Cont: The One Covid-19 Science and Medicine Thread Part 5

[icerat]

Pretty much the same here - both covid and 'flu vaccines give me a tender arm for a day and that's it.

The tetanus vaccine is the bastard.

Haven't had a vaccine for anything but Covid since I was a kid. The Covid vaccines have wiped me out for 3-4 days every time. Fever, chills, fatigue. And a sore arm.

Some ad hoc X polling has been done with Long Covid sufferers to see if this is common for sufferers, but no pattern discernible.

Have to consider flu and measles vaccines now, but I don't think the latter is available here. Neither is a covid booster, at least where I live.

 

[Puppycow]

Haven't had a vaccine for anything but Covid since I was a kid. The Covid vaccines have wiped me out for 3-4 days every time. Fever, chills, fatigue. And a sore arm.

My son had a similar response to the Moderna vaccine, although it was probably only for 2 days in his case. I can almost understand why some people become anti-vaxx. If you have a bad reaction like that, you might wonder if it's really worth it and feel like maybe you've been harmed.

I think at some point there was even talk of avoiding giving the Moderna vaccine to young males. After the initial course of 2, I didn't push him to get a booster after that, given the low risk for people in his age group.

 

[dann]

It wasn't just talk: Covid-19: Sweden, Norway, and Finland suspend use of Moderna vaccine in young people “as a precaution” (BMJ, Oct 11, 2021)
Denmark, too: Sundhedsstyrelsen dropper Moderna til alle under 18 år (TV2.dk, Oct 6, 2021)

I am not sure that you made the right decision. I wonder if a somewhat bad reaction to the vaccine doesn't mean that you would be even harder hit by the infection. We know that myocarditis from the infection was much worse than the (relatively few and relatively milder) cases of myocarditis from the vaccines.
Myocarditis risk significantly higher after COVID-19 infection vs. after a COVID-19 vaccine (Newsroom, Aug 22, 2022)
Still, avoiding Moderna shots for young men would be the wise thing to do. But there were safe alternatives, and there are more of them now.

 

[steenkh]

Have to consider flu and measles vaccines now, but I don't think the latter is available here.

Where do you live? I thought you were in Sweden. Anyway, I would be surprised to hear if measles vaccine is not available in a developed country. After all, it is marked for eradication by WHO, and it is not going well because of vaccine skeptics, rather than availability.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Where do you live? I thought you were in Sweden. Anyway, I would be surprised to hear if measles vaccine is not available in a developed country. After all, it is marked for eradication by WHO, and it is not going well because of vaccine skeptics, rather than availability.

Availability of the measles vaccine is a minor cause of the problem in parts of Africa where getting the frozen vaccine to people in rural areas has been a problem. But it was a solvable though ongoing problem.

 

[Puppycow]

Remember the Great Barrington Declaration?

I was reminded of it due to a case that is now before the Supreme Court in the US.

I wonder if there's anything more that we can say about it now, given the benefit of hindsight?

It was written in the days before the first vaccine was available, and nobody really knew at the time how long it would take to develop or how effective it would be. Also, it was back when people (including Fauci, who opposed the GBD) still thought that "herd immunity" would eventually save us. It was just a question of what percentage of the population needed to be infected and/or vaccinated before it would happen.

I think we can say now that "herd immunity" was never going to happen. It was one assumption that the GBD was based upon.

The Great Barrington Declaration was an open letter published in October 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns.[1][2] It claimed harmful COVID-19 lockdowns could be avoided via the fringe notion of "focused protection", by which those most at risk could purportedly be kept safe while society otherwise took no steps to prevent infection.[3][4][5] The envisaged result was herd immunity within three months, as SARS-CoV-2 swept through the population.[1][2][4]

Signed by Sunetra Gupta of the University of Oxford, Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford University, and Martin Kulldorff of Harvard University, it was sponsored by the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER), a libertarian free-market think tank associated with climate change denial.[6][7][8] The declaration was drafted in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, signed there on 4 October 2020, and published on 5 October.[2][9] At the time, COVID-19 vaccines were considered to be months away from general availability.[4] The document presumed that the disease burden of mass infection could be tolerated, that any infection would confer long term sterilizing immunity, and it made no mention of physical distancing, masks, contact tracing,[10] or long COVID, which has left patients with debilitating symptoms months after the initial infection.[11][12]

I do think there were some serious costs to the lockdowns, especially the closure of schools. I don't think remote learning was an adequate substitute for in-person traditional education for at least some students.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

... I think we can say now that "herd immunity" was never going to happen. It was one assumption that the GBD was based upon.

I do think there were some serious costs to the lockdowns, especially the closure of schools. I don't think remote learning was an adequate substitute for in-person traditional education for at least some students.

In normal times, ie before that idiot Trump was injected into the mix, herd immunity would have had a much more positive impact. But that didn't happen.

As for closing schools, again the benefit would have significantly out weighed the cost but politics ****** it up.

It is what it is. Next time, and there will be a next time with a highly pathogenic influenza and the serious lack of trust people in the US have with public health and how that is going to impact the rest of the world, it's going to be the nightmare all over again if people don't trust vaccinations and public health surveillance.

We don't yet know the full damage Trump has done to the world.

 

[angrysoba]

Remember the Great Barrington Declaration?

I was reminded of it due to a case that is now before the Supreme Court in the US.

I wonder if there's anything more that we can say about it now, given the benefit of hindsight?

It was written in the days before the first vaccine was available, and nobody really knew at the time how long it would take to develop or how effective it would be. Also, it was back when people (including Fauci, who opposed the GBD) still thought that "herd immunity" would eventually save us. It was just a question of what percentage of the population needed to be infected and/or vaccinated before it would happen.

I think we can say now that "herd immunity" was never going to happen. It was one assumption that the GBD was based upon.



I do think there were some serious costs to the lockdowns, especially the closure of schools. I don't think remote learning was an adequate substitute for in-person traditional education for at least some students.

I think this is a pretty good podcast which talks about the Covid outbreak and the Great Barrington Declaration's response.

Essentially, yes, it was far too confident about how quickly society would reach herd immunity, there were of course no vaccines then, so more people could be expected to get seriously ill and die, and they also explain what was happening in the hospitals and how the people in the GBD seemed to blithely ignore it.

Link

 

[Puppycow]

I think this is a pretty good podcast which talks about the Covid outbreak and the Great Barrington Declaration's response.

Essentially, yes, it was far too confident about how quickly society would reach herd immunity, there were of course no vaccines then, so more people could be expected to get seriously ill and die, and they also explain what was happening in the hospitals and how the people in the GBD seemed to blithely ignore it.

Link

Interesting. I'll add that one to my podcast app.

 

[Puppycow]

In normal times, ie before that idiot Trump was injected into the mix, herd immunity would have had a much more positive impact. But that didn't happen.

I hate that idiot Trump as much as we all do, but given what we know now, I don't think true herd immunity was ever in the cards, Trump or no Trump.

It's because of the nature of the disease. To get herd immunity, it has to be the kind of disease that you only get once in a lifetime, like chicken pox. When I was a kid, you generally got chicken pox at some point in your childhood, and then that was it. You never got it a second time. Covid, unfortunately, is not like that. You can get it multiple times. The vaccines reduce the severity but don't make you immune forever, so you can be a vector for the virus multiple times.

 

[marting]

It's because of the nature of the disease. To get herd immunity, it has to be the kind of disease that you only get once in a lifetime, like chicken pox. When I was a kid, you generally got chicken pox at some point in your childhood, and then that was it. You never got it a second time. Covid, unfortunately, is not like that. You can get it multiple times. The vaccines reduce the severity but don't make you immune forever, so you can be a vector for the virus multiple times.

Initially, Covid-19 was believed to have an R0 of 2.5 ish. When the vaccines first came out with a 95% efficacy against symptomatic disease with no evidence of decreased efficacy at the end, they were pretty optimistic that if enough people were vaccinated herd immunity would be achieved. That was the belief or hope through the first half of 2021. I recall Fauci saying as much in early 2021. And infections in the first half of 2021 were heavily skewed to the unvaccinated. And then along came Delta.

The P-Town, Delta breakout (July 2021) was an awakening. 75% of the cases were fully vaccinated. Worse, the majority of the Covid-19 cases had been vaccinated within the prior 90 days. So much for herd immunity. The boosters were rolled out with little to no evidence how effective they would be even short term. But what else to do? Then by Jan. 2022 Omicron completely obliterated the herd immunity concept. The rationale shifted to reducing severe disease, hospitalization and death which is obviously even more important.

As for the GBD, it was issued a few months before vaccines came out and at the time vaccines were considered unlikely until well into 2021 if ever.

The GBD wasn't completely nuts. There was good evidence that those previously infected were generally immune. It wasn't unreasonable at that time to think that if most people caught the disease and the elderly were protected that herd immunity would be achieved.

And this was occurring naturally prior to the GBD. San Diego published case, hospitalization and death stats grouped by age cohorts. I observed a significantly lower case rate relative to the population for older cohorts. People aren't stupid and the fact that Covid-19 greatly impacted the elderly was known early on. And they acted on it even if no formal program existed.

At the time it just wasn't known that neither the GBD approach nor vaccination would be able to achieve herd immunity. But even though neither would result in herd immunity, vaccination did have the benefit of providing significant protection for the elderly whereas the GBD wouldn't have.

So time goes on and we learn. And a lot faster than if this had happened 20 years earlier.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I hate that idiot Trump as much as we all do, but given what we know now, I don't think true herd immunity was ever in the cards, Trump or no Trump.

It's because of the nature of the disease. To get herd immunity, it has to be the kind of disease that you only get once in a lifetime, like chicken pox. When I was a kid, you generally got chicken pox at some point in your childhood, and then that was it. You never got it a second time. Covid, unfortunately, is not like that. You can get it multiple times. The vaccines reduce the severity but don't make you immune forever, so you can be a vector for the virus multiple times.

Herd immunity is working now. People think it means COVID would be completely gone (except in labs) like happened with SARS. There was some reason to believe that might be the pattern. But just getting past the significant lethality of the virus is due to herd immunity. It's following the pattern of influenza and numerous other viruses rather than that of SARS.

 

[jt512]

I think this is a pretty good podcast which talks about the Covid outbreak and the Great Barrington Declaration's response.

Essentially, yes, it was far too confident about how quickly society would reach herd immunity, there were of course no vaccines then, so more people could be expected to get seriously ill and die, and they also explain what was happening in the hospitals and how the people in the GBD seemed to blithely ignore it.

Link

Yeah, I would definitely expect a balanced, unbiased discussion of the Great Barrington Declaration on a podcast titled the "We Want Them Infected Podcast." No red flags with that title.

 

[jt512]

Remember the
I do think there were some serious costs to the lockdowns, especially the closure of schools. I don't think remote learning was an adequate substitute for in-person traditional education for at least some students.

There seems to be consensus globally that the school lockdowns did more harm than good. And there is a lot of debate about the lockdowns in general.

 

[The Atheist]

So time goes on and we learn. And a lot faster than if this had happened 20 years earlier.

Very well said, and it's nice to be able to view it with hindsight.

Not that I think humans as a species have learned anything from covid.

There seems to be consensus globally that the school lockdowns did more harm than good. And there is a lot of debate about the lockdowns in general.

Ah, good on you - I riased this in the pandemic thread and I'm inclined to agree on schools, although there would have been closures due to the number of infected teachers for a while anyway if we'd let it rip.

Overall, I think we should have let it go - no lockdowns, just let the chaos reign for the weeks it would have taken to sweep through the populations.

While a lot more lives would have been lost, the division in society is something which will probably cost society a lot more in the long run.

The pandemic - entirely die to lockdowns rather than the virus - caused an explosion of wealth for the super-rich, and a further descent into poverty for far too many. We're seeing this play out now as eviction moratoriums disappear and thousands of people are being left homeless.

Mental health problems are through the roof, and again, I blame the lockdowns, not the virus. People are relsilient to death more than mental anguish.

House values would have gone the opposite way to the insane growth numbers we've seen in the past few years, too.

 

[dann]

Nice work mate.

I'm sure someone suggested ME/CFS and long covid were mental illnesses, and it looks like that might be at least partly true.

No, it doesn't. Even with broken bones and other unambiguously biological and not psychological ailments, it is possible for people to imagine that that they suffer from it even though they don't. It's called hypochondria.
I already mentioned that blood tests can be used to determine if people have CFS, and now there's this:

"Overall, what we show is that ME/CFS is unambiguously biological, with multiple organ systems affected," neurologist Avindra Nath, lead researcher of the study and clinical director of NIH's National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), said in an interview with JAMA.
For decades, many doctors* had dismissed ME/CFS as a psychosomatic condition that was 'all in patients' heads'. Now there is little doubt: a host of biological changes underpin ME/CFS.
"It's a systemic disease," Nath continued, "and the people living with it deserve to have their experiences taken seriously."
Landmark Study Confirms Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Is 'Unambiguously Biological' (ScienceAlert, Mar 24, 2024)

*I recently mentioned one of those doctors in another thread.

 

[jt512]

At the time it just wasn't known that neither the GBD approach nor vaccination would be able to achieve herd immunity. But even though neither would result in herd immunity, vaccination did have the benefit of providing significant protection for the elderly whereas the GBD wouldn't have.

But the central strategy of the GBD was "focused protection." Per the GBD: "Adopting measures to protect the vulnerable should be the central aim of public health responses to COVID-19."

https://gbdeclaration.org/
https://gbdeclaration.org/focused-protection/

 

[marting]

But the central strategy of the GBD was "focused protection." Per the GBD: "Adopting measures to protect the vulnerable should be the central aim of public health responses to COVID-19."

https://gbdeclaration.org/
https://gbdeclaration.org/focused-protection/

Exactly. But the problem is that immunity turned out to be quite temporary. Thus, focused protection and a "let her rip" for the young would not have worked. Infections would continue and, over time, leak into the "protected" groups.

As it turned out, vaccines came out much sooner than expected. And they were prioritized to the oldest/HCW. A kind of focused protection or limited resource triage. Over the next few years a large majority, vaccinated or not, were infected. Often multiple times. But the vaccinated were more protected from severe disease.

 

[jt512]

Exactly. But the problem is that immunity turned out to be quite temporary. Thus, focused protection and a "let her rip" for the young would not have worked. Infections would continue and, over time, leak into the "protected" groups.

That's what happened with the lockdowns anyway. I'm not sure why focused protection would have been worse.

 

[marting]

That's what happened with the lockdowns anyway. I'm not sure why focused protection would have been worse.

I'm not at all sure it would have been worse given when vaccines came out. I wasn't making that argument. Rather, had vaccines not came out as quickly as they did and GBD adopted, I don't think the GBD would have done any good because immunity was so short lived. This wasn't known at the time.

At the time of the GBD, it wasn't known vaccines would get approval in a few months and it wasn't known that mucosal immunity was so short lived. Lasting immunity was critical to the GBT working. For that matter, the vaccines were too. They were initially believed to provide herd immunity when 70% (Fauci's number IIRC) of folks were vaccinated. The presumption was that it would stop infections by reducing R0 below 1. Didn't happen.

We now have a kind of herd immunity due to prior infection and/or vaccination. But not in the sense Fauci used 3 years ago. Rather, general reduction in severe disease. Most people infected in the recent wave were either vaccinated and/or previously infected. And there were a lot more infected than the case numbers indicated since it's harder to get PCR tested and home positive antigen tests aren't reported. But there are proxies like waste water and hospital positivity test rates one can compare with earlier waves.