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

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Dr.Sid said:
Japan ditched masks outside months ago. People still used them. This Monday they ditched masks inside. And as for what I can tell from webcams .. over 80% of people still are using them everywhere. But at least you can see a rebel here and there. And people in cars, traveling alone, with a mask ? Yep.
That might bite back, as recent spread of other viruses everywhere shows.
Of course I mainly want the habit to die down before my May trip. I learned to hate the masks last October, when I was there.
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angrysoba said:
I’m in the gym now here in Osaka. About 80% are masked. I am in the 20%.

The same is true is walking around and even more so on trains or in shops. The vast majority are still masked.
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Here in Tokyo and Yokohama it is more like 90%, although some people might be wearing them due to pollen allergies. Pollen season should be over by May.

My understanding is that you are still supposed to wear them in crowded commuter trains or hospitals, but not, for example, in a Shinkansen train, which are less crowded. Unless you want to, and some people will continue to wear them no matter what the government says.
 
Puppycow said:
Here in Tokyo and Yokohama it is more like 90%, although some people might be wearing them due to pollen allergies. Pollen season should be over by May.

My understanding is that you are still supposed to wear them in crowded commuter trains or hospitals, but not, for example, in a Shinkansen train, which are less crowded. Unless you want to, and some people will continue to wear them no matter what the government says.
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When we were in Japan some years ago, long before Covid, lots of people wore masks, particularly women. The percentage of people wearing masks will probably not go below the level of before Covid.
 
The Atheist said:
Except, as marting has taken pains to point out, new variants outside the omicron line aren't emerging, or seem at all likely to.
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I guess The Atheist still believes that Omicron is the mild variant ... or something.
Variants of Interest (VOI)
For these variants, evidence is available on genomic properties, epidemiological evidence or in-vitro evidence that could imply a significant impact on transmissibility, severity and/or immunity, realistically having an impact on the epidemiological situation in the EU/EEA. However, the evidence is still preliminary or is associated with major uncertainty. In addition, all the criteria for variants under monitoring outlined below apply.
(...)
Variants under monitoring
These additional variants of SARS-CoV-2 have been detected as signals through epidemic intelligence, rules-based genomic variant screening, or preliminary scientific evidence. There is some indication that they could have properties similar to those of a VOC, but the evidence is weak or has not yet been assessed by ECDC. Variants listed here must be present in at least one outbreak, detected in a community within the EU/EEA, or there must be evidence that there is community transmission of the variant elsewhere in the world.
SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern as of 9 March 2023 (European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control)
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The Atheist said:
ditching mask mandates and has stopped pre-departure testing for Chinese travellers.
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That will certainly help crush the pandemic: Cumulative confirmed COVID-19 deaths per million people
 
dann said:
I guess The Atheist still believes that Omicron is the mild variant ... or something.
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It demonstrably is.

The South African doctors noted it when it arose, and it's held true.

Omicron is far milder than delta.

I realise a publication like British Medical Journal saying:

The research confirms earlier studies from South Africa and South Korea, which suggested that infection with the omicron variant was notably less severe than with the previous dominant variants.
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...means nothing to people wanting to still panic over the disease, but most people understand it, so it's cool.

dann said:
Cumulative confirmed COVID-19 deaths per million people[/url]
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Still working on complete misrepresentation of the facts, I see.

Cumulative totals are utterly irrelevant in 2023.

We're 2.5 months into the year and just over 100,000 people have died of covid in 2023.

In 2021, it was 900,000, and in 2022, 600,000 people died, in the exact same period.

Just for comparison, during the first 2.5 months this year, 'flu has killed 100k, HIV 350k and car crashes 280k.
 
The Atheist said:
It demonstrably is.

The South African doctors noted it when it arose, and it's held true.

Omicron is far milder than delta.

I realise a publication like British Medical Journal saying:

...means nothing to people wanting to still panic over the disease, but most people understand it, so it's cool.
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Yeah, right! Far 'milder'! And making up for it in transmissibility:
Vaccinated people infected with the omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 had symptoms for 6.87 days on average, compared with 8.89 days with the delta variant, data from the ZOE app have shown.
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So why don't we skip all other measures against the virus and learn to live with it, right?!
Wait, that is just what we did, only it didn't really turn out the way The Atheist predicted, did it?!

Some people don't understand that transmissibility may be more important (and kill more people) than virulence. Numbers from my own country: March 2020 to Nov 30, 2021: 2,883 Covid-19 deaths; Nov 30, 2021 to March 16, 2023: 5,433 Covid-19 deaths.

The Atheist said:
Still working on complete misrepresentation of the facts, I see.

Cumulative totals are utterly irrelevant in 2023.

We're 2.5 months into the year and just over 100,000 people have died of covid in 2023.

In 2021, it was 900,000, and in 2022, 600,000 people died, in the exact same period.

Just for comparison, during the first 2.5 months this year, 'flu has killed 100k, HIV 350k and car crashes 280k.
Click to expand...


Yes, The Atheist is still working on complete misrepresentation of the facts, which is probably the reason why he didn't want to copy my link (a tendency I have noticed before). But let us look at the same graph after the arrival of the mild variant instead: Cumulative confirmed COVID-19 deaths per million people

And he never gets tired of his comparison with car crashes, which is why I always confront him with the NZ numbers* whenever he does:
dann said:
New Zealand road deaths in 2022: 373 - a little more than the average of recent years and yet no comparison to the SARS-CoV-2 death toll:
New Zealand Covid-19 deaths in 2022: 2,280
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The Atheist is not ignorant of the difference between the actual number of Covid-19 deaths and the registered number of Covid-19 deaths. He just likes to pretend that the registered number is the actual number.
And even when we look at the registered number of Covid-19 deaths, this number is 172,000. Don't be surprised that The Atheist calls this "just over 100,000". That is what minimizing is all about.

* The numbers from any country with reliable statistics will do.
 
marting said:
Eric Topol updates variant watch:

All remains quiet on the new variant front
https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1636778952554590208
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Yes, very steady as she goes.

I think we can be pretty confident that we're not going to see a sudden shift to a more dangerous form now.

It's now 15 months since omicron struck, and it's notable how the waves have declined each time, while deaths keep trending ever-lower.
 
Dr.Sid said:
Actually no. New Zealand had the luxury of being an isolated island. They managed to keep delta (and older variants) out. In EU and US omicron has more cases than delta (showing poor delta induced immunity) but less deaths even considering higher case numbers.

https://ourworldindata.org/explorer...sitivity=false&country=NZL~USA~European+Union

Every country which had delta, saw omicron as a relief.
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You leave out the effect of vaccinations in your calculations. Delta arrived more or less pre-vaxx (or only partly vaxxed).

In the Nordics, we didn't have fewer deaths. On the contrary, we saw a drastic rise in the death toll due to a rising number of infections.

The reason was, as I have mentioned already, that Omicron was more contagious - in spite of vaccinations and boosters:
Cumulative confirmed COVID-19 deaths per million people, Dec 2021 to Nov 2022.
In the first year after the arrival of Omicron, the death roll rose considerably in all countries. We an extreme increase in the number of deaths in:
Denmark: x 2,5 (495 --> 1,430)
Norway: almost x 4 (213 --> 824)
Finland: more than x 5 (270--> 1,430)
Iceland: x 6,5 (100 --> 640)

And this was in spite of the vast majority of adults being well-vaxxed (and then boosted in November and December), which we hadn't been in the (Delta) summer of 2021.
Does it look mild to you?! As I said, the transmissibility sometimes more than makes up for virulence, and in the winter of 2021-22, the Nordic countries went for the fabled hybrid immunity or 'super immunity': vaxx + infection. The latter, i.e. infection, was very easy to achieve since Omicron was as infectious as it was even after three jabs of Pfizer or Moderna.

There was no doubling, quadrupling or worse in Sweden, which had been hit much harder than the other Nordics in their attempt to achieve herd immunity by infection, but they still had a considerable increase in the number of deaths by Covid-19:
Sweden: 1,437 --> 2,008 - considering both vax + immunity acquired by earlier infection.


ETA: Cuba, of course, was almost unvaccinated when Delta arrived, but fared much better with Omicron. Not because it was mild, which it isn't, but because the whole population, including children, had then been vaccinated. Singapore had been vaccinated prior to Delta, and also vaccinated even very young children:
Cumulative confirmed COVID-19 deaths per million people: Nordics + Cuba + Singapore, Dec 2021 to Nov 2022.
 
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dann said:
You leave out the effect of vaccinations in your calculations. Delta arrived more or less pre-vaxx (or only partly vaxxed).
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No. In fact it was the Delta variant's emergence that triggered develoment and push for additional shots. Prior to Delta there had been a strong reduction in cases/hospitalizations/ and deaths by summer 2021 because the vaccines had been quite effective.

It was the summer crowds in Provincetown, MA. that changed things. P-town, as it is known, is a gay Mecca. And gays tended to get vaxxxed at higher rates with 80% being "fully vaxxed." Delta sprang up and large numbers of celebrants got Covid-19 vaxxed or not. 3/4 of the cases were "fully vaxxed."

This resulted from two factors. Vaccine protection against infection starts to wane after 4 months and Delta exhibited substantial immune escape.

And boosters were born.

https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/poll-finding/views-of-covid-19-vaccines-among-lgbt-adults/
https://www.npr.org/sections/health...spot-a-covid-outbreak-and-learn-more-about-de
 
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dann said:
ETA: Cuba, of course, was almost unvaccinated when Delta arrived, but fared much better with Omicron. Not because it was mild, which it isn't...
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The position so far:

One bloke on the internet screaming "omicron isn't milder!!11!!!"

BMJ - as above: omicron is milder.

USA's National Institute of Health (via Nature): [vaccinationm/received immunity...] Most likely both play a part in what is by now clear: Omicron leads to less severe disease at the population level.

Who will win?
 
marting said:
No. In fact it was the Delta variant's emergence that triggered develoment and push for additional shots. Prior to Delta there had been a strong reduction in cases/hospitalizations/ and deaths by summer 2021 because the vaccines had been quite effective.

It was the summer crowds in Provincetown, MA. that changed things. P-town, as it is known, is a gay Mecca. And gays tended to get vaxxxed at higher rates with 80% being "fully vaxxed." Delta sprang up and large numbers of celebrants got Covid-19 vaxxed or not. 3/4 of the cases were "fully vaxxed."

This resulted from two factors. Vaccine protection against infection starts to wane after 4 months and Delta exhibited substantial immune escape.

And boosters were born.

https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/poll-finding/views-of-covid-19-vaccines-among-lgbt-adults/
https://www.npr.org/sections/health...spot-a-covid-outbreak-and-learn-more-about-de
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Yes!
Dr. Sid and I are EU Europeans. Maybe you are unaware or maybe you just forgot, and it's very easy to forget because by the end of 2021 the EU (at least in Western Europe) had overtaken the USA, but the vaccine rollout in 2021 was very different in Europe from what it was in the USA. You object to what I wrote and support your claim by referring to an article about "the Provincetown, Mass., cluster that started around July Fourth weekend", and you mention that "vaccine protection against infection starts to wane after 4 months".

That may have been true in the USA, but it wasn't in Europe because the rollout was much slower. Denmark was one of the fastest countries in the EU at the time, but it only managed to get a majority of the population vaxxed by the end of the summer because it benefitted from the vaccine hesitancy in some countries in Eastern Europe:
Denmark buys 1.17 million doses of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID vaccines from Rumania (The Ministries of the Interior and of Health Care, June 29, 2021)
One million vaccines made a huge difference in a population of 5.86 million!

I.e. Denmark only had the problem of waning vaccines in the summer of 2021 in the very oldest and most frail parts of the population by the summer of 2021. In the age group corresponding to the one that appears to have been hit as one of the first in Provincetown, Mass. around July Fourth, vaccinations had probably hadn't even (or had only just) started in early July. What I wrote and you quoted was that "Delta arrived more or less pre-vaxx (or only partly vaxxed)." And my numbers referred to the Nordics (+ Cuban and Singapore).
I don't know about Singapore, but due to delay in the delivery of some of the ingredients of the vaccines (due to the U.S. blockade), the Cuban vaccination campaign didn't get up to full speed until the (Delta) summer of 2021. And it shows! Cumulative confirmed COVID-19 deaths in Cuba, June 1 to Nov 29, 2021.

I no longer remember any details about the vaccine rollout in the Czech Republic. Maybe Dr. Sid does. My guess is that it will have been a little faster than in Rumania, but considerably slower than in Denmark due to the extra doses Denmark was able to purchase at a critical moment.
 
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The Atheist said:
The position so far:

One bloke on the internet screaming "omicron isn't milder!!11!!!"

BMJ - as above: omicron is milder.

USA's National Institute of Health (via Nature): [vaccinationm/received immunity...] Most likely both play a part in what is by now clear: Omicron leads to less severe disease at the population level.

Who will win?
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I guess we all have to be grateful that The Atheist now seems to have understood that Omicron isn't mild, and that it isn't even "far milder" than Delta, which is what I pointed out, but The Atheist is always very selective when he quotes my posts!

Notice that The Atheist leaves out that the reason for describing Omicron as "milder" in the BMJ is the comparison with the extremely virulent Delta variant: Vaccinated people infected with the omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 had symptoms for 6.87 days on average, compared with 8.89 days with the delta variant, data from the ZOE app have shown.

Omicron just isn't "far milder" than Delta. It is only slightly milder, and it more than makes up for it in transmissibility, which is how it managed to kill several more people in most Nordic countries than the other variants, including Delta, had managed to kill before the arrival of Omicron - and in a shorter time span. That The Atheist also doesn't want to quote this goes without saying. It's his strategy for winning his imaginary contest, "Who will win?", in spite of Omicron's death toll "at the population level," which he only pretends to be concerned about anyway.

dann said:
The reason was, as I have mentioned already, that Omicron was more contagious - in spite of vaccinations and boosters:
Cumulative confirmed COVID-19 deaths per million people, Dec 2021 to Nov 2022.
In the first year after the arrival of Omicron, the death roll rose considerably in all countries. We an extreme increase in the number of deaths in:
Denmark: x 2,5 (495 --> 1,430)
Norway: almost x 4 (213 --> 824)
Finland: more than x 5 (270--> 1,430)
Iceland: x 6,5 (100 --> 640)
Click to expand...
 
UK cases on the way up again, according to Zoe and hospital admissions (up 12% in the last week). UK Government has decided to stop the ONS surveys, so we will not have reliable data any more. Also, funding for tests in hospital has changed, according to Chris Pagel, so again less reliable figures in future for patients being admitted. The bottom of each recent successive wave seems to be higher, even if the peaks are lower.
 
Planigale said:
You are not alone. Come into hospital with a cough and fever and you will be given an antibiotic even in the absence of a proven bacterial infection. Come in with flu or covid proven on PCR and you may not be given antivirals. The is despite he fact most antivirals are safer than antibiotics and in general there is no greater evidence of efficacy. There seems to be a reluctance to give antivirals which doesn't apply to antibiotics.
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Antivirals seem to be limited to those at high risk in the UK.
 
The Atheist said:
Appears to be no differentiation between people admitted for covid and with covid, which is misleading at best.

The current numbers are a small fraction of what's happened in the past couple of years.
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It's an indication that numbers of people infected with Covid is going up again. People will be off work, and some will get long Covid.
 
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