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Strangely it depends on how much Paxlovid your government has on hand. In the US, people with certain risk factors are recommended to take it. The way the risk factors add up, it’s the majority of the population. It’s only actually contraindicated for a small minority of the population. Nobody’s saying it’s certain death for young healthy people who don’t take Paxlovid, but there’s pretty minimal downside if it’s easy to get, and potential upside if it makes long covid as well as complications less likely.
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Oct 9, 2023 23:02
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i like nice words
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Anyone have relatively recent sources on the actual protection rates of the mRNA vaccines, in terms of sterilizing immunity and protection against symptomatic infection? Doing my final research before booking a shot this week, and I was shocked at how seemingly poor the Novavax numbers were: 31% against detectable infection, 50% against symptomatic infection. That's barely into flu shot territory! At the same time, I'm seeing article after article claiming that it's "roughly as effective" as the mRNA shots (which is loving grim for the efficacy of those shots too, tbh) using that verbiage so consistently that it sets off my "journalists quoting journalists quoting journalists" alarm bells, especially since nobody seems to want to show their sources. Unfortunately I haven't found any data that are terribly recent either, but I'm also out of the loop on this. I realize the data is almost hopelessly muddied at this point, but anything helps.
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Oct 10, 2023 03:16
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Kestral posted:Anyone have relatively recent sources on the actual protection rates of the mRNA vaccines, in terms of sterilizing immunity and protection against symptomatic infection? Doing my final research before booking a shot this week, and I was shocked at how seemingly poor the Novavax numbers were: 31% against detectable infection, 50% against symptomatic infection. That's barely into flu shot territory! I asked this in the C-SPAM thread and the answer/my takeaway was that the immune landscape is incredibly complex to do a solid study, and I don’t think Pfizer/Moderna have done one. They just look at Antibodies generated. In my mind I’m just pulling “no better than 50%” out of my rear end to rationalize around.
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Oct 10, 2023 03:30
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50% or worse sounds about right for the mrna vaccines since the beginning. they were never great at preventing infection past the first ~6 months. long term, they at least seem to provide some lasting protection against the worst outcomes (hospitalization, ventilator, and death). some info here: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccine-effectiveness for healthy adults, here's the summary for the original vaccines: quote:Original monovalent (ancestral SARS-CoV-2 strain) mRNA vaccination was 76% effective in preventing COVID-19–associated invasive mechanical ventilation and death up to 6 months after the last dose and remained 56% effective at 1–2 years. and the bivalent from last year: quote:Among adults aged ≥18 years without immunocompromising conditions, bivalent (ancestral and BA.4/BA.5 strains) vaccine effectiveness (VE) against COVID-19–associated hospitalization declined from 62% at 7–59 days postvaccination to 24% at 120–179 days compared with VE among unvaccinated adults. Among immunocompromised adults, lower bivalent booster VE was observed. However, bivalent booster VE was sustained against critical COVID-19-associated outcomes, including intensive care unit admission or death. there are some more detailed results and filters you can play with on that page if you're e: it should be noted that most of the control group of unvaccinated adults mentioned for the bivalent result (as well as for this year's XBB vaccine) would have had prior covid exposure by the time that vaccine was tested. so a decline in vaccine effectiveness would be expected compared to the prior years where less of the control population had pre-existing protection from an infection. in other words, the vaccines aren't necessarily getting less effective -- the population has also gotten more resilient one way or another. Bad Purchase fucked around with this message at 05:01 on Oct 10, 2023 |
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Oct 10, 2023 03:49
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Also note re: the early numbers on efficacy vs infection, the first round of vaccinations and trials occurred in an environment where lots more people were masking and taking other precautions. Thus even if you were exposed, it was probably to less virus than you're exposed to now, so it was easier to fight that off and prevent infection. The strains around at the time (pre-Omicron/Delta) were less infectious too.
Zugzwang fucked around with this message at 04:12 on Oct 10, 2023 |
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Oct 10, 2023 04:05
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An estimate of vaccine efficacy against infection could be made by looking at neutralizing antibody titers generated by vaccine recipients against circulating strains and looking at what VEinfection such titers corresponded to in earlier waves. There’s limited data to do this with though. Like, here’s a good recent titration study against authentic coronavirus, but it features participants who survived XBB.1.5, not people who got a shot targeted at XBB.1.5. And the panel of strains that they tested against doesn’t cover everything in circulation. At best you’re going to get numbers and error bars that tell you something like it’s nice to have, but probably not something that’s going to change your daily life. Flu shot, not smallpox shot, yeah.
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Oct 10, 2023 04:19
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Thanks, folks - god, what a mess of data. In case it helps anyone else, I did find a CDC slide show on vaccine effectiveness dated Sept 12 2023, which seems to suggest that 50%-ish is accurate for immunocompetent adults. Also shows quite starkly how quickly the VE falls off a loving cliff after three months. We've known that for a long time, of course, but it's a usefully unambiguous chart to show anyone who thinks a jab six months ago means they can go suck and gently caress with impunity.
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Oct 10, 2023 04:55
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I was thinking to wait till November so it would help through Christmas Getting flu or COVID updates seems early right now? Wendigee fucked around with this message at 05:46 on Oct 10, 2023 |
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Oct 10, 2023 05:42
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Kestral posted:Thanks, folks - god, what a mess of data. In case it helps anyone else, I did find a CDC slide show on vaccine effectiveness dated Sept 12 2023, which seems to suggest that 50%-ish is accurate for immunocompetent adults. Also shows quite starkly how quickly the VE falls off a loving cliff after three months. We've known that for a long time, of course, but it's a usefully unambiguous chart to show anyone who thinks a jab six months ago means they can go suck and gently caress with impunity. FWIW, even older vaccines which are very broadly applied and considered essential, like pertussis vaccines, are sometimes only ~50% effective against infection. Generally, such a vaccine can still be 94% effective vs. hospitalization, which is the correct metric for many diseases. When it comes to things this thread generally worries about, like long covid, it seems more complicated. I don’t know if it’s possible to say what the risk is with one vaccine over another. I do believe that most “long” symptoms are more common in people who had more severe Covid. Am I right?
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Oct 10, 2023 05:47
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I think by Min-Maxing I should probably hit the vaccine #5 the second week of November. I'm not getting them both at once I'll wait a week and take flu the next week. Wendigee fucked around with this message at 05:57 on Oct 10, 2023 |
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Oct 10, 2023 05:51
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got my moderna booster today
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Oct 10, 2023 05:55
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Wendigee posted:Getting flu or COVID updates seems early right now? That’s what I told myself last year about the shot targeted at BA.5, and BQ.1 & friends promptly muscled in and kicked out BA.5. Well played, virus. The good news is that this time around, XBB.1.5 was outcompeted months before the vaccines were even manufactured, so timing is unlikely to be so critical.
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Oct 10, 2023 06:03
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Platystemon posted:That’s what I told myself last year about the shot targeted at BA.5, and BQ.1 & friends promptly muscled in and kicked out BA.5. Well played, virus. I imagine timing concerns would be more about being Max Titers during whatever you perceive your period of greatest risk to be, yeah. I tend to agree with Wendigee about first or second week of November being some value of "optimal" unless you're doing Halloween socializing for some reason, that's what I'd normally wait for if my personal needs weren't accelerating the timetable.
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Oct 10, 2023 06:36
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Kestral posted:Thanks, folks - god, what a mess of data. In case it helps anyone else, I did find a CDC slide show on vaccine effectiveness dated Sept 12 2023, which seems to suggest that 50%-ish is accurate for immunocompetent adults. Also shows quite starkly how quickly the VE falls off a loving cliff after three months. We've known that for a long time, of course, but it's a usefully unambiguous chart to show anyone who thinks a jab six months ago means they can go suck and gently caress with impunity. Here in Australia they just changed the booster recommendations from "every 6 months for everyone 18+" to "once a year unless you're 65+ or severely immunocompromised" just as I was about to start looking for my next booster. So now I have to wait until 2024 if I want another shot.
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Oct 10, 2023 06:38
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Snowglobe of Doom posted:Here in Australia they just changed the booster recommendations from "every 6 months for everyone 18+" to "once a year unless you're 65+ or severely immunocompromised" just as I was about to start looking for my next booster. So now I have to wait until 2024 if I want another shot. Oh, so they're going to pretend it's the flu? Awesome. Sorry you have to deal with that - Public Health in the US is a shambling husk of what it was pre-pandemic, and it's not like it was good before that.
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Oct 10, 2023 06:42
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CaptainSarcastic posted:Oh, so they're going to pretend it's the flu? Awesome. I couldn't even find any info on whether Australia is going to update the boosters like the US has done, but I stopped looking when they told me I couldn't have one anyway. They've also rolled back a whole lot of weekly covid reporting here in Australia (to a different degree in each state, they all have their own reporting criteria) and the federal data is also incomplete so it's pretty hard to keep up to date on the pandemic situation. If anyone else is curious I've been checking this Twitter account regularly, they're doing a much better job of reporting data than the state or federal governments: https://twitter.com/dbraevn I'm just gonna keep wearing a mask everytime I'm around others.  E: one thing we seem to be doing better is that combo covid/RSV/flu rapid tests are available here in Australia, and I hear they're not available in the US. 
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Oct 10, 2023 07:07
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I got my covid vaccine asap in September since this is my state's hospitalization curve My stepmom is a pathologist an hour south of me and as of a week or two ago thought this local wave was waning based on what she was seeing ag her hospital. That would be nice but I'll believe it when the numbers actually go down.
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Oct 10, 2023 07:12
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I've tried to get better about masking again, but it's a struggle. Just a moment ago I remembered one of my cloth masks needed a fresh N95-equivalent filter, replaced it, and thought I should change all the filters out to make me more likely to wear them. I still have a bunch of actual N95s I can break out if things start to nosedive. Edit: I also have a poo poo-ton more of the N95-equivalent filters. And an actual respirator which I have yet to actually make use of.
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Oct 10, 2023 08:40
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i got the shot yesterday and today i felt like absolute death had to lay in bed after work for hours and take some ibuprofin before i started to begin to feel better
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Oct 11, 2023 04:17
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I got my 4th shot on Saturday and it barely did anything to me. I felt some lethargy for a couple hours on Sunday. A pleasant surprise compared to the first 3, which put me down all weekend.
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Oct 11, 2023 05:45
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Paxlovid worked pretty drat well. I haven't had any symptoms since basically Day 1 of taking a full dose of course I could just have just had mild covid.
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Oct 11, 2023 16:06
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I got covid and flu shots yesterday and god drat are these loving me up. I don't know why but my body seems to respond really intensely to these shots. The last two covid shots I got did more or less the same thing. I get horrible fevers and shake uncontrollably in bed, and then I get a pounding headache. I guess that's a good sign that my body is responding but it's rough. Good news is if this follows the patterns of the last two shots I got I'll be more or less back to normal by tomorrow. Still feel like poo poo today though and I got mine yesterday afternoon.
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Oct 11, 2023 17:18
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Hollismason posted:Paxlovid worked pretty drat well. I haven't had any symptoms since basically Day 1 of taking a full dose of course I could just have just had mild covid. my case was mild, pretty much same deal as you. I never really got a chance to get worse, though, the peak of my discomfort happened while I was waiting in the Walgreens drive through for my script. My girlfriend's was moderate, a lot more coughing and bedridden-ness and she caught it with a test later than I did; she hasn't had symptoms outside a lingering cough since day 1.5.
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Oct 11, 2023 17:27
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Man that Moderna shot kicked my rear end last night. Previous shots, I just got tired. Last night I was shivering so hard from the fever I was spiking, I couldn't pee straight.
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Oct 13, 2023 20:51
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Got my updated Covid jab finally. Last time, they kicked me out bc I’d had Covid within 90 days. This time the same Walgreens asked if I’d had it within 14 days. They also required a photocopy of my driver’s license and proof of residency, which was not wanted for any other shot I’ve had. Maybe they’re trying to bill everything thru MediCAL, but then why not ask for my actual insurance? Whatever. Got my shot, all good.
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Oct 15, 2023 00:34
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From the CSPAM COVID thread. deadwing posted:we have the tools!!!!!!!! Welp. Gonna be a lot more folks taking ivermectin whenever they get got now.
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Oct 17, 2023 01:45
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Hippie Hedgehog posted:FWIW, even older vaccines which are very broadly applied and considered essential, like pertussis vaccines, are sometimes only ~50% effective against infection. Generally, such a vaccine can still be 94% effective vs. hospitalization, which is the correct metric for many diseases. I don't know about all of that, I would still very much not like to be hospitalized thank you very much.
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Oct 18, 2023 06:49
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Looking at vaccine appointments the pharmacy near me has no appointments for the next 3 weeks, with the exception of a single appointment Friday night at 9:00 PM... I don't know what to make of this, I didn't even think the pharmacy part of the store was open that late, is this a trap
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Oct 18, 2023 06:55
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Hippie Hedgehog posted:I do believe that most “long” symptoms are more common in people who had more severe Covid. Am I right? It depends on what you mean. If you look at two cohorts of people, one with COVID and hospitalized, one with COVID but not hospitalized, each patient of the hospitalized cohort is more likely to have any post-acute sequela. If you instead examine PASC sufferers and see what their acute phase was like, most had “mild” cases; they were never hospitalized. Most people who contract COVID‑19 are never hospitalized for it, so even with lower odds on a per‐person basis, mild to PASC is the more common route.
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Oct 18, 2023 07:07
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Platystemon posted:It depends on what you mean. Good point. The first is indeed what I meant, because I had seen that reported at some point long ago. As for the non-hospitalized, we know that portion is growing, relatively speaking, with the Omicron variant and successors, but what’s unclear to me is: - The approximate proportion of infected who get “long” symptoms - How that proportion is affected by vaccination But I think it’s almost a given that it improves, of course…
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Oct 18, 2023 07:20
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Vaccination worsens the odds of getting long covid by reducing the chance you die of covid.
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Oct 18, 2023 07:26
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QuarkJets posted:Looking at vaccine appointments the pharmacy near me has no appointments for the next 3 weeks, with the exception of a single appointment Friday night at 9:00 PM... I don't know what to make of this, I didn't even think the pharmacy part of the store was open that late, is this a trap
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Oct 18, 2023 07:33
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Hippie Hedgehog posted:Good point. The first is indeed what I meant, because I had seen that reported at some point long ago. There's a preprint I know about that gives you the best chance of knowing Long COVID rates for vaccinated Omicron infections, I think: Long COVID in a highly vaccinated population infected during a SARS-CoV-2 Omicron wave – Australia, 2022 94% of the population in the study had >=3 vaccine doses when they got COVID, and they excluded people with a previous infection, and since Australia more or less kept COVID at bay until Omicron that's likely the strain they had. It's a pretty large survey -- 11,697 out of all 70,876 people reported to the DOH with COVID during that period. 18.2% of the survey respondents could be classified as having Long COVID 3 months from their infection; the vast majority were not hospitalized. Among people without previous chronic health issues Long COVID incidence was 16.2%.
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Oct 18, 2023 21:52
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Are there any good tests out at the moment for newer variants? I have some USPS ones ordered, but the ones we had at home that were older but covered by the extended shelf date life are coming up negative on my gf despite showing some pretty covid-y symptoms (taste/smell/out of breath).
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Oct 20, 2023 18:27
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EL BROMANCE posted:Are there any good tests out at the moment for newer variants? I have some USPS ones ordered, but the ones we had at home that were older but covered by the extended shelf date life are coming up negative on my gf despite showing some pretty covid-y symptoms (taste/smell/out of breath). https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/coronavirus-covid-19-and-medical-devices/sars-cov-2-viral-mutations-impact-covid-19-tests Rapid antigen tests have never been that sensitive, especially early in infection. If you have COVID-ish symptoms, you should probably isolate as if you had a positive test, and also consider going to get a PCR test, which will be more sensitive+specific (if a positive from that will actually change what you would do in terms of isolation/paxlovid/whatever. If you can isolate for 10 days anyway and wouldn't get a paxlovid course even if PCR positive, it won't really matter whether you confirm infection). One other more speculative wrinkle on antigen tests is that lots of COVID symptoms are from your immune response, not virus directly damaging tissue. Non-naive immune system from vaccination and exposure will upregulate faster (if fully naive, it takes you ~2 weeks before making anything pathogen specific) and you'll probably get immune-triggered symptoms while still at lower viral loads that are harder for an antigen test to detect.
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Oct 20, 2023 18:42
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Foxfire_ posted:Rapid antigen tests have never been that sensitive, especially early in infection. If you have COVID-ish symptoms, you should probably isolate as if you had a positive test, and also consider going to get a PCR test, which will be more sensitive+specific (if a positive from that will actually change what you would do in terms of isolation/paxlovid/whatever. If you can isolate for 10 days anyway and wouldn't get a paxlovid course even if PCR positive, it won't really matter whether you confirm infection).
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Oct 21, 2023 00:56
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Hippie Hedgehog posted:Man, I wish PCR testing was still available. I don’t think they do them here except if you’re admitted to hospital with pneumonia or other flu-like symptoms. You can always buy an about to expire Lucira for 30 bucks. Or shell out some cash for a Cue reader or Matrix.
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Oct 21, 2023 04:21
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Hippie Hedgehog posted:Man, I wish PCR testing was still available. I don’t think they do them here except if you’re admitted to hospital with pneumonia or other flu-like symptoms. Here in Australia you can only get a PCR test via a GP's referral or at a testing clinic which has a doctor on site to approve it. Also they changed the case reporting rules a while back so that they only report PCR results and don't include RAT results any more, and reported cases have dropped down to record levels. Weirdly enough, hospitalizations are only slightly lower than they were this time last year ..... During most of the pandemic the number of people hospitalized with covid was regularly around a tenth of the daily reported cases, but these last six months things have flipped around and there's actually been less reported daily cases than there were people hospitalized with covid.   Note that several states also changed their "hospitalized with covid" criteria in recent times so the current reported stats will also be lower than they would have been using the old criteria.
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Oct 21, 2023 07:46
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Oracle posted:You can always buy an about to expire Lucira for 30 bucks. Or shell out some cash for a Cue reader or Matrix. What are those, and where would you go if you wanted to get one?
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Oct 21, 2023 20:25
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Hippie Hedgehog posted:What are those, and where would you go if you wanted to get one? They're near enough to PCRs that I think you can call them home PCRs as a layman (I think they're all LAMP tests, but same basic principle from what I undertand) Aptitude Metrix and Cue are reusable (and currently still in business). You have to buy a reader + single use tests. Cue is the Apple of home COVID tests, very slick reader/app design, super easy to use. Also very expensive (like 60/test and you can only run one at a time). The Metrix is cheaper (I think like $45 a test) and can let you batch test (that is, everyone swabs with their own and put it in the reagent vial), letting you test more cost effectively. The last time I looked at the Metrix though, there was a waitlist so ymmv. Lucira was a single use dual covid/flu test but the FDA slow walked their approval until they ran out of money and Pfizer could buy them on the cheap. Pfizer I think is bringing back a consumer version, but right now they're focused on rolling out a product they can sell to physicians offices. You can still find some online, but they're all very near to expiring. Raskolnikov2089 fucked around with this message at 18:06 on Oct 22, 2023 |
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Oct 21, 2023 20:39
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