EPTCoronavirus and You - Page 274
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Any and all updates regarding the COVID-19 will need a source provided. Please do your part in helping us to keep this thread maintainable and under control. It is YOUR responsibility to fully read through the sources that you link, and you MUST provide a brief summary explaining what the source is about. Do not expect other people to do the work for you. Conspiracy theories and fear mongering will absolutely not be tolerated in this thread. Expect harsh mod actions if you try to incite fear needlessly. This is not a politics thread! You are allowed to post information regarding politics if it's related to the coronavirus, but do NOT discuss politics in here. Added a disclaimer on page 662. Many need to post better. | ||
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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ChristianS
United States3304 Posts
On October 31 2020 00:13 GreenHorizons wrote: I don't know what to assume anymore when it comes to the professionals around this, but are they at least testing the vaccines against known variations? Hi! Long time no post! I may not know much more than you on this, but my understanding is there’s not a great way to do this. There’s something called challenge trials, generally considered ethically questionable in humans, where you actually vaccinate participants and then *intentionally expose* them to pathogen, but normally we insist that participants’ health not be sacrificed for the sake of getting data. That gets a little artificial sometimes when you’re assigning people to placebo groups and you’re justifying it with “clinical equipoise” even though you’re pretty sure treatment is better than nothing, but that’s the general premise in clinical trials. That means you don’t have a great way to choose what variant of virus people are exposed to. I don’t think it’s a big issue as is, though. We can sequence viruses around the world and see some variations, but that’s mostly useful forensically; the vast majority of those mutations are almost certainly irrelevant to immunity. AFAIK most antibodies target functional parts of the spike protein, which will be highly conserved across variants because they’re essential to function. What could be a problem is when most of the population has immunity, either from vaccines or just getting the virus. Then there’ll be huge selective pressure to mutate a form of spike protein different enough that antibodies won’t recognize it. Whether that will be possible while retaining functionality is hard to predict, but either way there’s not a lot current vaccine-makers could do to anticipate it. I’m not 100% on all this - I work in pharma, but not in vaccines or clinical trials. But that’s my best understanding of the current state of things. Clinical trial results on mAb therapies (including the famous Regeneron) have apparently been disappointing, which puts a bit more pressure on the vaccines to perform. | ||
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Lmui
Canada6223 Posts
I guess you can expect variations across the areas, and even if it's only fully effective in some regions, it might still confer some other protective benefits in others. | ||
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TheTenthDoc
United States9561 Posts
Admittedly some of that may be my own anecdotal story of pseudo-vaccination with chicken pox resulting in me having shingles at the age of four... The risk will almost certainly not outweigh a even a (poor) 50% reduction in susceptibility to infection, but it's worth knowing when there's sure to be multiple candidates. | ||
KwarK
United States44203 Posts
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Simberto
Germany11941 Posts
Who the virus kills is based not only on the amount of infections, but also on how many people are infected at the same time (due to hospital overcrowding). And not everyone needs to be infected for the herd to be immune. Afaik it is about 60-70% of the population who need to be immune for the herd to be immune. However, i do agree that this is basically not a strategy, but what happens eventually if we don't find a better strategy. Herd immunity is basically our worst case scenario, where the disease has run its course and infected most of the population. There might be better or worse ways to achieve this state, but i don't think that it should be the state we try to achieve. | ||
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HolydaKing
21254 Posts
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Lmui
Canada6223 Posts
Helluva way to start the winter | ||
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InFiNitY[pG]
Germany3474 Posts
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xM(Z
Romania5299 Posts
sure the virus exists and it's bad and it unnecessarily killing people but at this point, this shit is all over the place. | ||
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Artisreal
Germany9235 Posts
On October 31 2020 18:54 xM(Z wrote: they will just let it roll men; some interdiction and closures sure, but at this point they're using covid to have the people pay for the current economic crisis(something similar to war profiteering). sure the virus exists and it's bad and it unnecessarily killing people but at this point, this shit is all over the place. I struggle to understand who they are and what you want too say here? The second paragraph advocates for a laissez faire attitude? | ||
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xM(Z
Romania5299 Posts
On October 31 2020 19:06 Artisreal wrote: I struggle to understand who they are and what you want too say here? The second paragraph advocates for a laissez faire attitude? since you brought it up, i see the laissez-faire approach to be yours. fighting against covid, working on prevention, trying to educate the population about it and so on, it is tremendous work and should be forever appreciated and admired and rewarded, but unless you're a medic or a patient, you do fuck all here. i see our well-being being only a side/part of this crisis, with the economic enslavement being the/another side and at this point in time, i see the later as more important 'cause it fucks up entire generations of people. covid is used politically to gain capital, economically to bail out big corporations and emotionally to morally or ethically bankrupt people. the former and later are self evident and on the middle example, i'm about here: Since mid-September, the Federal Reserve has injected three trillion U.S. dollars into the hands of private banks and Wall Street. Despite the fact that massive amounts of money was created out of thin air, the central bank still believes repurchase agreements (repos) are needed to tame the turbulent economy. Nearly every day the Federal Reserve Bank of New York gives primary lenders billions of dollars. Like clockwork on Tuesday, December 3, the entity introduced another $95.56 billion to private institutions. The Fed Created $3 Trillion Dollars for Private Banks and Continues to Create More Around two and a half months ago, the U.S. Federal Reserve cut interest rates and started creating massive amounts of money using repo operations because of a so-called short-term lending crunch. It started on September 17 at 10 a.m. with a massive $53 billion repo, which was accepted by the NY Fed. The following day, the Fed pumped another $75 billion into private financial markets claiming an “unusually high demand for cash.” When it all started, the Fed made sure to inform the press the move wasn’t another form of quantitative easing (QE). The last time the central bank cut rates and initiated colossal repurchase agreements was 10 years ago after the 2008 financial crisis. Beth Hammack, the Goldman Sachs Group treasurer, told the Wall Street Journal that the “market will be waiting to see if the Fed makes this a more permanent part of the playbook.” in march another 3 trillion was injected into US economy that was planned for before covid pandemic was ever a thing. point is, we would've been in a massive recession even without the covid. did covid influenced it/made it worse?, sure but imo, it added at best a 10% to 15% hike; the worse of it, the 85%, we had it coming since 2019. if the crisis wouldn't be put solely on covid, i'm guessing(hoping) that some of those to big to fail corporations would get fucked too but since everything is put now on covid, people(your children) will have to pay(hike in taxes) the money printing and money borrowing of state level actors all cross the globe while corporations get billions for free. | ||
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Artisreal
Germany9235 Posts
On October 31 2020 20:29 xM(Z wrote: since you brought it up, i see the laissez-faire approach to be yours. fighting against covid, working on prevention, trying to educate the population about it and so on, it is tremendous work and should be forever appreciated and admired and rewarded, but unless you're a medic or a patient, you do fuck all here. i see our well-being being only a side/part of this crisis, with the economic enslavement being the/another side and at this point in time, i see the later as more important 'cause it fucks up entire generations of people. covid is used politically to gain capital, economically to bail out big corporations and emotionally to morally or ethically bankrupt people. the former and later are self evident and on the middle example, i'm about here: in march another 3 trillion was injected into US economy that was planned for before covid pandemic was ever a thing. point is, we would've been in a massive recession even without the covid. did covid influenced it/made it worse?, sure but imo, it added at best a 10% to 15% hike; the worse of it, the 85%, we had it coming since 2019. if the crisis wouldn't be put solely on covid, i'm guessing(hoping) that some of those to big to fail corporations would get fucked too but since everything is put now on covid, people(your children) will have to pay(hike in taxes) the money printing and money borrowing of state level actors all cross the globe while corporations get billions for free. Who do you mean? | ||
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DarkPlasmaBall
United States46243 Posts
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SC-Shield
Bulgaria872 Posts
On October 31 2020 02:36 TheTenthDoc wrote: Personally the main thing I'm worried about as an epidemiologist is that none of the trials are going to have close to enough people to detect potential "vaccine enhancement" of the disease, cases in which the vaccine substantially reduces the risk of infection but elevates the damage when the infection does take hold. Especially given the immune wonkiness of COVID-19. Admittedly some of that may be my own anecdotal story of pseudo-vaccination with chicken pox resulting in me having shingles at the age of four... The risk will almost certainly not outweigh a even a (poor) 50% reduction in susceptibility to infection, but it's worth knowing when there's sure to be multiple candidates. I don't understand your post really. SARS-CoV2 mutates slowly. Slower than flu. Link: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/07/pandemic-virus-slowly-mutating-it-getting-more-dangerous Possible vaccine might still help since we're not dealing with a super fast mutating virus. If it doesn't, at the worst case we'll probably have to get a vaccine once per year for a few years in a row. Kinda like flu vaccines. I'm ok with that. I trust vaccine development when universities are involved (e.g. Oxford vaccine) since it's not 100% private sector and universities naturally prefer science over politics/money. Regarding unsafe vaccines, I have yet to see evidence that damages caused are more severe than getting infected and not being vaccinated if you mean vaccines in general. Yes, there are probably side-effects for some people but I don't agree that risk is higher than cure/reduction itself for most people. | ||
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Dark_Chill
Canada3353 Posts
On October 31 2020 00:38 JimmiC wrote: I found this super interesting it ranks all the US states and Canadian provinces on their current performance in regard to infections per 1.million. The worst preforming province is Manitoba and it would rank as the 42nd worst performing state! https://www.ctvnews.ca/mobile/health/coronavirus/covid-19-in-the-u-s-how-do-canada-s-provinces-rank-against-american-states-1.5051033 Is that seriously accurate? I thought Quebec was doing badly given the media attention it got (granted, it is bad) but holy shit, I hope you guys down south are okay. | ||
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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xM(Z
Romania5299 Posts
(the subject goes against thread rules so ...) | ||
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Artisreal
Germany9235 Posts
I'm certain it's not me. | ||
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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