, it's organizations/institutions -both public and private, that oversee and regulate them, to such an extent that they lost the peoples trust.


    Not sure how science can ever regain that trust, but the best way out of this mess is for them to figure out a way. IMO, a good first step would be to come clean. Until then, we will have to just muddle our way through, picking and choosing the science we want to follow as we go.


    When it comes to governmental mitigation mandates and directives, I think the people all over the world (except Aus/NZ) are speaking up and saying "no more lockdowns". Masks...the jury is still out. I think politicians would have a more receptive audience if they showed us exactly what science they are basing their mandates on. Especially so when it comes to school children.

    213 Compared with peak viral loads of cases infected with old SARS-CoV-2 strains detected in
    214 Vietnam between March and April 2020, peak viral loads of breakthrough cases were
    215 significantly higher, median log10 viral load in copies per mL (range): 9.1 (range: 2.8–
    216 10.2) vs. 6.7 (1.9–9.5), equivalent to 251 times higher for median viral loads. The
    217 differences were more profound among symptomatic cases while there was no difference
    218 in viral loads among asymptomatic cases between the two groups (Figure 2B).


    So it was a Wyttenfact I'm afraid.


    This says that vaccinated delta symptomatic infection is 250 X more vital load than unvaccinated alpha infection.


    But we know delta infection has 1000X higher nasal viral load - which is one reason why it spreads so much easier.


    No comparison here between vaccinated and unvaccinated delta.

    Quote from Shane D.

    IMO, a good first step would be to come clean.

    Not sure about the US - in the Uk everyone is pretty transparent.


    The real question is the political messaging.


    You can say different things which have identical scientific meaning, and one way people will be scared shitless, another way they will think there is no risk and have little superspreaders all the time. The reality - what you want - is something in between. But messaging so that you convey to people the right mixture of caution and lack of fear is easy to get wrong. Scientists need to be careful what they say or it will create sound bite headlines that confuse everyone. You can see even with est efforts that happens sometimes.


    Whichever way you say things people will accuse you of being biassed in the way you present things. Some people are better at this than others. New Zealand, Scotland good examples where politicians are talking to people and the population as a whole believes they are being honest (and I think that is right).


    Boris in the UK is all over the place. Everyone knows he is a windbag and we tend just to assume nothing he says is reliable, because he contradicts himself so much and says what sounds good to whichever audience he is thinking of at the time.


    THH

    You just contradicted yourself, UK transparent, no one believes the windbag, confusion rules!!!!!!!!!

    the UK is no different from the United States, the population has had it with Covid!


    Britons, Unfazed by High Covid Rates, Weigh Their ‘Price of Freedom’

    Britain is reporting more than 30,000 new coronavirus cases a day, but the public seems to have moved on. Experts say this could be a glimpse into the future for other countries.


    Britons, Unfazed by High Covid Rates, Weigh Their ‘Price of Freedom’
    Britain is reporting more than 30,000 new coronavirus cases a day, but the public seems to have moved on. Experts say this could be a glimpse into the future…
    www.nytimes.com

    Quote from Wyttenbach

    Data also shows a vaccine gives you 50% protection from death = 2x better than unvaccinated....


    May be eating apples has the same effect as a vaccination for age < 50....

    W please try to resist the temptation to lie so blatantly. It loses you respect.


    Vaccination reduces deaths by at least 5X - probably 10X - though it depends on when vaccination happened of course. But even 2X would be a big deal.


    For age < 50, as many links here have shown, risks are still significant. Specifically it is under-50s in the UK who are gumming up our hospitals because they can't be bothered to get vaccinated.


    Majority of under-50s in hospital or who have died with Delta variant not jabbed
    The data for England comes amid a continued push to get as many people vaccinated against Covid-19 as possible.
    www.standard.co.uk


    While the vast majority of deaths with the variant were in people aged 50 or over, the under-50s account for more when it comes to hospital admissions.

    Of the 1,076 deaths of people aged 50 or over, 318 (30%) were unvaccinated, 93 (9%) had received one dose of vaccine and 652 (61%) had received both.

    Of the 113 deaths of people under 50, 72 (64%) were unvaccinated, 11 (10%) had received one jab and 27 (24%) had received both.

    Of the 3,173 people aged 50 or over admitted to hospital in England up to the middle of this month who were either confirmed or likely to have had the Delta variant, 989 (31%) were not jabbed.

    A total of 318 (10%) had received one dose of vaccine and 1,838 (58%) had received two.

    Most of the 4,112 people aged under 50 had not had a jab, making up 3,044 (74%) of the total.

    A total of 631 (15%) had received one dose of vaccine and 366 (9%) had received both doses.

    Quote from Wyttenbach

    THH FUD logic. As UK data shows:: https://assets.publishing.serv…Technical_Briefing_20.pdf

    Death risk for people age < 50 from delta is 0.03%!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


    Far lower than from any flu. OH yeahhh! Damn long Covid.......fearrrrrrrrrrr fear!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    OK - so this is something worth thinking about.


    That link (Table 5) gives you emergency care cases and deaths data for <50s in UK over period 1 Feb to 2 Aug. That could be used to give an apparent CFR of 670 / 265749 = 0.25%.


    But this really does not help for lots of reasons

    deaths are displaced from cases and the case count over that period has been very uneven.

    who turns up at ER and then dies is a subset both of those with COVID, and those who die of COVID.

    it is just rubbish data to determine even CFR let alone IFR. I'm not even going to try to process it since there are better ways to do this.


    Like:


    if vaccination reduces deaths by 10%, and unvaccinated deaths are a small proportion of total (wrong), then with a 0.3% alpha IFR we would now have something like a 0.3% (too low) X 2 (delta) / 10 (vax) = 0.06% IFR.


    So 0.03% after vaccination is not unreasonable, though a factor of 2 or 3 on the low side.


    If W's belief that vaccination give only X2 protection is true the estimate would go up to 0.3%, but his statement is false, so that is not the point.


    to find the IFR for Flu I use this:

    The COVID-19 elimination debate – needs to use correct data

    Research conducted in New Zealand (NZ) and internationally suggests that the IFR for COVID-19 is typically at least an order of magnitude higher than for seasonal flu. The most detailed study of seasonal influenza mortality in NZ to date estimated average annual mortality of 13.5 (95%CI 13.4, 13.6) per 100,000 population [1]. Furthermore, the proportion of the NZ population infected with influenza in a year has been measured from a seroconversion study at 35% (95%CI: 32%-38%) [2]. Combining these figures suggests an IFR for seasonal influenza of about 0.039% (ie, 13.5/35,000) in NZ. This seasonal influenza IFR is 17 times lower than that estimated for COVID-19 at 0.68% [3] and 0.65% [4], based on international data (there have been too few COVID-19 cases in NZ to produce an IFR estimate).


    So that low 0.03% IFR estimate is slightly lower than seasonal Flu at 0,039%. In the Uk we struggle every year with seasonal Flu and hospitals only just coping. So what then matters if what is the infection rate of COVID relative to Flu.


    A more realistic - taking into account the anti-vax victims + the real delta higher IFR - would be that COVID per infection on a UK-style vaccinated population will be on average at least twice as bad as seasonal Flu.


    I have no idea whether we expect seasonal Flu infections or COVID infections to be higher this winter. For the Uk specifically, if the hospital burden from COVID is as bad as it is from seasonal Flu we will be in trouble.



    Quote from Fm1

    Didn't I read you were going to leave the thread for awhile? Instead you're on steroids today. Confusion rules ;)

    I slept well - it is a lazy Saturday - RB is blocking me so limited passive-aggressive snide remarks from him - and I'm happy we are getting more data to resolve the things we have been guessing for so long.

    Quote from Fm1

    the UK is no different from the United States, the population has had it with Covid!

    Just commenting on this again, more seriously.


    The big difference between US and UK is vaccination rates. it is not the overall rate that matters - it is the number of older at risk people who are unvaccinated. If you can get that down to UK levels you will indeed be in a similar situation - but with more political shouting about it.

    The continuous evolution of SARS-CoV-2 in South Africa: a new lineage with rapid accumulation of mutations of concern and global detection


    The continuous evolution of SARS-CoV-2 in South Africa: a new lineage with rapid accumulation of mutations of concern and global detection
    SARS-CoV-2 variants of interest have been associated with increased transmissibility, neutralization resistance and disease severity. Ongoing SARS-CoV-2…
    www.medrxiv.org


    Abstract

    SARS-CoV-2 variants of interest have been associated with increased transmissibility, neutralization resistance and disease severity. Ongoing SARS-CoV-2 genomic surveillance world-wide has improved our ability to rapidly identify such variants. Here we report the identification of a potential variant of interest assigned to the PANGO lineage C.1.2. This lineage was first identified in May 2021 and evolved from C.1, one of the lineages that dominated the first wave of SARS-CoV-2 infections in South Africa and was last detected in January 2021. C.1.2 has since been detected across the majority of the provinces in South Africa and in seven other countries spanning Africa, Europe, Asia and Oceania. The emergence of C.1.2 was associated with an increased substitution rate, as was previously observed with the emergence of the Alpha, Beta and Gamma variants of concern (VOCs). C.1.2 contains multiple substitutions (R190S, D215G, N484K, N501Y, H655Y and T859N) and deletions (Y144del, L242-A243del) within the spike protein, which have been observed in other VOCs and are associated with increased transmissibility and reduced neutralization sensitivity. Of greater concern is the accumulation of additional mutations (C136F, Y449H and N679K) which are also likely to impact neutralization sensitivity or furin cleavage and therefore replicative fitness. While the phenotypic characteristics and epidemiology of C.1.2 are being defined, it is important to highlight this lineage given its concerning constellations of mutations.


    Discussion/Conclusion

    We have identified a new SARS-CoV-2 variant assigned to the PANGO lineage C.1.2. This variant has been detected throughout the third wave of infections in South Africa from May 2021 onwards and has been detected in seven other countries within Europe, Asia, Africa and Oceania. The identification of novel SARS-CoV-2 variants is commonly associated with new waves of infection. Like several other VOCs, C.1.2 has accumulated a number of substitutions beyond what would be expected from the background SARS-CoV-2 evolutionary rate. This suggests the likelihood that these mutations arose during a period of accelerated evolution in a single individual with prolonged viral infection through virus-host co-evolution19–21. Deletions within the NTD (like Y144del, seen in C.1.2 and other VOCs) have been evident in cases of prolonged infection, further supporting this hypothesis22–24.


    C.1.2 contains many mutations that have been identified in all four VOCs (Alpha, Beta, Delta and Gamma) and three VOIs (Kappa, Eta and Lambda) as well as additional mutations within the NTD (C136F), RBD (Y449H), and adjacent to the furin cleavage site (N679K). Many of the shared mutations have been associated with improved ACE2 binding (N501Y)25–29 or furin cleavage (H655Y and P681H/R)30–32, and reduced neutralization activity (particularly Y144del, 242-244del, and E484K)17,33–39, providing sufficient cause for concern of continued transmission of this variant. Future work aims to determine the functional impact of these mutations, which likely include neutralizing antibody escape, and to investigate whether their combination confers a replicative fitness advantage over the Delta variant.


    The C.1.2 lineage is continuing to grow. At the time of submission (20 August 2021) there were 80 C.1.2 sequences in GISAID with it now having been detected in Botswana and in the Northern Cape of South Africa.

    remdesivir wins out (an old trial - but I had not seen it)


    https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2007764



    METHODS


    We conducted a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial of intravenous remdesivir in adults who were hospitalized with Covid-19 and had evidence of lower respiratory tract infection. Patients were randomly assigned to receive either remdesivir (200 mg loading dose on day 1, followed by 100 mg daily for up to 9 additional days) or placebo for up to 10 days. The primary outcome was the time to recovery, defined by either discharge from the hospital or hospitalization for infection-control purposes only.


    RESULTS


    A total of 1062 patients underwent randomization (with 541 assigned to remdesivir and 521 to placebo). Those who received remdesivir had a median recovery time of 10 days (95% confidence interval [CI], 9 to 11), as compared with 15 days (95% CI, 13 to 18) among those who received placebo (rate ratio for recovery, 1.29; 95% CI, 1.12 to 1.49; P<0.001, by a log-rank test). In an analysis that used a proportional-odds model with an eight-category ordinal scale, the patients who received remdesivir were found to be more likely than those who received placebo to have clinical improvement at day 15 (odds ratio, 1.5; 95% CI, 1.2 to 1.9, after adjustment for actual disease severity). The Kaplan–Meier estimates of mortality were 6.7% with remdesivir and 11.9% with placebo by day 15 and 11.4% with remdesivir and 15.2% with placebo by day 29 (hazard ratio, 0.73; 95% CI, 0.52 to 1.03). Serious adverse events were reported in 131 of the 532 patients who received remdesivir (24.6%) and in 163 of the 516 patients who received placebo (31.6%).


    These are good results - not stunning - but a 30% reduction in deaths is as good as it gets, typically, for a drug treating a new virus.


    Unlike the first flaky results, these are very solid and show the same thing, with enough people to also show the reduction in death rate.


    The reduction in hospital days (again 30%) is what will matter to places like the UK which fear over-packed hospitals this winter.


    All these treatments add up:

    regeneron (20% reduction for those without good antibody response - who are therefore most at risk)

    remdesivir (30% reduction for most?)

    dexamethasone (30% reduction for those needing ventilation)

    tocilizumab (15% reduction for most?)


    Boring, for those seeking a miracle treatment, but put together they mean a 60% cut in mortality from what it would have been at start. Almost enough to balance the increase in delta severity.

    Quote from THHuxleynew

    This says that vaccinated delta symptomatic infection is 250 X more vital load than unvaccinated alpha infection.


    But we know delta infection has 1000X higher nasal viral load - which is one reason why it spreads so much easier.

    As FUD'r you always pick irrelevant data to gain the last grain of hope for your argument... Did you look at figure 12?



    Quote from THHuxleynew

    Vaccination reduces deaths by at least 5X - probably 10X - though it depends on when vaccination happened of course. But even 2X would be a big deal.

    As a professional FUD'er you have to cite outdated data to undermine your arguments. I used real data from bulletin 20 UK! .... Do you not like real data??


    Quote from THHuxleynew

    That link (Table 5) gives you emergency care cases and deaths data for <50s in UK over period 1 Feb to 2 Aug. That could be used to give an apparent CFR of 670 / 265749 = 0.25%.

    I know, that reading a table needs a college degree. May be understanding needs a bit more 670 is for age >50. (71 for < 50)


    Why do you always spread FUD??? I could also say spread lies?

    Quote from THHuxleynew

    annual mortality of 13.5 (95%CI 13.4, 13.6) per 100,000 population

    THH FUD alert! Population mortality has nothing to do with IFR.... stay off...

    Quote from Fm1

    The identification of novel SARS-CoV-2 variants is commonly associated with new waves of infection.

    This statement is plain wrong as the correct one is: A mutation may lead to a new wave if it escape natural immunization. But this did not happen so far. So only in vaccinated countries a new wave will occur - see Israel.

    2) If the virus has a higher transmission rate due to higher infection rate then the reservoir becomes broader. The Delta wave is not a new wave its the expansion of CoV-19 to age < 50. But as the UK data shows. 71 of about 270'000 age < 50 did die from delta so far. May be THH can dig out some more - like victims of car accidents that have been PCR+ unborn babies....

    The problem is these treatments all are done in hospitals for severe patients, without an early outpatient treatment, hospitals will continue to be full with waiting lines thus prolonging the pandemic. It's that simple. Treat early treat all, end pandemic!

    The primary outcome was the time to recovery, defined by either discharge from the hospital or hospitalization for infection-control purposes only.


    This is old cheese and cheating fro marketing only. The primary outcome has been changed, what is not allowed during a registered study.


    Fact is: The people that did survive Gilead crap remdesivir were discharged 3 days earlier but the ones that did die with the crap did live up to 10 days longer. So in average the people did stay longer in hospital...


    Remember the old joke? Oh dear the stake was cheap only 1 $ ... but.. they charged 12$ for the fries...

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