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

[marting]

If someone gets the alleged protection from having had more (!) infections, more infections don't seem to give you much protection, do they?! On the contrary, it seems to indicate that someone who is less vaccinated tends to get infected more often.

Did you miss this?

People that were vaccinated and infected >=1 y had a negative efficacy which is consistent with some degree of immune imprinting.

Vaccinated: Efficacy -4.6% (-16.5 to 8.2)
UnVaccinated: Efficacy 6.9% (-18.8 to 29.6)

CI overlaps so not determinative. Also, it's pretty well established that vaccination significantly reduces severe Covid/death. But reducing infection? Not so much.

Something else I found quite curious. A much larger portion of the vaccinated was previously infected compared to the unvaccinated. Observational and one might expect some difference in behavior. Possibly being vaccinated means OK to take more risks.

Of the unvaccinated controls, 257 were previously infected v 1064 that had not been infected.
Of the vaccinated controls, 1377 were previously infected v 1304 that had not been infected.

Pretty darned big difference. Surprised not to see comments on this in the paper but I guess it's a side issue. See Table S2 in the paper.

 

[The Atheist]

TA, you are missing an important fact. If one tries for 'natural' protection by avoiding the vaccine and instead getting infected, even an otherwise healthy person under age 65 risks getting a fatal case of COVID, long COVID, or passing the infection on to any number of persons who do have risk factors. And as to that last one, vaccinated persons who still get infected shed less virus and are less contagious.

I've stated many times that people should get vaccinated, but it's abundantly clear that a lot of people won't do that.

 

[dann]

No pretending - the words you typed only mentioned the 1.8%, and that's what people see.

The reality of 80% for up to 6 months is better than a 'flu vaccine and totally adequate.

All the bluster and projection in the world isn't going to reverse your clear attempt at dishonesty.

Now I see the problem! This one will help people understand and spare them some time and effort the next tine they find interesting information online: How to Copy and Paste on Any Device (Wikihow)

I don't know why flu vaccines are brought into a discussion of the waning of the level of immunity by COVID-19 infection. I think most people understand that the point of vaccines is to spare them from the worst effects of infections.
I am not even sure if typical antivaxxer promotion of "personal and herd immunity" by letting "the disease take its course" was due to dishonesty or due to ignorance.

This is most of what I copy-pasted (!) and posted from the study itself:

"The overall effectiveness of previous infection in preventing reinfection with JN.1 was estimated at only 1.8% (95% CI: −9.3-12.6%). This effectiveness demonstrated a rapid decline over time since the previous infection, decreasing from 82.4% (95% CI: 40.9-94.7%) within 3 to less than 6 months after the previous infection to 50.9% (95% CI: −11.8-78.7%) in the subsequent 3 months, and further dropping to 18.3% (95% CI: −34.6-56.3%) in the subsequent 3 months. Ultimately, it reached a negligible level after one year."
Reality-Check post 455

 

[dann]

I've stated many times that people should get vaccinated, but it's abundantly clear that a lot of people won't do that.

There is a reason why people aren't likely to get vaccinated. They won't get vaccinated if they believe nonsense like this:

...Someone who is less vaccinated may have had more infections, and gets the protection from that. ...

Some people are going to lose their **** over that.

It's a good reason to not get booster shots, because we know the protection against severe disease does last, so you're better to let the disease take its course and build up personal and herd immunity.

I'm quite amused by it.

I find it peculiar to pick that particular sentence from marting's post, when this was another option: "And it is well estblished that vaxxes reduce serious disease/risk of death."
But it clearly wouldn't rhyme with the antivaxxer notion that there is "good reason to not get booster shots."


I won't go into The Atheist's warnings against pediatric C19 vaccinations. Maybe he doesn't think of children as "people".

 

[The Atheist]

I won't go into The Atheist's warnings against pediatric C19 vaccinations. Maybe he doesn't think of children as "people".

Lovely attempt to poison the well, btw. Logical fallacies are cool, eh?

It's quite simple.

The risk of the vaccine outweighs the risk from the disease for very young children, except for children with immune deficiencies or other issues. We had superb evidence of the lack of harm covid does to very young kids when an Aussie hospital managed to infect a neonatal intensive care ward early in the pandemic, and not a single child died, despite being critically ill to begin with.

That's why Australia, UK, NZ and other enlightened countries don't advocate children under 5 be vaccinated as a matter of course.

 

[marting]

The risk of the vaccine outweighs the risk from the disease for very young children, except for children with immune deficiencies or other issues.

I haven't seen evidence of that. OTOH, I haven't seen contrary evidence either. The problem is that both vaccine injury is rare but so is serious Covid-19 disease among children.

We had superb evidence of the lack of harm covid does to very young kids when an Aussie hospital managed to infect a neonatal intensive care ward early in the pandemic, and not a single child died, despite being critically ill to begin with.

That's why Australia, UK, NZ and other enlightened countries don't advocate children under 5 be vaccinated as a matter of course.

Here in San Diego (3.3M population) There have been no deaths of children (0-17 Y/O) from Covid-19 since last June. There has been one death from Flu. The C19 vaccination rate for these kids is under 20% so it's not vaccinations that are preventing deaths.

OTOH, the C19 deaths of those over 65 are about 10x higher than Flu. Yet 90% of those are vaccinated for C19 and 50% for Flu.

Covid-19 heavily skews to older people.

It would take a really huge study to make a determination that vaccination of children had more benefit than risk. It probably does in secondary issues. Possibly by reducing long covid risk but is by no means a certainty.

Here's a New York Times piece on "vaccine injured"

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/03/health/covid-vaccines-side-effects.html

Dr. Gregory Poland, 68, editor in chief of the journal Vaccine, said that a loud whooshing sound in his ears had accompanied every moment since his first shot, but that his entreaties to colleagues at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to explore the phenomenon, tinnitus, had led nowhere.
...
Research may ultimately find that most reported side effects are unrelated to the vaccine, he acknowledged. Many can be caused by Covid itself.
...
An expert panel convened by the National Academies concluded in April that for the vast majority of side effects, there was not enough data to accept or reject a link.

 

[The Atheist]

Here in San Diego (3.3M population) There have been no deaths of children (0-17 Y/O) from Covid-19 since last June. There has been one death from Flu. The C19 vaccination rate for these kids is under 20% so it's not vaccinations that are preventing deaths.

The stats for kids is skewed by older children as well. The data for under 5s is hard to find, but what I've seen indicates that long covid is exceedingly rare in infants.

OTOH, the C19 deaths of those over 65 are about 10x higher than Flu. Yet 90% of those are vaccinated for C19 and 50% for Flu.

Covid-19 heavily skews to older people.

More proof I should have stuck with my original name of "Boomer Hoover" for it.

The death rate by age seems to still be increasing exponentially as the age of the patient goes up - you wouldn't want to be around people with covid if you're 90.

 

[The Atheist]

This is not good news: https://www.stuff.co.nz/world-news/...ccine-months-after-admitting-rare-side-effect

At least implicated in 81 deaths, it's not going to matter how many lives were saved, the only stat that will be bandied about is the harm it caused.

 

[Lplus]

This is not good news: https://www.stuff.co.nz/world-news/...ccine-months-after-admitting-rare-side-effect

At least implicated in 81 deaths, it's not going to matter how many lives were saved, the only stat that will be bandied about is the harm it caused.

Yep, and out of 3 billion doses, but that might as well be 300 as far as the detractors are concerned.

 

[marting]

Ethical Question re Pfizer's Vaccine Trial

I was reviewing some of the Pfizer history as to why they dropped the interim reporting requirement of 32 from the 4 targets: 32, 62, 92, 120 cases. These were the cumulative case counts that unblinding would occur in their vaccine trial.

However, the FDA made clear in early Oct. 2020 that they expected 2 months of safety data in addition to efficacy. There were discussions between the FDA and Pfizer that resulted in Pfizer proposing a protocol change dropping the 32 case, interim reporting requirement. But this raised a problem. They were close to reaching the 32 case threshold but had to wait for the FDA to approve the protocol change. And they were obligated to unblind and report the interim results when the cases hit the 32 count.

They did something ethically questionable. They collected swabs but halted testing them for Covid-19. Since lots of people were being tested, some of whom would prove to have Covid-19, neither people that tested negative nor positive would be informed about their test results. Previously, both groups of people would normally be told whether they had Covid-19 or not. When they got approval, and unblinded they had collected 94 cases. 62 more than the earlier, removed threshold.

Seems ethically sketchy.

 

[dann]

Lovely attempt to poison the well, btw. Logical fallacies are cool, eh?

It's quite simple.

The risk of the vaccine outweighs the risk from the disease for very young children, except for children with immune deficiencies or other issues. We had superb evidence of the lack of harm covid does to very young kids when an Aussie hospital managed to infect a neonatal intensive care ward early in the pandemic, and not a single child died, despite being critically ill to begin with.

That's why Australia, UK, NZ and other enlightened countries don't advocate children under 5 be vaccinated as a matter of course.

Another one of those antivaxxer posts with claims and no links or quotations whatsoever.
"The risk of the vaccine outweighs the risk from the disease for very young children, except for children with immune deficiencies or other issues." No evidence whatsoever.

Even the GBD crowd might have asked how the alleged "superb (I) evidence (I) of the lack of harm covid does to very young kids" can be based on only one incident and with death as the only criterion for harm. In fact, most people would consider children "being critically (I) ill to begin with" as a condition worth avoiding by means of vaccines and PPE.
Can't wait to see the study comparing this unfortunate group of children to a control group that escaped the infection or didn't get infected until after they had been vaccinated.

Uncivilized countries not only don't advocate children under 5 be vaccinated. They prevent them from being vaccinated because they believe the herd-immunity-by-infection lie as far as children are concerned.

Clinical Trials and Safety Monitoring Show That COVID-19 Vaccination Is Safe for Children and Teens
COVID-19 vaccines have undergone the most extensive safety analysis in U.S. history. Because the updated mRNA COVID-19 vaccines for 2023-2024 are very similar to the previous mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, their safety is firmly supported by data from earlier clinical trials and from complementary vaccine safety monitoring systems. The updated COVID-19 vaccines now available in the United States will provide better protection against variants currently making people sick. CDC and U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) continue to monitor the safety of COVID-19 vaccines, keep people informed of findings, and use data to make COVID-19 vaccination recommendations.
COVID-19 Vaccine Safety in Children and Teens (CDC, Oct 23, 2023)

Civilized countries protect their children by vaccinating them and do their best to prevent them from getting infected in other ways and fare far better.

Population density per km²:
Australia 3.5
New Zealand 20
Singapore 8,276

 

[dann]

Preprint of a very large study in the Nordics. Denmark, Finland, Sweden. Since the Nordics boost only 65+ at this point, that's the cohort that has been studied.

Results During autumn and winter 2023-2024, a total of 1,867,448 1:1 matched pairs of XBB-containing covid-19 mRNA vaccine recipients and non-recipients were included (mean age 75.4 years, standard deviation 7.4 years). The comparative vaccine effectiveness was 60.6% (95% confidence interval, 46.1% to 75.1%) against covid-19 hospital admission (930 v 2,551 events) and 77.9% (69.2% to 86.7%) against covid-19 related death (301 v 1,326 events) at 12 weeks of follow-up. This corresponded to 191.1 (95% confidence interval, 50.2 to 332.1) covid-19 hospital admissions and 109.2 (100.2 to 118.1) deaths prevented per 100,000 individuals vaccinated with an XBB.1.5-containing vaccine. The comparative vaccine effectiveness was similar across sex, age (65-74/≥75 years), number of previous covid-19 vaccine doses received, and seasonal influenza vaccination co-administration subgroups and periods of either omicron XBB- or BA.2.86-sublineage dominance. While the protection was highest during the first weeks after vaccination, it was well-preserved at end of week 12 of follow-up.

Conclusion Among adults aged ≥65 years, vaccination with a monovalent XBB.1.5-containing covid-19 mRNA vaccine reduced the rates of covid-19 related hospital admission and death during autumn and winter 2023-2024 across three Nordic countries.
Comparative effectiveness of the monovalent XBB.1.5-containing covid-19 mRNA vaccine across three Nordic countries (medRxiv, May 9, 2024)

X comment:

Remarkably well done study of booster effectiveness based on cutting edge trial emulation design, and with enormous sample sizes enabling high statistical power and the ability to precisely match boosted and unboosted with respect to many key potential confounding factors, which all adds to the credibility of the results.
Prof Jeffrey S Morris (X, May 13, 2024)

A simiiar study focusing on the immunocompromised found:

At day 270, the comparative VE against Covid-19 hospitalization was 34.2% (95% CI, 7.1% to 61.3%) for the bivalent BA.4-5 vaccine (696 vs 1,128 events, risk difference [RD] per 100,000, -223.7, 95% CI, -411.5 to -36.0) and 42.6% (95% CI, 31.3% to 53.9%) for the BA.1 vaccine (395 vs 740 events, RD per 100,000, -385.0, -673.4 to -96.6) compared with matched unboosted. The comparative VE against Covid-19 death was 53.9% (95% CI, 38.6% to 69.3%) for the bivalent BA.4-5 vaccine (203 vs 457 events, RD per 100,000, -138.7, 95% CI, -195.5 to -81.9) and 57.9% (95% CI, 48.5% to 67.4%) for the BA.1 vaccine (112 vs 302 events,

 

[angrysoba]

This is not good news: https://www.stuff.co.nz/world-news/...ccine-months-after-admitting-rare-side-effect

At least implicated in 81 deaths, it's not going to matter how many lives were saved, the only stat that will be bandied about is the harm it caused.

Only for people who are stupid. The fact that it probably saved millions of lives is far more important.

 

[The Atheist]

Only for people who are stupid.

There's no shortage of them around - I've seen the report heavily cherry-picked on social media.

81 deaths!

If we say 3 billion vaccine shots were given, you were more likely to win the lottery than die from vaccine reaction.

 

[angrysoba]

There's no shortage of them around - I've seen the report heavily cherry-picked on social media.

81 deaths!

If we say 3 billion vaccine shots were given, you were more likely to win the lottery than die from vaccine reaction.

Yeah, you said that these are the numbers that will be bandied about and you have now twice bandied them about. Why do that?

 

[dann]

I haven't seen evidence of that. OTOH, I haven't seen contrary evidence either. The problem is that both vaccine injury is rare but so is serious Covid-19 disease among children.

Here in San Diego (3.3M population) There have been no deaths of children (0-17 Y/O) from Covid-19 since last June. There has been one death from Flu. The C19 vaccination rate for these kids is under 20% so it's not vaccinations that are preventing deaths.

OTOH, the C19 deaths of those over 65 are about 10x higher than Flu. Yet 90% of those are vaccinated for C19 and 50% for Flu.

Covid-19 heavily skews to older people.

It would take a really huge study to make a determination that vaccination of children had more benefit than risk. It probably does in secondary issues. Possibly by reducing long covid risk but is by no means a certainty.

Here's a New York Times piece on "vaccine injured"

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/03/health/covid-vaccines-side-effects.html

(An article on Science-Based Medicine about the NYT article: A poorly framed article on COVID-19 vaccine injury in the New York Times (SBM, May 6, 2024))


I was reminded of the quoted post, particularly the sentence, "The problem is that both vaccine injury is rare but so is serious Covid-19 disease among children," when I listened to the most recent episode of the podcast series We Want Them Infected, Disputed Data: The Ongoing Debate Over COVID's Cardiac Effects (Apple podcast, May 14, 2024).

What is the comparison used to come up with the word rare in this context? When used about both (C19) "vaccine injury" and "serious Covid-19 disease," it sounds as if it's about fifty-fifty: both rare!
To me, it sounds like the usual vague minimizer version of the antivaxxer trope, so I would like to hear what exactly rare means in the case of both "vaccine injury" and "serious Covid-19 disease." How many % or ‰ are we talking about? I would also like to know what you mean by "vaccine injury." For instance, in the case of "Covid-19 disease," you qualify it as "serious," but you don't do so in the case of "vaccine injury." Is that a mere coincidence?

I would also like to know if the word rare used about both "vaccine injury" and "Covid-19 disease" means rare in comparison to other vaccines and diseases, for instance the ones covered by the MMR vaccines. Rare is a weasel word that has been used to mean different things by minimizers like Vinay Prasad and John Mandrola throughout the pandemic, as pointed out in the We Want Them Infected podcast mentioned above.

 

[dann]

Yeah, you said that these are the numbers that will be bandied about and you have now twice bandied them about. Why do that?

That's what antivaxxers and C19 minimizers do. They are the only ones who 'bandy about' the alleged stats. Don't expect to be presented with a sensible reason.
As for AstraZeneca's side effects:

The AstraZeneca vaccine was recently withdrawn from sale worldwide. A number of media outlets as well as antivaxxers claimed that this was owing to side effects like blood clots. This is not true. Dr Susan Oliver and Cindy the dog go back to the science and show that the real reason was more mundane.
AstraZeneca vaccine withdrawn! Antivaxxers lose the plot! (Back to Science (Dr. Susan Oliver) on YouTube, May 15, 2024)

Why was the AstraZeneca vaccine withdrawn? Hint: It’s not what antivaxxers and many media outlets are saying.
Dr Susan Oliver (PhD) (X, May 15, 2024)

 

[The Atheist]

Yeah, you said that these are the numbers that will be bandied about and you have now twice bandied them about. Why do that?

Do you have a problem with stating facts?

My last post was pointing out how absurdly low the number is.

 

[rjh01]

That's what antivaxxers and C19 minimizers do. They are the only ones who 'bandy about' the alleged stats. Don't expect to be presented with a sensible reason.
As for AstraZeneca's side effects:

To save people from watching the video the reason it was withdrawn was because no one was buying it anymore. They also were not updating it for the latest variants (why?). This leaves the question unanswered of why people not buying it anymore?

Edit. It ceased to be available in Australia from March 2023. The reason stated was because of the side effects. Ref: https://www.health.gov.au/our-work/covid-19-vaccines/advice-for-providers/clinical-guidance/tts

 

[marting]

To save people from watching the video the reason it was withdrawn was because no one was buying it anymore. They also were not updating it for the latest variants (why?). This leaves the question unanswered of why people not buying it anymore?

Edit. It ceased to be available in Australia from March 2023. The reason stated was because of the side effects. Ref: https://www.health.gov.au/our-work/covid-19-vaccines/advice-for-providers/clinical-guidance/tts

It was associated with more AEs than Pfizer for GBS, the main issue with it.
https://researchportal.tuni.fi/en/p...d-adverse-events-of-special-interest-a-multin

Results: Participants included 99,068,901 vaccinated individuals. In total, 183,559,462 doses of BNT162b2, 36,178,442 doses of mRNA-1273, and 23,093,399 doses of ChAdOx1 were administered across participating sites in the study period. Risk periods following homologous vaccination schedules contributed 23,168,335 personyears of follow-up. OE ratios with LBCI > 1.5 were observed for Guillain-Barr´e syndrome (2.49, 95 % CI: 2.15, 2.87)) and cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (3.23, 95 % CI: 2.51, 4.09) following the first dose of ChAdOx1
vaccine