Cont: The One Covid-19 Science and Medicine Thread Part 4

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I've just signed up for clinical trials for combined covid & 'flu vaccines.

It seems pretty redundant when the covid vaccine is Novavax, which is under-performing against the mRNA vaccines and more so against the bivalent.

I'm only doing it because the timing works to get a proper 'flu jab and bivalent vaccine before winter.

I'll post details of anything interesting to come out of of it.
 
The Atheist said:
I've just signed up for clinical trials for combined covid & 'flu vaccines.

It seems pretty redundant when the covid vaccine is Novavax, which is under-performing against the mRNA vaccines and more so against the bivalent.

I'm only doing it because the timing works to get a proper 'flu jab and bivalent vaccine before winter.
I'll post details of anything interesting to come out of of it.
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Or at least a 50-50 chance of getting one anyway. :thumbsup:

But thank you for your service. ;)
 
angrysoba said:
Or at least a 50-50 chance of getting one anyway. :thumbsup:

But thank you for your service. ;)
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The Atheist said:
I asked if they'll tell you whether or not it was placebo at the end of the trial, and apparently they will, for the obvious reasons.
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But there is a 50% chance you will have had neither a covid booster nor a flu shot for the duration of the trial. That's not a trial I would volunteer for. So, yeah, thanks for your service.
 
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jt512 said:
But there is a 50% chance you will have had neither a covid booster nor a flu shot for the duration of the trial. That's not a trial I would volunteer for. So, yeah, thanks for your service.
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It's well before 'flu season will start, and covid doesn't concern me at all after having had an asymptomatic dose of it in November.
 
The Atheist said:
It's well before 'flu season will start, and covid doesn't concern me at all after having had an asymptomatic dose of it in November.
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I don't see how you could test effectiveness of a flu vaccine outside of the flu season, so I take it this is a Phase II trial?

And I don't understand why you are not concerned "at all" about corona virus. How much protection against a future severe case do you think your asymptomatic case gives you, and for how long? In the absence of good data showing otherwise, I would assume not a whole lot of protection and for not very long.
 
marting said:
Yes, rate for the whole population.
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Then the comparison is meaningless*, because the risk of stroke increases with age.
The older you are, the more likely you are to have a stroke. The chance of having a stroke about doubles every 10 years after age 55.
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*At least not without accounting for that. And if we double** 63/550k during 3 weeks that's 126 which would be essentially equal to 130.

**I don't know if doubling is the right correction here, but it sounds about right if we are talking about people over 65 and the risk doubles every 10 years after 55.

Another question: why did the CDC official who spoke to CNN have to remain anonymous? Yes, the are says "because they weren’t authorized to share the data". But at the same time they claim that this is "transparency"? Transparency would be sharing the data (anonymized of course, we don't need to know private information about the patients). Why is the underlying data a secret?
 
Puppycow said:
Then the comparison is meaningless*, because the risk of stroke increases with age.


*At least not without accounting for that. And if we double** 63/550k during 3 weeks that's 126 which would be essentially equal to 130.
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Yep.

Another question: why did the CDC official who spoke to CNN have to remain anonymous? Yes, the are says "because they weren’t authorized to share the data". But at the same time they claim that this is "transparency"? Transparency would be sharing the data (anonymized of course, we don't need to know private information about the patients). Why is the underlying data a secret?
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Agree. Meaningless number without the subsquent 3 weeks number which would have meaning as it was the same vax age distribution..

What gets me is the CDC's comment about a "signal" without any data whatsoever. They shouldn't put out stuff like that. Especially claiming they want to be transparent. Nothing transparent about it at all.
 
jt512 said:
I don't see how you could test effectiveness of a flu vaccine outside of the flu season, so I take it this is a Phase II trial?
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Correct - testing for antibody production and safety.

jt512 said:
And I don't understand why you are not concerned "at all" about corona virus.
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Because it's just not dangerous to people under 85 who have had vaccines and aren't immuno-compromised, or very sick before getting it.

Check the numbers around the world.

jt512 said:
How much protection against a future severe case do you think your asymptomatic case gives you, and for how long? In the absence of good data showing otherwise, I would assume not a whole lot of protection and for not very long.
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It's now very clear that keeping up with boosters - and bivalent vaccines - reduces the chance of serious injury to levels that just aren't a concern outside of the above groups. Infections also increase the body's immune response, so after 4 vaccines and one or two infections and a bivalent vaccine in a couple of months time, my personal concern level about covid is so close to zero that it really doesn't matter.

And now we have paxlovid available as well. I've seen nothing that suggests covid is an issue for 99% of people in 2023.
 
Because it's just not dangerous to people under 85 who have had vaccines and aren't immuno-compromised, or very sick before getting it.
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I tend to agree with most of your posts however are you discounting long covid??
The numbers are horrendous even in kids.

My business associates partner is just now ( a year later ) showing some improvement ( out of the wheel chair and back to part time work.
For a while she was classified as fully disabled.....she had no comorbidities and was an active and healthy 30 year old before getting a relatively mild case ( no hospital )

The best path is never get it ....so far partner and I have avoided but barely....
Queensland Australia caseload has always been low.
We still mask for any venue with crowds....I'm much more concerned with covid now than in 2020 just because current crop is crazy infectious and it's a crap-shoot for long term consequences.
 
macdoc said:
I tend to agree with most of your posts however are you discounting long covid??
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Nope. It's very low odds post-vaccination, and treatments seem to be coming out to combat it.

It's a risk, but to me, it's on par with the risk of driving to the clinic.

https://www.bmj.com/content/377/bmj-2021-069676

I see no option but to accept that risk, because people no longer mask, are reluctant to get further vaccines, and won't even take therapeutics.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/15/covid-19-coronavirus-us-surge-complacency

macdoc said:
The best path is never get it ....so far partner and I have avoided but barely....
Queensland Australia caseload has always been low.
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Has it? I haven't been looking at Aussie.
 
The Atheist said:
It's a risk, but to me, it's on par with the risk of driving to the clinic.
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But if you have long COVID you end up with both risks, in fact you probably drive to a clinic a number of times to deal with your illness.

And don't forget to include lost work time.
 
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Not even close to comparable risk .
What we now know about long COVID and our brains - Pursuithttps://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au › articles › what-we-now...
6 Jan 2023 — Of more than 665 million cases worldwide, nearly one in every two people with COVID-19 is at risk of developing Post-COVID-19 Neurological Syndrome (PCNS).
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...long covid may end up costing more to the medical system than the original pandemic. Some of the autopsies are finding the virus pockets in areas not previously suspected.
The very uncertain prognosis is already a cost factor, what is it?, how can it be treated.?

https://aci.health.nsw.gov.au/covid-19/critical-intelligence-unit/post-acute-sequelae

When I arrived in Queensland from Canada in January 2021 ...there were only 7 deaths for the entire state ( 5 million pop )
That held pretty close until Dec 2021 when they skyrocketed ( comparatively ).

now for Australia

Forty deaths a day
Countless thousands of Australians had their Christmas and New Year plans upended for the third year in a row after a year in which deaths across the country numbered 14,813. That’s 40.5 deaths per day, dramatically outstripping 909 in 2020 (3.6 per day) and 1,331 ( 2.7 per day) in 2021.
In the latest data for the week ending January 13, there were 413 deaths bringing the national total for the year already to 659, about 50% of the total deaths in 2021.
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https://michaelwest.com.au/long-lon...e-needs-a-booster-say-experts-as-deaths-rise/

One of the headaches with covid is there seems no path to long term immunity whereas my bout of Hong Flu offers some protection decades later.
With covid it is a restart every year or less and given the variants you can even end up with dual infections of different variants ( rare but still there as a risk ).

Fat lady perhaps is retiring...
 
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marting said:
A couple new papers on long covid

Nature: Long COVID: major findings, mechanisms and recommendations
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-022-00846-2

Preprint: Long-term cardiac symptoms following COVID-19: a systematic review and meta-analysis
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.01.16.23284620v1
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Thanks mate!

Still has many questions, and the inclusion of ME/CFS as an outcome has my skeptical radar on high alert.

I see the post-vaccine cases are much lower, but it's not specified what severity's involved.

macdoc said:
Not even close to comparable risk .

...long covid may end up costing more to the medical system than the original pandemic. Some of the autopsies are finding the virus pockets in areas not previously suspected.
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It's not just long covid, either. Marting posted a study a couple of weeks ago that suggested multiple infections are likely to shorten your life. That's the key to figuring out where we go from here.

It might turn out that more life is lost from repeated infections than ever die from the first dose.

I made the comment in the Covid Roulette thread that my estimate of 60 million deaths might turn out to be low.

But we can't live in a bubble, and the wide majority of people aren't taking precautions. It's here to stay as an endemic disease, but what shape that takes we'll have to wait to find out.
 
Bi-valent booster data from Israel

"Among more than 600,000 booster-eligible adults ages 65 and up, those who received Pfizer/BioNTech's bivalent booster had an 81% lower risk of COVID hospitalization compared with those who received no booster (adjusted HR 0.19, 95% CI 0.08-0.43), reported Ronen Arbel, PhD, of Clalit Health Services (CHS) in Tel Aviv, Israel...Of note, only 14% of the eligible Israeli population of older adults received the updated vaccine during the study period, which started following the rollout of the new vaccines. "Vaccine misinformation, reports of side effects, or the belief that the vaccine is unnecessary as COVID-19 infection is sufficient to obtain immunity," were cited by Arbel and co-authors as possible reasons for the low uptake." MedPageToday

Regrettably misinformation is not confined to one country.
 
I was just casting around the numbers and I see Japan is having its highest death toll right now. Their daily death records show an increasing number of deaths in successive waves, which is the opposite of what happened elsewhere.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/japan/

They have a reasonable vaccination rate - maybe one of our residents can try to shed some light on possible reasons?
 
TA
Good topic. It's pretty strange.

Japan, until 2022 had an exceptionally low covid death total. Under .01%. Now in the last 12.5 months it's .03%.

Like Omicron elsewhere, it's hitting the elderly harder than earlier variants. But this increasing impact is hard to explain. Seems to be creating more and larger clusters in elder community homes.

Here's one discussion:
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/backstories/2185/

The health ministry said on January 14 that at least 4,998 people had died after contracting COVID-19 so far this month. That is clearly outpacing the rate of the past few months. Elderly people account for the vast majority of those deaths.

The National Institute of Infectious Diseases says around 60 percent of the deaths were directly caused by the coronavirus. The rest were attributed to heart failure, cancer, pneumonia, old age, aspiration pneumonia, or kidney failure, among other causes.
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