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+--- Thread: CDC stats on breakthrough infection (minus the media hysteria) (/showthread.php?tid=258482)
Re: CDC stats on breakthrough infection (minus the media hysteria) - deckeda - 08-01-2021
Yes Janit. I was just trying to get us all to the end of this year.
Re: CDC stats on breakthrough infection (minus the media hysteria) - N-OS X-tasy! - 08-01-2021
Anybody else notice they got the year wrong?
Re: CDC stats on breakthrough infection (minus the media hysteria) - N-OS X-tasy! - 08-01-2021
mattkime wrote:
[quote=Ombligo]
164 million x .001 mortality is still 164,000 murdered by anti-vax, anti-mask idiots.
`.001` was a percentage, so it was really
164 million x .00001 mortality = 1,640
Still terrible.
164K seemed really high.
Re: CDC stats on breakthrough infection (minus the media hysteria) - mrbigstuff - 08-01-2021
mattkime wrote:
[quote=Ombligo]
164 million x .001 mortality is still 164,000 murdered by anti-vax, anti-mask idiots.
`.001` was a percentage, so it was really
164 million x .00001 mortality = 1,640
Still terrible.
What's the incidence of other deaths from other viruses over this period? And what Is the period? No doubt that it's a tragedy when someone dies, no matter the cause, especially if they are an otherwise healthy individual. But there will be people who die from bug bites, or other viruses, or bacterial infection. In other words, something that they caught by no fault of their own. We will never get to zero deaths from this, ever, so we have to determine what that "percentage" is where we can again fee comfortable resuming a "normal" life.
Re: CDC stats on breakthrough infection (minus the media hysteria) - Acer - 08-01-2021
Janit wrote:
[quote=PeterB]
I think the big problem is, how are they defining "breakthrough infection" ? As has been discussed here already, it's possible for a fully vaccinated person to get corona and have a mild-to-moderate upper respiratory infection only, or not even that and be apparently completely asymptomatic.
There has been some disagreement about the data, but at one recent point, it was claimed that the infected, vaccinated person can as easily infect others as an infected, unvaccinated person with Delta. So the "breakthrough rate" may not actually be that low -- but it also wouldn't matter that the breakthrough rate was high, except for the fact that there are so many unvaccinated still around.
The way I'm thinking about it is: suppose EVERYONE were vaccinated. There's no question that even under that circumstance, the virus could still potentially infect some people and be transmitted from person to person (since the vaccines are of course not 100%) ... nevertheless, the rates of everything would be dramatically reduced across the board, and the final death toll would be really, really low. It might even be akin to the common cold... that it goes around and around and around, and yes, some people get sick, but very, very few actually get severe illness or die. That's what I see the ultimate goal as being... we'll never be rid of this virus, but if we can get it to the point of being no more dangerous than the common cold.
Yes, I think this is the best way to think about it, with the caveat that even with high levels of vaccination, an endemic delta variant would still cause serious illness in people for whom the vaccine is contraindicated. So not yet quite like the common cold.
Given the present incidence of the delta variant, maximal vaccination has become just the first step, in that it dramatically reduces mortality. The next step will be an updated vaccine that interferes with delta's ability to generate high viral loads and thus lowers the contagion. Of course, there could be yet another dangerous variant, so that we may be playing whack-a-mole for a while. Everyone who can should take every new vaccine as it is developed.
This makes me wonder about the evolutionary history of our endemic "common cold" coronaviruses. Did they follow a similar pattern of starting with serious illness, generating variants, and finally achieving a benign equilibrium after a long period of co-evolution?
I think success needs to be defined with comparison to the current status of influenza, not the common cold. The flu still kills people outright, the common cold much, much less so. But still we consider the risk of the flu "manageable" with current measures. Perhaps someday COVID will fade into the ranks of its common cold cousins, but flu-level threats (not 1918 levels, but 2021 levels of course) in the meantime would be welcome.
Re: CDC stats on breakthrough infection (minus the media hysteria) - PeterB - 08-01-2021
Janit wrote:
[quote=PeterB]
I think the big problem is, how are they defining "breakthrough infection" ? As has been discussed here already, it's possible for a fully vaccinated person to get corona and have a mild-to-moderate upper respiratory infection only, or not even that and be apparently completely asymptomatic.
There has been some disagreement about the data, but at one recent point, it was claimed that the infected, vaccinated person can as easily infect others as an infected, unvaccinated person with Delta. So the "breakthrough rate" may not actually be that low -- but it also wouldn't matter that the breakthrough rate was high, except for the fact that there are so many unvaccinated still around.
The way I'm thinking about it is: suppose EVERYONE were vaccinated. There's no question that even under that circumstance, the virus could still potentially infect some people and be transmitted from person to person (since the vaccines are of course not 100%) ... nevertheless, the rates of everything would be dramatically reduced across the board, and the final death toll would be really, really low. It might even be akin to the common cold... that it goes around and around and around, and yes, some people get sick, but very, very few actually get severe illness or die. That's what I see the ultimate goal as being... we'll never be rid of this virus, but if we can get it to the point of being no more dangerous than the common cold.
Yes, I think this is the best way to think about it, with the caveat that even with high levels of vaccination, an endemic delta variant would still cause serious illness in people for whom the vaccine is contraindicated. So not yet quite like the common cold.
Given the present incidence of the delta variant, maximal vaccination has become just the first step, in that it dramatically reduces mortality. The next step will be an updated vaccine that interferes with delta's ability to generate high viral loads and thus lowers the contagion. Of course, there could be yet another dangerous variant, so that we may be playing whack-a-mole for a while. Everyone who can should take every new vaccine as it is developed.
This makes me wonder about the evolutionary history of our endemic "common cold" coronaviruses. Did they follow a similar pattern of starting with serious illness, generating variants, and finally achieving a benign equilibrium after a long period of co-evolution?
I don't know too many patient populations for whom the vaccines are contraindicated at this point? (Especially with the mRNA vaccines, where it's not even a viral particle in the vaccine...) But hopefully herd immunity would keep infections in such individuals limited, and/or they could be treated with donated antibodies. My real concern (as I've stated here many times) is that we're going to end up with Delta Plus (as India already has) or Delta plus plus, eventually leading to an Omega, where Omega evades all current vaccines. This virus mutates more and faster than would be expected for a run-of-the-mill coronavirus.
My understanding is that the endemic, "common cold" coronaviruses are exactly that, basically coronaviruses that are simply not as pathogenic as MERS, SARS, and SARS-CoV-2.
There are a whole host of other coronaviruses which, though not as pathogenic as these, can still cause disease -- one of the most interesting of those (at least, to me) is NL63, which does not usually cause serious disease, but CAN cause respiratory infection outbreaks in susceptible populations (such as the elderly), and especially in crowded conditions (such as assisted living facilities). I ran across some very interesting publications about NL63 because it could potentially serve as a less-pathogenic-but-still-useful model for SARS-CoV-2. Researchers have used it to see if some of the antiviral stuff in Sambucus (for example) might be useful for preventing or treating corona:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31560964/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33753964/
And reading the last part of what Sarcany wrote, still makes me wonder if we shouldn't just encourage masking and of course vaccination, but also push forward the work on the nasal spray to prevent infection (as an adjunct to vaccination). If there were an OTC nasal spray that you could do daily-- that would, say, reduce your chance of getting infected by 95%-- I think a lot of people might do it. I know I would. (It might even appeal more to some of the vaccine-averse, because it wouldn't involve injection and all the spray ingredients could be non-proprietary and therefore listed right on the label.)
Lastly, my trying to compare it to the common cold was indeed because they are both caused by coronaviruses, and it'd be great if we could reduce it to that level of pathogenicity ... since I think the likelihood of our being able to interfere with its transmissibility is not high. These are just very contagious viruses. I was thinking of the best possible achievable outcome.
Edit, more interesting reading, some have been thinking about it the same way I have:
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/general-information.html
https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/common-cold-coronaviruses-tied-to-less-severe-covid-19-cases-68146
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7825868/
Re: CDC stats on breakthrough infection (minus the media hysteria) - mattkime - 08-01-2021
I too hate the term 'breakthrough' although I begrudging respect its usefulness. It hasn't broken through anything....thats just part of how vaccines work!
...someday this will all be over...right? right???
Re: CDC stats on breakthrough infection (minus the media hysteria) - Filliam H. Muffman - 08-01-2021
I would consider a daily nasal spray to reduce susceptibility but it would need to either be shelf stable and available everywhere, or an auto-ship option.
The evidence that this virus is mutating so fast is disturbing, and still waiting for China to publish genetic profiles of the Wuhan 2015 Gain of Function research to prove it isn't related (like that is ever gonna happen).
Re: CDC stats on breakthrough infection (minus the media hysteria) - PeterB - 08-01-2021
Filliam H. Muffman wrote:
I would consider a daily nasal spray to reduce susceptibility but it would need to either be shelf stable and available everywhere, or an auto-ship option.
The evidence that this virus is mutating so fast is disturbing, and still waiting for China to publish genetic profiles of the Wuhan 2015 Gain of Function research to prove it isn't related (like that is ever gonna happen).
I don't see why the nasal spray couldn't be both shelf-stable AND available everywhere. It's a lipopeptide, which I would guess should be pretty stable in formulation, and hopefully not too hard to mass-produce: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/05/health/coronavirus-ferrets-vaccine-spray.html
Re: CDC stats on breakthrough infection (minus the media hysteria) - Sarcany - 08-01-2021
Filliam H. Muffman wrote:
The evidence that this virus is mutating so fast is disturbing, and still waiting for China to publish genetic profiles of the Wuhan 2015 Gain of Function research to prove it isn't related (like that is ever gonna happen).
Good luck waiting for the papers documenting something that never happened.
On top of all the other evidence against the whole "THOSE DARK-SKINNED FUNNY-SPEAKING FOREIGNERS ENGINEERED IT" line of BS pushed most notably by Rand Paul at the behest of Donald Trump, there was an international pause on "Gain of Function" research and a moratorium on funding at the time in question.
(Whatever Facebook groups you're on, take a break.)