COVID-19: People on the internet are judging me for going outside. It used to be the reverse.

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > COVID-19: People on the internet are judging me for going outside. It used to be the reverse.

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Which horse film is your favorite? This poll is closed.
Black Beauty	2	1.06%
A Talking Pony!?!	4	2.13%
Mr. Hands 2x Apple Flavor	117	62.23%
War Horse	11	5.85%
Mr. Hands	54	28.72%
Total:	188 votes

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Charles 2 of Spain: Nov 7, 2017

A big flaming stink posted:

https://twitter.com/NICKIMINAJ/status/1437532566945341441

lmao i gotta give props to this guy trying to blame getting chlamydia from cheating on his girl on the vaccine

Big George Costanza energy

# ¿ Sep 14, 2021 01:33

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# ¿ May 13, 2024 01:19

Charles 2 of Spain: Nov 7, 2017

HonorableTB posted:

I was talking to a friend of mine from my hometown, and found out she was unvaxxed. This girl took my virginity eons ago in 2005 and we've fallen in and out of touch several times over the years. Now we're back in touch and I was able to convince her to get vaccinated! She was surrounded by so much fear and disinformation that she was more scared of getting sick from the vaccine than she was of getting covid, and she doesn't have the science literacy to understand good information from bad information, not to mention being surrounded by chuds 24/7 being in West Georgia.

I was able to get her to agree by listening to her fears instead of trying to shame her, and I was able to gently persuade her into it by telling her that I had gotten the shots and was totally fine, and I wouldn't ask her to do anything unsafe or anything that I wasn't also willing to do myself. I also made the point that her young children (she's a single mom, our area was extremely working class) aren't old enough to get the shots yet so the best protection she could give them was to get herself protected too so she had a better chance of not bringing it home to her babies.

Personal connections matter, they really do. I am really beginning to believe the only way we can convince some of the vaccine hesitant people (the ones who aren't hardliners and who are just unable to tell good info from bad) is to use those connections and leverage them into persuasion. Literally the only reason my friend agreed is because I told her it was safe, and she trusts my judgment. She even made the appointment and provided me all the screenshots of the details, without being asked.

These people can be reasoned with and won over. Not all of them and not all of the time, but some of them, and every little bit helps.

This gives me hope today, after a really rough week.

This owns

# ¿ Sep 16, 2021 22:59

Charles 2 of Spain: Nov 7, 2017

Thorn Wishes Talon posted:

Most of those are unvaxxed. Boosters won't help them.

Have there been studies done specifically for health care worker immunity over time? I'm not an expert but I'd assume that regular exposure to the virus over the course of their work would allow them to maintain a high level of immunity even without boosters.

Professor Beetus posted:

I'd be curious to see more info as well. I have a friend who works directly in a covid research lab and she's pretty sure her regular microexposures have made her retain a high level of immunity. Now it's possible that she's a dumbass or doesn't do the kind of research that means anything, but I am definitely likely nowhere near as informed as she is, and she was one of the first people to show me raw delta data and recommend that I continue to mask up for my groceries and such 100% of the time.

Not sure if there's been studies on healthcare workers specifically. The long-term ones I've seen consist of mainly older people who would've got their vaccine earlier. I think nearly all of them show some waning for infection but hardly any change for hospitalisation.

# ¿ Sep 17, 2021 04:00

Charles 2 of Spain: Nov 7, 2017

Stickman posted:

Most of what I've seen has shown waning VE vs infection, but have far too small of sample sizes to say anything definitive about hospitalization. So far I haven't seen any that offer good evidence that protection v severe disease doesn't decline either, just that it's probably not by as much as the more severe estimates of VE v infection decline (which would be consistent with the immunological results). I haven't had time to keep up with everything, though, so it's possible there's something I missed!

The Kaiser study had one with about 3 million people, there was a recent one out of Portugal which I think had about a million as well. I mean the original waning freakout was based on Israeli observational data which wasn't exactly a huge sample size either. PHE also released some stuff a couple of days ago I think. We'll probably get some reasonable studies in the near future.

Charles 2 of Spain fucked around with this message at 04:38 on Sep 17, 2021

# ¿ Sep 17, 2021 04:34

Charles 2 of Spain: Nov 7, 2017

Platystemon posted:

If you want to argue that those doses are better given to the third world, I won�t disagree, but I don�t think that�s a credible alternative in America today.

America could literally buy and give millions of doses to low income countries, who would eagerly take them, and manage their distribution and it would be objectively better for the global pandemic than boosters for all*.

* Americans

# ¿ Sep 17, 2021 05:05

Charles 2 of Spain: Nov 7, 2017

Stickman posted:

By "large enough sample size" I mean "large enough sample size of hospitalizations". There's always a lot fewer of those than cases! Israel's analysis is a great example because there's enough cases to have at least some evidence in decline vs detected infection, but not enough severe cases to really say much.

Thanks for mentioning those two studies, I hadn't seen them. The Portugal study (is this the one you meant?) actually looks relatively decent for deaths sample-wise but unfortunately they only have temporal analysis of 80+ folks, presumably because that's the only cohort with sufficient follow-up periods. They estimated 74% VE vs death for 80+ at >98 days, compared to 86 for the first month after full vaccination, but unfortunately there's no discussion about how much of that period overlaps Delta. The hospitalization estimates are weird because they had 91 breakthrough deaths but only 43 breakthrough vaccinations, which I guess means that most of the cohort received care outside of hospitals? Maybe at care centers? Either way I don't think there hospitalizations metrics are likely to be a good proxy for "severe disease" in that cohort, and I'm not really sure how to interpret those numbers without knowing more about how they are defined.

What is the Kaiser study? Nothing is popping up right was

The Kaiser one is behind a paywall, but I could get it from what appears to be Mexican government website. Seems to have around 12,000 hopsitalisations from a quick look:
https://salud.edomex.gob.mx/cevece/docs/covid/Six-month%20effectiveness%20of%20BNT162b2%20mRNA%20COVID-19%20vaccine.pdf

I mean you can pick holes in any study but given the weight of evidence we have so far, I'd say VE against severe disease holds up more than the opposite. Of course this could change in a few months.

# ¿ Sep 17, 2021 05:26

Charles 2 of Spain: Nov 7, 2017

Platystemon posted:

Why are we endorsing N95 respirators in this topic?

Would that equipment not save many more lives in the the third world, where not even medical workers are provided such equipment?

Yeah rich countries should be donating those too. China is.

# ¿ Sep 17, 2021 05:31

Charles 2 of Spain: Nov 7, 2017

Stickman posted:

The Pfizer phase 3 team apparently published their 6-month analysis yesterday. VE against detected infection decreased from 96% [93% to 98%] across the 2 months following full vaccination to 84% [75% to 90%] for 4+ months (with ~6 months max follow-up).

Unfortunately about half of each arm was lost to follow-up by 4 months, so randomization loses some of it's robustness. I suspect that much of the loss to follow-up was due to people becoming eligible for vaccination, meaning that older participants would have been lost first.

There were only 23 "severe" cases in the control arm and 1 in the vaccine arm, so no analysis of VE over time was possible (but average VE was 96%).

Should note this study was mainly pre-Delta surge, although Beta was included as well which could be more vaccine-evasive if I remember correctly.

# ¿ Sep 17, 2021 05:42

Charles 2 of Spain: Nov 7, 2017

Comirnaty sounds like when you're intubated and trying to say "community".

# ¿ Sep 17, 2021 14:17

Charles 2 of Spain: Nov 7, 2017

Fritz the Horse posted:

I did some homework. Here's my summary of the Israeli booster data.

Data are from:
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2114255 Full peer-reviewed publication in booster shots for people ages >60, published 15 Sept
https://www.fda.gov/media/152205/download Israeli Ministry of Health powerpoint slides released by FDA 17 Sept

Timeline:
March 2021 - Israel reaches high levels of full vaccination, ~3 months before other countries
March 7th - Israel fully reopens
June - Delta takes over as dominant variant
July through early August - 10x increase in severe cases 60% of which are fully vaccinated, data show immunity waning
July 30th - Booster shots start for >60. Younger age groups eligible in following weeks.

The data here support:
-Vaccine effectiveness vs. infection wanes for all ages

-Vaccine effectiveness vs. severe disease wanes for >60

-Booster shot is effective at decreasing infection for all age groups
-Booster shot is effective at decreasing severe disease for >60
-Low rate of adverse events at this time

We don't know:
-If effectiveness vs. severe disease wanes for people under 60

-If a booster shot improves effectiveness vs. severe disease for people under 60
-How long the booster helps (simply hasn't been enough time)

My takeaways:
-Boosters definitely should be rolled out for elderly and immunocompromised because their immunity to severe disease wanes and a booster is effective. It is predicted that Israel's hospital system would have been overwhelmed without boosters or if boosters for 60+ were rolled out weeks later. This emphasizes urgency of getting boosters out to high-risk populations in the US, we are a few months behind Israel.

-Vaccine protection vs. infection wanes for everyone and boosters improve that
-There is not evidence to support waning immunity vs. severe disease for those under 60 or that a booster helps against severe disease in those groups
-We won't have good data on how long the boosters are effective or on how well they work vs. severe disease in younger people just because it will take time to have enough cases of severe illness to be statistically meaningful

edit: those are some big error bars on a lot of those plots.
edit2: added info about Israeli hospital system predicted to be overwhelmed if no booster or boosters administered several weeks later.
Yes, I know that these data do not break things down by immune status or underlying conditions but I'm lumping immunocompromised people in with the elderly because it seems entirely reasonable to do so and boosters are going to them in the US already

also also, this is all Pfizer vaccine. Moderna, J&J, and mixed regimens may be different especially I would think with regard to timeframes.

Did they publish this table which was in the original preprint (maybe it's integrated into the figure somewhere)?

Also should be noted that while Israel had high levels of full vaccination in March, it's been surpassed by a lot of other countries (not the US though, whose rate is abysmal), but this might be to do with the eligible population being more.

# ¿ Sep 18, 2021 03:22

Charles 2 of Spain: Nov 7, 2017

Are you saying there's no adjustment for multiple comparisons or something else?

# ¿ Sep 18, 2021 04:09

Charles 2 of Spain: Nov 7, 2017

The reasoning I read is that they want to reduce the number of HCWs stopping work if they get mild illness.

# ¿ Sep 18, 2021 08:45

Charles 2 of Spain: Nov 7, 2017

https://twitter.com/nytopinion/status/1439341949857697794
Lmao

# ¿ Sep 19, 2021 05:59

Charles 2 of Spain: Nov 7, 2017

Epic High Five posted:

New page, new fur tax! Everybody is now required to comment on my dog

Wanna pet that dog right before it rips my face off.

# ¿ Sep 19, 2021 06:00

Charles 2 of Spain: Nov 7, 2017

Platystemon posted:

If I were God‐Emperor of All Mankind, and assuming I inherited this mess, I would send the vaccine overseas.

If I were instead a U.S. federal regulator, whose constituency is the people of the United States, I would approve boosters.

Neither of these has any substantial impact on the formation of the Ligma variant.

You don't need to be a God-Emperor. This thread often talks about how Biden can easily do federal mask mandates, forcibly vaccinate people etc. but he won't because there's no political will. It's basically the same thing here on a global scale with rich countries.

# ¿ Sep 19, 2021 06:09

Charles 2 of Spain: Nov 7, 2017

The UK does do regular updates of their data to be fair. The tracking studies that get released seem more comprehensive than Israel's.

# ¿ Sep 19, 2021 10:20

Charles 2 of Spain: Nov 7, 2017

Fritz the Horse posted:

Thanks this is helpful. It's late and I'm tired so I'll give it a look tomorrow and offer my 2c for whatever it's worth.

To get on my soapbox again a bit: a major component of good science is admitting you were wrong when new data emerge. I'm not saying my earlier analysis of the Israeli data was wrong, but I'm happy to re-evaluate with what Stickman has linked. I strongly invite other posters to use the framework I posted and evaluate the data from Israel themselves.

A recurring theme I see from some posters here is working backwards from a conclusion. E.g. "everyone should get boosters right away" and then going to great lengths to find data and policy options that support that conclusion.

I understand that my approach might be unsatisfactory to some but that's how actual science works: it is cold and calculating and addresses only the data presented.

This is in part why folks distrust CDC recommendations: the CDC is adapting to the science as it evolves. They may well be wrong at any given time! But they are working from the best evidence they have at the time (and there is also the element of political pressure).

If you want to know my own personal opinion, feel free to PM me and I am happy to share it.

Thanks your posts are good.

# ¿ Sep 19, 2021 10:53

Charles 2 of Spain: Nov 7, 2017

Failed Imagineer posted:

We live in a time where science as a practice is mostly boring and inscrutable and even fundamental scientific literacy is non-existent for probably 95% of the population. Do I have any solutions? Nah

More alarm emojis in published journals imo

# ¿ Sep 19, 2021 11:40

Charles 2 of Spain: Nov 7, 2017

mod sassinator posted:

Is this what science looks like? Two dueling committees coming to completely differing opinions from the same data?

Yeah actually this happens a lot.

# ¿ Sep 23, 2021 23:47

Charles 2 of Spain: Nov 7, 2017

There's also going to be another issue soon for studies in the US and UK where a lot of the unvaccinated have already been infected.

# ¿ Sep 25, 2021 08:59

Charles 2 of Spain: Nov 7, 2017

StrangeThing posted:

That's roughly on par with a flu in a given year.

*does the canned audience whoooooaaooh from Married With Children*

# ¿ Sep 27, 2021 00:00

Charles 2 of Spain: Nov 7, 2017

Thorn Wishes Talon posted:

I also want to note that one cannot read studies critically unless they have training in that field.

I don't agree with this. If you know a bit about statistics and experiment design you can at least critically evaluate the methodology of some papers outside your field and come up with things the study lacks from that perspective. What you can't do is evaluate the technical aspects and underlying implications. COVID brain is maybe a good example - I can understand that on average grey matter is reduced by a statistically significant amount when you get COVID, but I don't know enough about the brain to evaluate how it affects humans in real life.

# ¿ Sep 30, 2021 23:07

Charles 2 of Spain: Nov 7, 2017

The connection is "another paper measuring Ct values of vaccinated people to throw on the pile".

# ¿ Oct 1, 2021 03:21

Charles 2 of Spain: Nov 7, 2017

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

Again though, with preprints the pile is endless for whatever you want. There is always dozens of preprint papers showing virtually anything you can imagine. They by definition have minimal vetting

I know what a pre-print is, I just think for this particular one the results are not really that novel or interesting. If a pre-print is trash you can usually work it out within a couple of minutes of reading it.

# ¿ Oct 1, 2021 04:43

Charles 2 of Spain: Nov 7, 2017

Sanofi abandoned their mRNA vaccine.

# ¿ Oct 4, 2021 13:54

Charles 2 of Spain: Nov 7, 2017

They announced it literally a couple of hours after that press release because they realised no money would be made off it.

:capitalism:

# ¿ Oct 4, 2021 14:07

Charles 2 of Spain: Nov 7, 2017

Are the "people in power" in this analogy supposed to be the NZ government?

# ¿ Oct 4, 2021 22:48

Charles 2 of Spain: Nov 7, 2017

It's basically right, but this

Fritz the Horse posted:

The PM decided to abandon the zero COVID strategy because it literally wasn't working, they haven't been able to get to zero after nearly two months of lockdown.

is where there's contention. Auckland went from the highest level of lockdown to the next one below a couple of weeks ago with cases still being locally transmitted. Whether this decision directly caused cases to rise in the last few days can be debated.

There's also the very real possibility that Ardern got influenced to do this by New Zealand's own open er up crew who have been banging on about lifting restrictions for months.

# ¿ Oct 4, 2021 23:15

Charles 2 of Spain: Nov 7, 2017

-Blackadder- posted:

How is NZ's vaccine stocks? And what's their populations vaccine hesitancy levels at? I read somewhere that they had to wait in line a bit so they couldnt get people the jab as quickly as they wanted it.

https://www.health.govt.nz/our-work...al-vaccinations
Supply should be fine now, the most vaccine hesitant are unsurprisingly Maori and Pacific Islanders.

# ¿ Oct 5, 2021 00:28

Charles 2 of Spain: Nov 7, 2017

Yeah that's comparing people who previously tested positive vs. people negative, it's not a 20% of reinfection.

# ¿ Oct 5, 2021 04:57

Charles 2 of Spain: Nov 7, 2017

Because then your weather analogy is flawed.

In any case I think this discussion is kinda moot, since this was all done pre-vaccine and no one sane is seriously suggesting to prevent reinfection by getting infected.

Charles 2 of Spain fucked around with this message at 05:15 on Oct 5, 2021

# ¿ Oct 5, 2021 05:13

Charles 2 of Spain: Nov 7, 2017

I do agree with their main point that even something as rare as 1% chance is not nearly low enough when there's thousands of chances happening every day.

# ¿ Oct 5, 2021 05:24

Charles 2 of Spain: Nov 7, 2017

dalstrs posted:

Has there been any news of new variants of worry after Delta? I saw a couple in the news a few weeks ago but nothing recent has sounded alarming.

This website is handy if you want to see how Delta has basically taken over everywhere:
https://covariants.org/per-country

# ¿ Oct 13, 2021 13:59

Charles 2 of Spain: Nov 7, 2017

Thought this was kind of interesting:

"We note there is an inherent trade-off between transmissibility and immune escape, and that the worst-case scenario of both very high transmissibility and immune escape is rejected a posteriori by the data."

# ¿ Oct 15, 2021 23:50

Charles 2 of Spain: Nov 7, 2017

I mean they admit themselves that conclusion (like many things COVID) is based on an uncertain model, but we don't hear much about the Mu variant nowadays.

# ¿ Oct 16, 2021 00:10

Charles 2 of Spain: Nov 7, 2017

Professor Beetus posted:

Still seems less than ideal for preventing further spread or limiting covid cases in places with lower vaccination rates though.

Yeah the takeaway from both of those papers is still the same as it's been for months - get as many people vaccinated as possible.

# ¿ Oct 16, 2021 00:57

Charles 2 of Spain: Nov 7, 2017

Cholera is a bacterial disease you can't really compare it to viruses like smallpox and measles.

# ¿ Oct 20, 2021 13:55

Charles 2 of Spain: Nov 7, 2017

fosborb posted:

More than 20% of Australia's population is under the age of 16. How can you possibly be at 90% with a first dose?

They mean eligible population.

# ¿ Oct 20, 2021 22:58

Charles 2 of Spain: Nov 7, 2017

It's fine, when the next variant comes from an unvaccinated country they'll just order more boosters again.

# ¿ Oct 22, 2021 01:56

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# ¿ May 13, 2024 01:19

Charles 2 of Spain: Nov 7, 2017

Yeah the min-max is a different brand.

# ¿ Oct 24, 2021 23:14

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