Cont: The One Covid-19 Science and Medicine Thread Part 3

[marting]

In terms of actual fatality rate, the best study to date shows:

The median infection fatality rate across all 51 locations was 0.27% (corrected 0.23%).

Ioannidis?

He's the guy that claimed Covid-19 had roughly the same IFR as the seasonal flu back in April 2020. Also one of the signers of the Great Barrington Declaration. Also makes the rounds on Fox.

I see he's been scaling his estimates upward over time. I guess it's kinda hard to do otherwise since seasonal flu rarely kills 60k in a year v 600k like C19 in the USA. But what's an order of magnitude?

 

[Samson]

A real case.
60 year old with 13 percent lung function and always with oxygen bottle receives 1st Pfizer
Gets pneumonia and dies a week later.
Is this cause or coincidence?

 

[Pixel42]

A real case.
60 year old with 13 percent lung function and always with oxygen bottle receives 1st Pfizer
Gets pneumonia and dies a week later.
Is this cause or coincidence?

The only way to find out is to compare the incidence of such people dying of pneumonia before and after vaccination, and see if the latter is greater. That's what things like the VAERS database are for.

Last I heard the only such correlation found was for that rare blood clot condition.

 

[angrysoba]

Ioannidis?

He's the guy that claimed Covid-19 had roughly the same IFR as the seasonal flu back in April 2020. Also one of the signers of the Great Barrington Declaration. Also makes the rounds on Fox.

I see he's been scaling his estimates upward over time. I guess it's kinda hard to do otherwise since seasonal flu rarely kills 60k in a year v 600k like C19 in the USA. But what's an order of magnitude?

Yeah, back in April 2020, it seems he was saying:

If we assume that case fatality rate among individuals infected by SARS-CoV-2 is 0.3% in the general population — a mid-range guess from my Diamond Princess analysis — and that 1% of the U.S. population gets infected (about 3.3 million people), this would translate to about 10,000 deaths. This sounds like a huge number, but it is buried within the noise of the estimate of deaths from “influenza-like illness.” If we had not known about a new virus out there, and had not checked individuals with PCR tests, the number of total deaths due to “influenza-like illness” would not seem unusual this year. At most, we might have casually noted that flu this season seems to be a bit worse than average. The media coverage would have been less than for an NBA game between the two most indifferent teams.

Some worry that the 68 deaths from Covid-19 in the U.S. as of March 16 will increase exponentially to 680, 6,800, 68,000, 680,000 … along with similar catastrophic patterns around the globe. Is that a realistic scenario, or bad science fiction? How can we tell at what point such a curve might stop?

Of course, now it is over 700,000 people in the US.

Yep, Ioannidas was working with Jay Bhattacharya, the co-author of the Great Barrington Bollocks.

The Atheist, I am very puzzled. You were one of the people who was earliest to say that this could be very serious. You disagreed with forum members who told you it was no big deal (they had said it was nowhere near as bad as SARS, and no worse than flu - and they pretended that they had included Spanish flu when that turned out to be wrong), and criticized what you considered the lack of vigilance by the New Zealand government.

Now, you seem to be in the minimizing camp and claiming that the NZG is too vigilant.

Anyway, here is some critique of John Ioannides from Science-Based Medicine.

 

[angrysoba]

A real case.
60 year old with 13 percent lung function and always with oxygen bottle receives 1st Pfizer
Gets pneumonia and dies a week later.
Is this cause or coincidence?

Is this someone you know. If so, my condolences.

To be honest, it is difficult to know just from what you said. There could be many reasons why someone had pneumonia.

 

[Samson]

Is this someone you know. If so, my condolences.

To be honest, it is difficult to know just from what you said. There could be many reasons why someone had pneumonia.

Yes a business partner. He was a heroin addict in the 90s but a rare case of complete abstinence since about 2000. The last time I spoke about 6 months ago I imagined him stable on 19% from previous discussion but maybe the trajectory was south then.
He was wealthy and health conscious but the history collided. I mischievously related his demise to a good friend but vax hesitant and her eyes lit up and she said have you put this on the website?

 

[Puppycow]

Japan is making a good case study of the effectiveness of the vaccines.

Japan was a relative latecomer to getting people vaccinated, but it finally got its act together and the rate of vaccination here has caught up to that in the US and looks like it will end up being somewhat higher than in the US. So what about the infamous Delta variant? It was reported in early September that Delta is now the most prevalent variant in Japan. Nevertheless, we've seen new infections here drop rather dramatically over the last month. It peaked at somewhere over 20,000/day in late August, but has since fallen to roughly 2,500/per day over the last 7 days (Dashboard Here). Currently the effective reproduction number is at 0.6 (even lower in Tokyo, at 0.56). Deaths have also started to come down.

So what could account for this? I suggest it's the vaccinations. Will the effect wear off? Maybe, I guess we'll have to wait and see. Maybe this post won't age very well. But for now at least, it seems to be doing what it's supposed to.

Obviously this is not a scientific analysis, just the view of a layman, but it sure does look like it's working as it should here.

 

[Puppycow]

A real case.
60 year old with 13 percent lung function and always with oxygen bottle receives 1st Pfizer
Gets pneumonia and dies a week later.
Is this cause or coincidence?

Just a coincidence would be my guess.

Seriously, is it any wonder that a person with such a serious condition should die? Let's be realistic here.

And a week is a long time. In a typical week in America about 55,000 people die. (pre-pandemic; I'm sure it's higher now)

 

[angrysoba]

Japan is making a good case study of the effectiveness of the vaccines.

Japan was a relative latecomer to getting people vaccinated, but it finally got its act together and the rate of vaccination here has caught up to that in the US and looks like it will end up being somewhat higher than in the US. So what about the infamous Delta variant? It was reported in early September that Delta is now the most prevalent variant in Japan. Nevertheless, we've seen new infections here drop rather dramatically over the last month. It peaked at somewhere over 20,000/day in late August, but has since fallen to roughly 2,500/per day over the last 7 days (Dashboard Here). Currently the effective reproduction number is at 0.6 (even lower in Tokyo, at 0.56). Deaths have also started to come down.

So what could account for this? I suggest it's the vaccinations. Will the effect wear off? Maybe, I guess we'll have to wait and see. Maybe this post won't age very well. But for now at least, it seems to be doing what it's supposed to.

Obviously this is not a scientific analysis, just the view of a layman, but it sure does look like it's working as it should here.

Yes, I think it is mostly down to vaccines. There has of course been a state of emergency, but honestly I have not seen such a massive difference in how it has differed from the non-state of emergency. My son is in school in the middle of Osaka, and the gym merely closes slightly earlier, which seems an odd way to space out customers (squeezing the time available).

 

[dann]

The level of vaccinations is still pretty low in Japan. Maybe in combination with masking up?! I assume you are still masking up in Japan unlike many European countries.

 

[The Atheist]

The Atheist, I am very puzzled. You were one of the people who was earliest to say that this could be very serious.

Correct.

I have to note there haven't been many things I've been wrong about so far, even to nailing the exact day the world sharemarkets **** themselves.

You disagreed with forum members who told you it was no big deal (they had said it was nowhere near as bad as SARS, and no worse than flu - and they pretended that they had included Spanish flu when that turned out to be wrong), and criticized what you considered the lack of vigilance by the New Zealand government.

Yep, those are some of the things I was right about.

Now, you seem to be in the minimizing camp and claiming that the NZG is too vigilant.

Correcting overstatement isn't minimising it. The guy I quoted may have stopped clock syndrome, because he's pretty close to right this time.

The fact is, no matter what metric you use, or what data you crunch, Covid has an overall mortality rate of well under 1%. I think the 0.23% is probably a little light. I've put a stick in the sand a long time ago that said I think the mortality rate is about 0.5%, and that seems to be holding very well.

And I'm not saying NZ is too vigilant - the only reason we have Covid in the community is because the government screwed up - they were so busy patting themselves on the back at how clever they were they let it back in. Now that we have it back, and with a vaccination rate of over 75% with one dose, I believe we should open up. Still mask and ban large gatherings, but stop locking the population in their homes.

We proved we can't avoid Covid forever, and my biggest concern is that the idiots running this country aren't watching the evidence. We know for sure that immunity declines, and declines fastest among the aged. Our vaccine rollout ensured the aged were vaccinated before anyone else, starting March this this year, so if we delay any longer we're going to create the perfect storm of having widespread infection when the aged community antibody levels have declined far enough to be a real problem.

 

[Delphic Oracle]

I have an aunt in rural SW Missouri. She is in her late 60s with diabetes. 2nd shot was in late May.

About 2 weeks ago she developed joint swelling and chronic fatigue (which has since subsided). Despite her known diagnosis and that these are common symptoms, the doctor concluded it must be side effects of the vaccine from 4 months ago.

Bad statistics can go both directions.

 

[Planigale]

A real case.
60 year old with 13 percent lung function and always with oxygen bottle receives 1st Pfizer
Gets pneumonia and dies a week later.
Is this cause or coincidence?

First thought, 13% lung function is dire. A sniffle and they would be dead! Yes a coincidence. Pneumonia is due to an infection, Pfizer is an mRNA virus it does not cause an infection.

 

[marting]

The fact is, no matter what metric you use, or what data you crunch, Covid has an overall mortality rate of well under 1%. I think the 0.23% is probably a little light. I've put a stick in the sand a long time ago that said I think the mortality rate is about 0.5%, and that seems to be holding very well.

Probably not far off Worldwide. IFR is heavily skewed towards the older with extra points for commodities. In the USA that mostly means fat people with associated issues. CDC has it at roughly .8% but that's if the entire population was exposed with no vaccines. My guess is more like .6% given steroids seem to be effective at reducing deaths 30% or so.

Given vaccines it's going to be much lower and is likely to be roughly similar to a bad flu season as the bugger becomes endemic. It's got a few more vax deniers to harvest but I would be shocked if we have more than another 200k deaths in the next year. My expectation is around 100k or so.

Things are actually pretty near normal in Calif. (which is quite liberal overall). Not that many masked. Very unlike late March 2020 where things really were shut down and nearly everyone was staying home.

Deaths so far in the USA are at .2% with roughly 35% of the population recovered and a pretty large percentage of the at risk people vaccinated. Hence the relatively low projection of around 100k more to go. Don't really see anything beating out Delta. At least currently.

As for Ioannidis, he's kind of a hot button for me. When his Santa Clara study came out in April 2020, I eagerly read the paper but was appalled looking at his stats and especially confidence intervals. Looking at the antibody specificity and sensitivity it was clear the confidence intervals he had for the population had simply ignored the uncertainty of the tests themselves. When I looked at his background and realized he was quite accomplished ignoring those seemed completely out of place with what otherwise would be expected from someone of his stature. Since then I've noticed him referring to serological studies such as the one out of Japan that claimed Tokyo had reached herd immunity as of July 2020. Problem with that study is that deaths there have roughly tripled since. And the study itself was internally flawed as I pointed out here sometime last year. Should have been obvious to him.

Don't know what his problem is but then again I've railed at stupid statements by our director of the National Institute of Health with his bogus claim 99.5% of deaths in recent weeks were unvaccinated. Seems everyone is so polarized they start saying BS because the other side is also saying BS. It's annoying as hell for someone trying to cull the junk to get at least a sense of actual facts.

Link to a breakdown of Ioannidis's flawed paper who saw the same thing.

https://statmodeling.stat.columbia....-in-stanford-study-of-coronavirus-prevalence/

Summary

I think the authors of the above-linked paper owe us all an apology. We wasted time and effort discussing this paper whose main selling point was some numbers that were essentially the product of a statistical error.

I’m serious about the apology. Everyone makes mistakes. I don’t think they authors need to apologize just because they screwed up. I think they need to apologize because these were avoidable screw-ups. They’re the kind of screw-ups that happen if you want to leap out with an exciting finding and you don’t look too carefully at what you might have done wrong.

 

[angrysoba]

I have to note there haven't been many things I've been wrong about so far, even to nailing the exact day the world sharemarkets **** themselves.



Yep, those are some of the things I was right about.



Correcting overstatement isn't minimising it. The guy I quoted may have stopped clock syndrome, because he's pretty close to right this time.

The fact is, no matter what metric you use, or what data you crunch, Covid has an overall mortality rate of well under 1%.

That's been known about for some time, but it is still vastly more serious than flu. Ioannides was saying it is just like a bad flu and that's all.

That is not the case. Even a mortality rate of 0.5% is serious, and then you have to factor in long-term illness etc...

I think the 0.23% is probably a little light. I've put a stick in the sand a long time ago that said I think the mortality rate is about 0.5%, and that seems to be holding very well.

And I'm not saying NZ is too vigilant - the only reason we have Covid in the community is because the government screwed up - they were so busy patting themselves on the back at how clever they were they let it back in. Now that we have it back, and with a vaccination rate of over 75% with one dose, I believe we should open up. Still mask and ban large gatherings, but stop locking the population in their homes.

The vaccination rate is not 75%. Certainly not if you include children, which you should. And a single dose is not adequate protection. IIRC you have been talking about opening up for a while, well before this, and you yourself have been fully vaxxed a while back. I think it is sensible to wait until more of the population is fully vaxxed.

We proved we can't avoid Covid forever, and my biggest concern is that the idiots running this country aren't watching the evidence. We know for sure that immunity declines, and declines fastest among the aged. Our vaccine rollout ensured the aged were vaccinated before anyone else, starting March this this year, so if we delay any longer we're going to create the perfect storm of having widespread infection when the aged community antibody levels have declined far enough to be a real problem.

This now seems to suggest that Covid is serious, and honestly what are you going to do about declining antibodies? That is going to happen no matter what.

 

[Puppycow]

The level of vaccinations is still pretty low in Japan. Maybe in combination with masking up?! I assume you are still masking up in Japan unlike many European countries.

Absolutely. Masks are ubiquitous here in public spaces. (Even outside, where supposedly it isn't necessary.)

 

[The Atheist]

My guess is more like .6% given steroids seem to be effective at reducing deaths 30% or so.

We're thinking pretty much along the same lines again!

Given vaccines it's going to be much lower and is likely to be roughly similar to a bad flu season as the bugger becomes endemic.

Again, that's very much where I see it heading.

Providing it doesn't mutate to virulence.

As for Ioannidis, he's kind of a hot button for me.

I'll make sure I don't use him again - I rely on you for picking up the dodgy bastards. Like I said, stopped clocks and all that.

That is not the case. Even a mortality rate of 0.5% is serious, and then you have to factor in long-term illness etc...

Things I've been saying from the start.

The vaccination rate is not 75%.

You're right - it's actually 77% have had one dose. Sorry, I wasn't quite up to date.

https://www.health.govt.nz/our-work...tics/covid-19-vaccine-data#total-vaccinations

Certainly not if you include children, which you should.

As you can see, our official numbers detail percentage eligible population first, which is the important metric. Yes, that excludes children, and I'm quite comfortable with that.

The medical authorities haven't authorised vaccines for under 12s so far, so they're not relevant.

And a single dose is not adequate protection. IIRC you have been talking about opening up for a while, well before this, and you yourself have been fully vaxxed a while back. I think it is sensible to wait until more of the population is fully vaxxed.

This now seems to suggest that Covid is serious,...

Can you find a single instance of me saying it isn't? Accordingly, it's hardly worth your saying it.

... and honestly what are you going to do about declining antibodies? That is going to happen no matter what.

It's a question of when it happens.

We know that boosters raise antibodies, so the sensible option is to start giving boosters immediately before opening up. Right now, boosters aren't approved here.

 

[angrysoba]

Huh? Your stance makes no sense at all.

You think you should open up, because one shot is enough, but not until the adults have had boosters?

Huh?

Totally contradictory!

And yes, children can spread the virus so excluding them from the figures of total vaccinated means you are relying on misleading figures.

 

[marting]

An excellent article in NyMag's Intelligencer on rather extreme age skew of Covid-19.

We've touched on it from time to time here but it's worth a read. In particular since the media seems to give a lot of coverage to the relatively rare younger person that dies of Covid-19.

The Public Continues to Underestimate COVID’s Age Discrimination
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/09/covid-19-vaccine-status-age-discrimination.html

But in small type, King County included some other data that paint what seems at first blush like a very different picture: Fully 25 percent of deaths were among vaccinated people, the county reported. How can this be? If the vaccines are so effective that they reduce mortality 42 times over, how could the vaccinated account for such a large proportion of the deaths? The answer is actually quite simple: the overwhelming age skew of the disease, which — in the time of vaccines, breakthrough cases, and Delta — we are still, as a public, hugely underestimating and which is governing the post-*vaccine pandemic landscape as clearly as it did the pre-vaccine landscape.

 

[Puppycow]

"Age Discrimination" is a funny term to use there. I understand what they mean of course, but it's a virus; it doesn't discriminate. It's just that younger, healthier bodies are generally better prepared to survive it.

Discussion continues here.

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Posted By: zooterkin