I was told this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated.
Unlike how bacterial infections could gain or incrementally increase some of its antibiotic immunity or other attributes thanks to the conditions in a single host, for example incomplete or unnecessary antibiotic regimens, viral infections need to be infecting new cells in order to experience meaningful mutations. This is where immune function influences viral mutation.
Less immunity will result in more cell infection which directly creates opportunities for mutations as the virus replicates. If a vaccine improves host immunity enough that they replicate less virus, they will cause much less mutation. The relationship is non-linear because of the multiplicative nature of viral spread (r0?)
My opinion is that isn't anybody's "fault" that a pandemic virus is causing such unbelievable mayhem, but vaccinations and immunology is the truest course to achieving excellent results going forward.
Edit: Virus does not require fresh host to mutate
Interesting! What causes this, is there some keyword i can search for in order to learn more?
If RNA is damaged and changed and the virus particle is destroyed or for some reason never replicates, I don't count that as mutating, but then again what do I know.
There are mechanisms for bacteria to uptake dna in the environment and incorporate it (e.g. antibiotic resistance). But without replication of the bacteria the resistance wont spread.
One interesting point is that in general biology they teach that lamarckian evolution doesnt exist, but bacterial uptake of DNA demonstrates that it does exist.
The Sars-CoV-2 virus (provisionally) doesn't seem to infect and then suppress only to re-emerge later in a new infection, or hang around as an active infection for months. People get sick and their illness lasts a big armful of days.
What doesnt necessarily get selected for within the host is improved survival rates outside the body, ability to penetrate the body in the first place, etc. But bacteria are under the same evolutionary pressures.
Agreed.
There is a bucket of vulnerable ACE-2 receptors in everybody. Once a viral infection occurs in a single person, it undergoes an infection curve within the host bucket, analogous to the infection curve of the general population. The non-linear host cell infection curve can be greatly influenced by early intervention (immunity). It can be expected that some people have a big curve that results in a more complete viral infection than in others, but the number is limited until it can move to a new person, and run a new infection curve. So the mutation can occur in that once person, but it has to replicate in a new host to see the new infection curve of the viral prototype. If one never transmits the prototype, it is moot.
Bacterial resistances like MRSA are most likely when an infection that is able to survive treatment is able to re-establish. With most susceptible bacterial cells having now been eliminated in this case, the new infection is more formidable. There are of course other mutation vectors.
Brad Little of Idaho says greater than 98% of cases, hospitalizations and deaths are unvaccinated (link below).
Cases are probably the most unstable of those stats, but the point is unvaccinated folks are bearing the majority of the pain.
https://twitter.com/GovernorLittle/status/142593002008663654...
> 98.9-percent of new COVID-19 cases since Jan. 1, 2021, were people not vaccinated
> 98.6-percent of COVID-19 hospitalizations since Jan. 1, 2021, were people not vaccinated
> 98.7-percent of COVID-19 deaths since Jan. 1, 2021, were people not vaccinated
These kinds of numbers games naturally lead one to suspect an agenda.
On January 12, 2021, a grand total of 0.24 percent of the Idaho population was fully vaccinated.
> Since May 15, there have been 10-times as many COVID-19 cases among unvaccinated people compared to vaccinated people
> Since May 15, there have been 13-times as many COVID-19 hospitalizations among unvaccinated people compared to vaccinated people
> Since May 15, there have been 8-times as many COVID-19 deaths among unvaccinated people compared to vaccinated people.
As of May 15, 31% of Idhoans were fully vaccinated[2].
> Over 197 million Americans have received the vaccine safely.
According to the CDC[3],
C> As of August 30, 2021, more than 173 million people in the United States had been fully vaccinated against COVID-19.
Why does the governor feel the need to overstate the number of fully vaccinated people by almost 14% in a press release dated Thursday August 12, 2021?
[1]: https://gov.idaho.gov/pressrelease/idahoans-urged-to-receive...
[2]: https://github.com/owid/covid-19-data/blob/f6217a7ccbd2fbcfd...
[3]: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/health-departments/bre...
Just a few lines above, he is counting as "unvaccinated" all people who are not "fully vaccinated".
Again, trust in people doing this song & dance would be higher if they did not constantly resort to tricks like this.
Addressing somebody whose concern is "the vaccine might not be safe", it makes sense to point to the large number of people who have been given a dose and been fine. I don't think a lot of people are in the halfway point where they think 1 shot is safe but 2 shots are unsafe.
Addressing somebody whose concern is "the vaccine might not be effective", it makes sense to look at the effectiveness of the recommended 2-shot course.
Anybody promoting anything will point to their most favorable numbers and try to keep it simple. Press release + nuance is a rare combination. This is not a research paper, it's a conclusion derived from research, and the governor is trying to get that bottom line conclusion out to the public: that it is safer to get vaccinated than not. As somebody who is smart enough to have questions about the details, you're also able to look up the answers to those questions. Does what you've found lead you to a different conclusion?
In fact, there seems to be grounds to believe that people are extra susceptible to infection and illness during the period between the first shot and the two weeks following the second. Lumping people in that group are together with others who have never received a shot has the effect of keeping the number of hospitalizations and deaths from Covid19 among the vaccinated low.
As of 8/30, the rate of known deaths from Covid19 among those fully vaccinated has risen to 11/100,000 roughly 0.01 percent. It takes time to get exposed, infected, hospitalized, and die. We are a long way from that rate stabilizing. In the meantime, if things go as planned, there won't be anyone to compare with (but, of course, the definition of "fully vaccinated" will keep changing as needed).
> it is safer to get vaccinated than not.
Is it? Even if one has had Covid19?
Can you link some data on that? That would certainly change things if you are at higher risk of illness than an unvaccinated person between getting the shot and immunity kicking in. The data I had seen like from the Pfizer trial[0] indicated that your immunity keeps pace with an unvaccinated person until about 2 weeks from the first shot, then surpasses that.
> Is it? Even if one has had Covid19?
For somebody who has had a confirmed positive case of COVID I don't think there's enough data to say confidently. As far as I know natural immunity is at least as good as vaccine immunity. The risk associated with getting vaccinated seems to be low enough that it's pretty harmless though. And anecdotally there are a lot of people who are "pretty sure that cold they had last year was COVID" but never got tested. I wouldn't want those people to conclude they shouldn't get vaccinated just because they think they might have natural immunity. Again, I don't assume malice just because a politician tries to keep their message simple.
Ontario had 554 new reported cases of COVID yesterday. Of these cases:
- 319 were not vaccinated (213 of these were 12+ and therefore eligible to be vaccinated)
- 56 were partially vaccinated
- 136 were fully vaccinated
- 44 unknown
In other words, roughly 16% of the population (eligible but not vaccinated) is driving close to 40% of reported cases.
OK, but reported cases are blah blah, who cares, right? Individual cases will vary in severity and everyone can make their own decisions about risk tolerance, etc etc. But the strain on our health care system is the biggest cost we all share in the pandemic regardless of personal choices, so let's look at ICU numbers instead:
- 113 unvaccinated
- 7 partially vaccinated
- 8 fully vaccinated
You can draw your own conclusions.
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/ontario/comments/pkbgrz/ontario_sep...
> - 319 were not vaccinated (213 of these were 12+ and therefore eligible to be vaccinated)
> 16% of the population (eligible but not vaccinated) is driving close to 50% of reported cases.
Your overall point would remain valid even without exaggerating by 28%.
The breakdown is similar on weekends, holidays, etc which suggests that mandatory testing does not skew the numbers significantly in Ontario at least.
But as I said: reported cases blah blah, they paint a fairly clear picture to me but there is a lot of complexity there.
What about ICU numbers?
- Multiple entities are amalgamated into one single entity. (ie, "the media.")
- Two conflicting statements are put side by side and meant to suggest a hypocrisy. In reality, it's not a hypocrisy when two unrelated entities make statements which are at odds.
- Often, a straw-man version of the argument is used to help foster the hypocrisy claim. In this case, "this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated." This is not a good faith argument because vaccinated individuals are much less likely to spread the virus, and to become seriously ill. It is an equivocation of meaning: "can the vaccinated be involved whatsoever" vs. "is this primarily affecting the unvaccinated?"
https://www.axios.com/unvaccinated-hospitalized-covid-60dc90...
It does not mean that the vaccinated cannot spread disease, however.
[1] https://www.ncdhhs.gov/news/press-releases/2021/08/27/adult-...
Looking at this release's underlying report they mention:
"The age-adjusted mortality rate among unvaccinated individuals was 5.00 cases per 100,000 unvaccinated population and the age-adjusted mortality rate among vaccinated individuals was 0.33 per 100,000 vaccinated individuals for the four-week period ending August 28, 2021."
So the difference in mortality rate is roughly ~5 in 100,000 of the population. This is a very low number. Does it obviously override any possible confounders to indicate a strong signal? Also remember this is age-adjusted. I would imagine this difference is substantially smaller for cohorts omitting the elderly. Is there a material benefit to younger reasonably healthy people? It seems the question is muddier than is typically made out.
It's frankly irresponsible to say this. We are talking about what's essentially an exploratory study that needs a LOT of followup before taking action and pushing it in a way that's going to cause people to run scared.
[0] https://www.covid-datascience.com/post/israeli-data-how-can-...
I recently saw a social media post of a person in an ICU with Covid expressing regret about not getting vaccinated, and urging others to get vaccinated. One of their "friends" commented in response to the post with parent's "alternative explanation."
Would someone please share a link to source data showing that infection severity between vaccinated and unvaccinated is not similar?
If the alternative explanation is proven, it implies that people who are vaccinated and develop an infection should react to that news the same as an unvaccinated person. In other words, even if the alternative explanation doesn't influence the choice to get vaccinated, if it is true and we are saying it's false it would mean vaccinated people are more likely to die once infected because they've been led to believe it is not as serious a concern to be infected and will be less likely to, for example, notify their doctor as promptly or go to the ER given they have been informed their risk of severe infection is low.
Data:
Graph from the CDC: https://i.imgur.com/Ql25IjB.png Source: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7034e1.htm
Spreadsheet based on weekly UK data: https://i.imgur.com/yySYFyd.png Source (PDF warning): https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
And a Twitter thread on Israel for good measure: https://twitter.com/gummibear737/status/1434237628258344961
All of this data says the same thing to me. Basically if you're younger there is no significant evidence these vaccines reduce your risk.
In the CDC case: They show 1-2 unvaccinated hospitalized cases out of 100k and <1 for vaccinated (<50 cohort). It's important to remember in all of this data the unvaccinated do not represent a strict control group which is analogous to one found in an RCT.
In the UK case: ~0.5% less incidence of hospitalization for <50 cohort and effectively none wrt mortality.
In the Israeli thread: Author comes to the opposite conclusion and decides to call risk reduction 90% even though they're comparing 2 extremely tiny numbers. Both less than 1 severe case out of 100,000.
If the improvement over severe outcomes is so stark, as many claim, then where should I look to see this data such that I can come to agreement?
I'm fully vaccinated, and I spent half an hour at a bank yesterday (wearing an N95) and I'm voluntarily quarantining for two weeks.
It's a deadly disease. It doesn't care about your PR slogans or your political alignment. It does care about transmission, which is why avoiding unnecessary trips, wearing real ventilators (not cloth masks, Fauci is lying to you when he says they work, all scientific evidence is that they don't), and getting vaccinated all reduce the likelihood that either you will get it or you will transmit it to someone else. Nothing gets the likelihood to 0%.
Look for a study from Jena, a town in Germany, that issued a mask mandate weeks before other regions if you are curious.
IMO wearing better masks is a great thing, and so is minimizing indoor time with strangers, but it's also possible to overdo COVID protection.
Most of the spread of COVID is among unvaccinated people doing things indoors and unmasked. Unfortunately, you being even more careful will not affect their behavior.