Covid-19 miscellany

[ZiprHead]

So, someone else's weight problem puts others at risk of a virus?

If you are vaccinated how does an unvaccinated person put you at risk? Are you a vaccine skeptic?

Vaccinated people still die of covid. It's rare but it does happen.

 

[Keith&Co.]

So, someone else's weight problem puts others at risk of a virus?

If you are vaccinated how does an unvaccinated person put you at risk? Are you a vaccine skeptic?

Vaccinated people still die of covid. It's rare but it does happen.

Body armpr does not make you invincible, but it does improve your chances to survive being shot at.
In exactly the same way, vaccines do not make you invulneranle, but they do improve your chances of surviving being exposed to an infection.

 

[ZiprHead]

I'm pro-vaccine but cynicism is always necessary.

I cannot find any page on the AAP website that looks like that and Pfizer isn't listed on their donor page. Doing a search for Pfizer brings up news stories about the vaccine and children. Nothing more.

 

[crazyfingers]

I'm pro-vaccine but cynicism is always necessary.

I cannot find any page on the AAP website that looks like that and Pfizer isn't listed on their donor page. Doing a search for Pfizer brings up news stories about the vaccine and children. Nothing more.

Agreed. I looked too. Unless i'm given a URL I believe that AAP page is a fake.

 

[bilby]

I'm pro-vaccine but cynicism is always necessary.

I cannot find any page on the AAP website that looks like that and Pfizer isn't listed on their donor page. Doing a search for Pfizer brings up news stories about the vaccine and children. Nothing more.

Agreed. I looked too. Unless i'm given a URL I believe that AAP page is a fake.

I think it's real but hugely misleading.

http://www.scaap.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Foxworth-CATCH-Update-and-Highlights.pdf

Pfizer doesn't fund AAP as such, but they do help fund the AAP Community Access To Child Health (CATCH) program, which is a tightly focused program of grants for specific innovation initiatives in Paediatric Community Health, where those initiatives could not be funded in other ways.

There's no indication of any conflict of interest; Pfizer doesn't appear to fund the AAP, other than in the provision of CATCH grant money. The pdf at my link (above) lists the specific exclusions from eligibility for CATCH funding, and it's very clear that this funding doesn't support the AAP itself, its administration, or its members and their activities, other than innovations in community child health specifically defined.

That pdf makes clear that Pfizer is the major donor to the CATCH program. That's not the same thing as being the AAP's "biggest donor" as alleged by the meme.

But to a conspiracy theorist, everything looks like a conspiracy.

 

[crazyfingers]

Agreed. I looked too. Unless i'm given a URL I believe that AAP page is a fake.

I think it's real but hugely misleading.

http://www.scaap.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Foxworth-CATCH-Update-and-Highlights.pdf

Pfizer doesn't fund AAP as such, but they do help fund the AAP Community Access To Child Health (CATCH) program, which is a tightly focused program of grants for specific innovation initiatives in Paediatric Community Health, where those initiatives could not be funded in other ways.

There's no indication of any conflict of interest; Pfizer doesn't appear to fund the AAP, other than in the provision of CATCH grant money. The pdf at my link (above) lists the specific exclusions from eligibility for CATCH funding, and it's very clear that this funding doesn't support the AAP itself, its administration, or its members and their activities, other than innovations in community child health specifically defined.

That pdf makes clear that Pfizer is the major donor to the CATCH program. That's not the same thing as being the AAP's "biggest donor" as alleged by the meme.

But to a conspiracy theorist, everything looks like a conspiracy.

Interesting. I wonder how old that tweet image actually is. The current page for CATCH at https://www.aap.org/catch and https://www.aap.org/en/advocacy/community-health-and-advocacy/community-access-to-child-health/ (the two are identical) doesn't look anything like the image in the tweet and Pfizer is not show as a donor. The supporters of CATCH are described as:

Our Supporters

The AAP CATCH Program is made possible through the support of Roots & Wings Foundation with additional support from various AAP Sections and Councils and donations to the AAP Friends of Children Fund.

That image is likely years old and no longer correct.

 

[bilby]

Interesting. I wonder how old that tweet image actually is. The current page for CATCH at https://www.aap.org/catch and https://www.aap.org/en/advocacy/community-health-and-advocacy/community-access-to-child-health/ (the two are identical) doesn't look anything like the image in the tweet and Pfizer is not show as a donor. The supporters of CATCH are described as:

Our Supporters

The AAP CATCH Program is made possible through the support of Roots & Wings Foundation with additional support from various AAP Sections and Councils and donations to the AAP Friends of Children Fund.

That image is likely years old and no longer correct.

Quite possibly. The pdf I found was from January 2019, so pre-dates Covid (much less Covid vaccines) by several months.

 

[marc]

Body armpr does not make you invincible, but it does improve your chances to survive being shot at.
In exactly the same way, vaccines do not make you invulneranle, but they do improve your chances of surviving being exposed to an infection.

I’ve been using that analogy for a while. The vaccine is your body armor, the mask is your helmet. If everyone just armored up we would all have a better chance of getting through this

 

[Keith&Co.]

Body armpr does not make you invincible, but it does improve your chances to survive being shot at.
In exactly the same way, vaccines do not make you invulneranle, but they do improve your chances of surviving being exposed to an infection.

I’ve been using that analogy for a while. The vaccine is your body armor, the mask is your helmet. If everyone just armored up we would all have a better chance of getting through this

I prefer saying the vax is +5 on your savings throw, but you can always still fumble. Not everyone gets the math rocks analogy, though.

 

[marc]

Body armpr does not make you invincible, but it does improve your chances to survive being shot at.
In exactly the same way, vaccines do not make you invulneranle, but they do improve your chances of surviving being exposed to an infection.

I’ve been using that analogy for a while. The vaccine is your body armor, the mask is your helmet. If everyone just armored up we would all have a better chance of getting through this

I prefer saying the vax is +5 on your savings throw, but you can always still fumble. Not everyone gets the math rocks analogy, though.

Yea, people trying to dismiss the danger because of ‘only x% die from it’ do not make much of an impression to anyone who has rolled a few nat 1s

 

[Shadowy Man]

I prefer saying the vax is +5 on your savings throw, but you can always still fumble. Not everyone gets the math rocks analogy, though.

Yea, people trying to dismiss the danger because of ‘only x% die from it’ do not make much of an impression to anyone who has rolled a few nat 1s

I bet a lot of those same people play the lottery.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

From https://www.google.com/amp/s/arstec...ums-to-get-religious-vaccine-exemption/?amp=1

A hospital system in Arkansas is making it a bit more difficult for staff to receive a religious exemption from its COVID-19 vaccine mandate. The hospital is now requiring staff to also swear off extremely common medicines, such as Tylenol, Tums, and even Preparation H, to get the exemption.

The move was prompted when Conway Regional Health System noted an unusual uptick in vaccine exemption requests that cited the use of fetal cell lines in the development and testing of the vaccines.

I am aware of that case--which isn't going far enough.

Make as complete a list as possible, if anyone does a vaccine exemption based on the fetal cell bit the use of any medicine on the list is an automatic termination for being unvaccinated as they have shown their claimed exemption is false.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Risk is monitored via multiple aspects:

1) side effect
2) rate of side effect
3) how many people exposed to the risk

Generally, the worse the side effect, the lower the rate of that side effect. But when 3 increases, that lowers thresholds greatly.

Yes, but the new vaccine would be doing just the same. Where would the danger come from? The only difference is that a slightly difference spike protein would be used to do, well, the same thing. The risk is never zero, but it's low enough.

Exactly... just like the Boeing 737-Max. The changes weren't that significant. What is the danger? That is the question that has led to lots of suffering. Remember Flint, MI? The water was too corrosive. But was it safe to drink, except that wasn't the only issue. What is the danger?

Sorry, but Boeing saying the 737-Max changes were minor doesn't mean that's the case. As a software guy the description of the "minor" change is obviously nothing of the sort.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

So, someone else's weight problem puts others at risk of a virus?

If you are vaccinated how does an unvaccinated person put you at risk? Are you a vaccine skeptic?

Because the vaccine isn't anything like 100% against Delta. It's been all over the news, why are you trying to bring up a clearly false point?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

My god you really have no understanding of all this do you?

The difference here is freedom. I favor it; you apparently do not. There will always be pathogens and other creepy crawlies out there. It seems to have been forgotten that this was the world before March 2020. We have vaccines that work pretty well for the new gain-of-function arrival. Should some decide not to get it, that’s their choice. The persistent fear mongering is out of proportion to reality.

Then I suppose you support my right to drive drunk in front of your child's school?

But, no, that's not a good comparison because being a plague rat is many times as dangerous.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

And I'll repeat for you too. My god you really have no understanding of all this do you?

Do remind us of the COVID fatality rate for children.

If you understood the situation, or were honest about the situation, you'd know that death is not the only possible outcome. Do recall that sick kids can make others sick and there is such a thing known as long Covid in kids. For Christ sake. Learn something or admit that you think it's OK to endanger others for no good reason.

Recent data from Wuhan--half of those hospitalized still have long Covid.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Clown World.

Review Analysis: Stanford students are more likely to wear masks on bicycles than helmets

That works out to a masking rate of 41% and helmet-wearing rate of 17%. So, Stanford students are about twice as likely to wear a mask on a bicycle as a helmet. To be certain, there’s a margin of error here -- I can only count so many cyclists at a time, and I’m sure I missed some. But the point stands that at one of America’s leading research universities, students wear masks on bicycles at a higher rate than they wear helmets.

Masking has become an important way to signal that you are “conscious” about COVID-19, though I’d submit that wearing a mask on a bicycle is actually a pretty clear signal of ignorance, not consciousness. If our government handed out dunce caps with “follow the science” embroidered on them, a double-digit percentage of the population would start wearing them (maybe even on bicycles) and look askance at people who don’t.

1) On-campus can be quite crowded. I would wear a mask outdoors for the crowds I encountered at the university. Likewise, you can get a crowd anywhere the flow is stopped (say, a red light.)

2) When you're in a situation where sometimes you should wear a mask and sometimes it's not needed it's often easier to just wear it. Especially since you're supposed to clean your hands before removing it.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The guy with the vax hesitant daughter's boyfriend.

Does the boyfriend have health insurance?

If not, why not put $10,000 in notarized escrow to pay bills for his very unlikely severe vaccine side effects?

If no side effects you would be only out the notary fee.

Earth to repoman:

It wasn't about the boyfriend. It was about the risk to his not-yet-able-to-be-vaccinated wife.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Seems pertinent with the incessant fear mongering.

The COVID-19 Hospitalization Metric in the Pre- and Post-vaccination Eras as a Measure of Pandemic Severity: A Retrospective, Nationwide Cohort Study

Results: Among 47,742 admissions in 38,508 unique patients with laboratory-confirmed SARS-CoV-2, N=28,731 met the criteria for moderate-to-severe COVID-19. The proportion with moderate-to-severe disease prior to widespread vaccine availability was 64.0% (95% CI, 63.1-64.9%) versus 52.0% in the later period (95% CI, 50.9-53.2%), p-value for non-constant effect, <0.001. Disease severity in the vaccine era among hospitalized patients was lower among both unvaccinated (55.0%, 95% CI, 53.7-56.4%) and vaccinated patients (42.6%, 95% CI, 40.6-44.8%).

Conclusions and Relevance: The proportion of hospitalizations that are due to severe COVID-19 has changed with vaccine availability, thus, increasing proportions of mild and asymptomatic cases are included in hospitalization reporting metrics. The addition of simple measures of disease severity to the case definition of a SARS-CoV-2 hospitalization is a straightforward and objective change that should improve the value of the metric for tracking SARS-CoV-2 disease burden.

So what? There's been a small drop in the number of moderate-to-severe cases because some people end up in the hospital for other reasons and are diagnosed. (On the other hand, not all those other reasons really are--another forum, a doc knew of a case where the admission was for broken bones. Cause: Covid. (Dizziness from Covid lead to a fall.))

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Exactly... just like the Boeing 737-Max. The changes weren't that significant. What is the danger? That is the question that has led to lots of suffering. Remember Flint, MI? The water was too corrosive. But was it safe to drink, except that wasn't the only issue. What is the danger?

Well, I'm not an expert on the 737-max, but afaik, there was a significant change in the way the plane was programmed to react. In the case of the vaccines, it's an mRNA vaccine with the spike protein of a virus that no longer exists among the public, vs, the spike protein of a virus that does. The latter would create better immunity. And what you are not taking into consideration is that as long as you keep using a less effective vaccine, more people get sick, including some who get seriously sick and die.

In other words, when asking about the danger, one ought to consider also the danger of not updating the vaccine.

However, there's the issue of whether you can put a Delta-specific vaccine through the system fast enough to deploy it before Delta is no longer the main threat. It was almost a year from the start to the EUA for the current vaccines, there's no reason to think it would go any faster for a delta-specific one. I can't imagine a delta-specific vaccine before at best Q2 2022 and Q3 would be more like it. Will it be important enough for an EUA by then, or are we looking at probably Q1 2023 for approval?