There's a lot of reason to be optimistic about omicron.
My main point is that everyone just seems to have moved on from under 5s. We've adopted a stance of "vaxxed and done" for adults and older children and paid no attention to the vax trials for under 5s taking forever. It's barely even mentioned. So we have parents across the country relying on the generosity of their employer in handling shutdowns, illnesses and so on. I'm lucky, my employer has been flexible and understanding. But I know that's not the case for a lot of people.
How does anyone convince themselves that this is actually a problem?
Especially when the vaccine no longer prevents catching the virus or transmitting it.
What remaining benefit are people so eager to confer upon their toddlers?
Also vaccines reduce risk of some post-acute COVID disorders like MIS-C (which can result even from asymptomatic COVID).
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7102e1.htm
And of course you don't want to infect your child with a disease that has long term consequences which we are still learning about. Diabetes hit the news recently in the US, but it is actually been known for a while in other countries.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7102e2.htm
https://diabetesjournals.org/care/article/43/11/e170/35903/N... (UK)
https://adc.bmj.com/content/early/2021/05/27/archdischild-20... (Finland)
If that wasn't bad enough, diseases that are associated with T1D like celiac disease are on the rise, and show stronger association in COVID patients:
Not for kids under 5. That's why it's not approved.
>And of course you don't want to infect your child with a disease
Breakthrough cases are so common now that the media refuses to use the term anymore. That (lack-of) "preventing-infection" efficacy is baked into the <5 study that showed no benefit.
>that has long term consequences which we are still learning about.
Why is this a valid concern, but potential long-term effects of the vaccines aren't? Especially the known risk of inflammation in still-growing bodies and especially in developing hearts.
Wrong. Per the Pfizer press release [0], the immunogenicity analysis of the trial failed in children ages 2 to 4, but succeeded in children ages six months to two years. Given the small dose (3ug) in that study cohort, there was probably not enough rna in the vaccine for the 2-4 age group to show any effect.
>Why is this a valid concern, but potential long-term effects of the vaccines aren't? Especially the known risk of inflammation in still-growing bodies and especially in developing hearts.
The risk of developing myocarditis from the vaccine is about 100-150 in 5 million [1]. The risk of developing myocarditis from COVID-19 is about 150 in 100,000 [2]. I know I'm picking the vaccine for my child.
[0] https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-deta... [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02740-y [2] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7035e5.htm
edited for typos.
I’m all for getting kids vaccinated when it’s deemed safe and effective (my daughter got vaccinated the first week it was available). But the risk to kids is quite low.
The issue is that you're not comparing apples to apples. The Israeli data is looking at the entire population that received the vaccine. The COVID study is only looking at hospitalized patients with/without COVID which is a subset of the entire population restricted entirely to those experiencing the most severe symptoms.
This is not an easy problem to solve. A more apples to apples comparison [3] puts the COVID:vaccine myocarditis ratio at about 6:1, but it also suffers from a bias. In order to measure those rates they relied on the population that tested positive for COVID. This excludes the population of individuals which were infected with COVID but did not received a diagnosis who presumably also had a near 0 rate of myocarditis. This bias [presumably] becomes more pronounced at lower age groups where COVID displays milder symptoms making it less likely to end up diagnosed.
Finally, there is also the consideration that while the vaccines have not yet changed - COVID has. And its likely that the omicron strain will have a different distribution of side effects. It's a difficult problem to solve, and conflicts of interest abound make it all even more challenging.
[1] - https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7035e5.htm [2] - https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02740-y [3] - https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.23.21260998v...
Statistically we should be much more worried about something like RSV or the flu (even after vaccination).
Despite its name, SARS-CoV-2 is not strictly a "respiratory virus". While it is spread airborne, it attacks multiple tissues besides the respiratory system, and causes multi-system dysfunction (including but not limited to MIS-C, type 1 diabetes, celiac disease, acute kidney injury, erectile dysfunction, ...). Many of the damages are immune-mediated, which is in line with what we know about T1D and celiac as autoimmune disorders.
Pneumonia.
The study you cite specifically excludes those under 5.
As does early treatment, https://c19early.com
Vaccine efficacy decays monthly (Delta/2021), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSZMtSPX3iE
The unvaccinated get COVID 400% more than the vaccinated, and the unvaccinated die from COVID 1,200% more than the vaccinated[1].
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html
It is pointless to quote rates without their context (country, age, virus strain, month, etcetera).
(Edit: forgot the source :P) https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.30.21262866v...
Post vaxx kid: "I don't feel good." Doctor: Let's check you for this myocarditis thing I've read about.
Pre-2020 kid: "I don't feel good." Doctor: You're probably fine.
It’s true, but we’ve had plenty of vaccinated that were 90%+ effective compared to the Covid vaccines at 30% for infection risk.
My problem with that statement is that it wasn't a fact. The vaccines do prevent catching the virus, just no where near as well as they used to and even at their best they never eliminated the risk of catching and transmitting the virus.
It sucks that the new variants are able to overcome so much of the protection we had from vaccines, but we always knew there was a risk that would happen if we allowed the virus to spread uncontrolled. We didn't do enough to keep the number of infections down and evolution did its thing resulting in poorer vaccine performance.
I really hope that adjustments are able to made to existing vaccines to compensate or new vaccines are developed which do a better job, but it's going to be an arms race until people stop passing this virus around by the millions every day giving it more opportunity to mutate and spread again.
Right now, the vaccines are still the best defense we have. 30% is a hard number to hear when we had 90% but 30% of 7.9 billion people is 2,370,000,000 so it can still prevent a whole lot of infections in the world and if we work harder to bring the number of infections down hopefully we can prevent things getting much worse. My biggest fear was that some variant would evade the protections we have entirely and negate the lessons we've learned in treating the sick and we'd be right back to where we were early 2020. That's still a possibility we have to be ready to face.
Oh please. We have a truckload of vaccines that convey multi-decade/life-long immunity. case: the smallpox vaccine, polio vaccine, etc
We truly never had a real Covid Vaccine - we only have "protective boosters" and for Omicron they are utterly in-effective.
Albeit, I do not believe it is that common, it's still possible. However, if you isolated in a remote location in the woods miles away from humanity, then perhaps you'd be safe, I suppose.
What we do have evidence for are future problems caused by these coronavirus infections along with a long list of immediate problems like deaths, severe (sometimes life altering) symptoms which can at times persist for weeks, months, and years, healthcare systems being overwhelmed preventing or delaying access to care and making accessing health services more risky, etc.
If you have to choose between getting a vaccine which appears to be perfectly safe but maybe could cause harm at some point in the future, and not getting it which we know does cause harm now and is very likely to cause harm in the future the choice is pretty clear. We can only deal with the evidence we have today and our best understanding of our current situation.
Especially when the vaccines benefit us not only by keeping us healthier and helping to eliminate the strain on our healthcare systems, but they are also our best bet to help reduce the need for social restrictions and disruptions in education and the economy.
There's still always that chance that the vaccines will have some negative impact on us later, but anyone in the future looking back and seeing our current situation won't have to wonder "What were they thinking taking their chances with this new vaccine!" It should be very clear to them that because we had no indication that there would be problems with the vaccine and because the vaccines were our best option to keep ourselves and each other healthy in the face of current problems and known future problems caused by the virus it was perfectly reasonable to take the chance on the vaccines and that doing so saved many lives and prevented many problems.
And I hope that should we have to deal with any future consequences from these vaccines that we can once again turn to medical science to find the best available option to treat those problems using the best understanding of them we have at the time. A huge percentage of the global population will be impacted after all so once again we'll be in a position where the entire world has an incentive to work together to find a solution which will hopefully go even smoother next time following the lessons learned here and now.
With more research and time things could change, but until there are indications that the vaccines could cause more harm than the known harms of the virus the vaccines will remain the smartest option we have today, no matter how tragic things turn out decades later.
This is enough for me to avoid them. I didn’t read the rest because it’s a short essay.
https://www.alberta.ca/stats/covid-19-alberta-statistics.htm...
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/health/how-effective-are-co...
I wonder if the early data has been proven wrong or if something is wonky about Alberta. At even 30% effectiveness you’d expect to see a big gap between unvaccinated and vaccinated new cases.
Weirdly near the bottom of your link they show nearly 90% effectiveness against all the variants of concern, but omicron isn’t listed. It seems like the vaccines would have to be negatively effective against omicron for all the other data to work out, though.
It seems unlikely that the Alberta population is experiencing a significantly different pandemic than neighbouring regions (demographics and responses are largely the same). I also wouldn't conclude from this data that vaccines are negatively effective as hospitalization rates are lower in the vaccinated group.
I agree. But I don’t understand that data. It doesn’t seem to line up with data from other areas.
e.g. Seattle is seeing 2.5x more infections among the unvaccinated.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/record-covi...
If you search hard enough (and quickly enough, they’ll likely be removed soon as they’re anti-narrative) you’ll find articles of people discussing exactly this. That the vaccine actually increases your chance of infection.
You can find anything online if you search hard enough. That doesn’t mean it’s true. It probably means you’re actively seeking out bias-confirming articles.
> (and quickly enough, they’ll likely be removed soon as they’re anti-narrative)
And now it’s full on conspiracy theory. This stuff is nuts. People like Alex Jones loudly put forward blatant lies that are “anti-narrative” and no one shuts them down. Why does every group imagine they are persecuted?
> you’ll find articles of people discussing exactly this. That the vaccine actually increases your chance of infection.
I would be interested in any relevant reputable articles showing this, but I’m pretty certain there are none.
It's not conspiracy theorist BS to suggest Google shapes search results for various reasons, to include politics. They been forced to admit as much. And before you use the confirmation bias argument, I'm pro-vax and all in favor of as many boosters as they offer.
The existence of that article in the New York Times would certainly seem to indicate a lack of suppression.
I do appreciate the link, though. That’s interesting and I hadn’t heard that was a concern. I wonder if there is science evidence that or if it’s hypothetical. The article doesn’t indicate one way or the other unless I missed it.
I don't know a ton about the science behind it other than some teams in Israel seem to have pretty strong feelings about it (more pointed than what's in the NYT article), but in my quick search I didn't see them in the search results.
With regards to search shaping, it's pretty easy to see: just Google image search "black inventors" then "white inventors". Also try "black family" then "white family". I'm not claiming any kind of oppression here, just noting that one of the sets of results looks like a Benetton-style diversity ad, while the other just has black people. I find it difficult to believe this was an organic result that wasn't explicitly influenced behind the scenes.
You could be right. I certainly see that “white family” involves a fair number of pictures of non-white folks. Individually the results all make sense (one from an article called “my white family”, stock photo “interracial black white family”, another about from an article about adopting a white child), but it’s odd that “black family” doesn’t have the same.
At the same time, it’s entirely plausible that this is just surfacing biases in the input. Maybe articles about families that aren’t just white have higher page rank? Maybe it’s something else. It’s interesting, but I’m doubtful it’s intentional (but it could be). If Google wanted to push a bias, it would make a lot more sense to push it on the unqualified “family” or “inventors”.
“White inventors” showing some black inventors makes a lot of sense given popular articles like “The iconic American inventor is still a white male” that specifically discuss non-white inventors.
The vaccines never stopped catching or transmission... they lessen the chances of you developing severe symptoms, your immune system still has to work.
Although I hope we will see vaccines that do a better job at preventing infection and transmission the benefits we're getting from them right now are enough that everyone who can should be vaccinated and boosted as needed to maintain those benefits.
-- writing this while my toddler is banished from daycare for 10 days because a single kid there tested positive.
Hopefully it's transient, soon followed by calm risk-benefit analysis.
Also, are you aware that children sometimes die from RSV and even the common cold? The problem COVID vaccines for kids are facing is that the problems from COVID in that age are so infrequent that they are essentially in the noise.
I think the very young child (<18 months) is at higher risk, though.
Which means that scenario playing in your head is just as likely to happen (or more likely, not happen) whether your children are vaccinated or not.
If they are ignoring symptoms to approve a vaccine who's primary remaining benefit is ... reducing severity of symptoms ... then how exactly has the trial proved anything?
Since antibodies are no longer a reliable indicator of immunity or of preventing transmission, then reduced severity is the primary remaining benefit.
Ideally they'd be looking at a cumulative risk/prevention assessment, but I don't see how they do that while excluding observed symptoms.
If they are using antibody levels as a proxy for this when they could just ... directly observe symptoms... then there would be a bigger problem with the study than just a failure to show sufficient efficacy.
It's just a fine line between arguing what would justify FDA "approval" vs what merits have changed that actually increase the risk-versus-reward assessment.
Put another way, when the biggest excuse for not getting vaccinated was "it's experimental and not approved", it became a straw-man-esque "gotcha-trap" of a battle to achieve "approval", even though that approval process looked nothing like any before it (no matter how many times "full fda approval" is repeated).
When the metric becomes the goal, it's no longer a metric, and all that.
We get bogged down arguing whether criteria of a definition or standard are being met, while the regulators end up just redefining things.
And we're supposed to pretend the teacher applying a curved grading scale actually represents a difference in the students performance.
BUT, the tests were administered based on self-reported symptoms which were then evaluated by a staff member to decide whether a test was warranted. This absolutely blew my mind.
This kind of avoidable subjective decision making should not be happening in a clinical trial. All participants should have been tested at regular intervals.
Passed+Failed = "Passed!"
[0] There will be a reason given to ignore that first trial, it just likely won't be a good one.
I think you meant to type 'vaccine'
Do you have a source on that?
My understanding is the reason it's taking so long is 1) an abundance of caution because the risk/reward calculation is different and 2) young children's immune systems don't work the same as adults').
Moreover, the government should be representative and derive it's power from the consent of the governed. Not enforce compliance to administrative state edicts. The slide from a representative republic to a technocracy is worrying.
[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/dangerous-push-to-give-boosters...
Moreover, the governed don't want the actions of others to kill them. That's why they created a government that prevents others from polluting, driving dangerously, and spreading disease.
400
> Why are you comparing across years?
Many seem to have the misconception that covid is risky for children, while they are at low risk, so I highlight that the child covid death numbers from covid was low and comparable to a normal flu season like the one in 2019.
That would make Covid hundreds of times deadlier for children than the flu. If it were a regular flu season without the mitigations that dropped flu deaths to 1, Covid would have killed even more children.
I saw one paper claiming the reason is that MMR vaccine gives children some protection against "severe" covid due to overlapping T-cells, but didn't check if it reproduced so wouldn't believe too much in that. (And I saw it on twitter from Dr Feigl-Ding who's an alarmist type.)
This is likely correct, but
> Omicron is much less risky than other kinds of covid.
There's some indication (though no solid proof) that the jump in child hospitalizations is due to omicron being _more_ severe in children. The proposed mechanism is that its focus on the upper respiratory system instead of the lungs makes it less severe for us and worse for young children (in line with other childhood diseases that are generally taken somewhat seriously).
Most likely they’ll get the disease, completely recover and move on.
If you believe prior cases of COVID don’t affect your survival rate in subsequent cases, and that there will be an infinite number of similarly deadly successive variants, then you conclude that most unvaccinated people will eventually get the variant that kills them.
I think this makes three large assumptions:
1. That natural infection doesn't result in durable immunity. This appears to be, unquestionably, not true [1].
2. Those that are unvaccinated will not get a natural infection. This is exceedingly unlikely, assuming they're living normal lives.
3. Vaccines will be constantly updated. This appears to be true, with a large time delay (see omicron vaccine being worked on now).
I agree that "kill one another off" was a bit hyperbolic, but it was past the edit window before I noticed that it was being genuinely misunderstood. All I meant was what would seem to be happening: People exposing one another to a communicable disease with a death rate of X. I was arguably using the wrong terminology for the magnitude of X.
Whether a death rate of X is acceptable or not may depend on social acceptance of the cause, the visibility of the cause (plane crashes always make the news, suicides don't) social class, etc. This is evident in the use of analogies within this sub thread, as a way of trying to make sense of the issue.
With natural immunity [1], the death rate will not be constant [2].
1. https://www.science.org/content/article/having-sars-cov-2-on...
The unvaxxed won't be killing off each other at a rate much (if any) higher then the vaxed and this is clear as day right now. Numbers.
What is it about this disease that is causing otherwise intelligent people to step into this reality of alternate (and untrue) facts? Even US supreme court justices.
I don't mean this as an attack, it's just I don't get it.
> Preliminary state data suggest that more than 90 percent of today’s deaths are still among unvaccinated people.
Source they provided: https://dshs.texas.gov/immunize/covid19/data/vaccination-sta...
From the numbers, it seems fairly clear that this virus is much more likely to cause death amongst the unvaccinated - unless I'm misinterpreting.
Given that fully vaxxed places are blowing up in case numbers, the vax obviously isn't stopping transmission much if at all right now.
Many more people are vaxxed then not right now. So if you are unvaxed and infected on a trip to the store who most likely gave it to you? A vaxxed person or an unvaxxed person?
"Unvaxxed killing each other off" is a hysterical take and inaccurate.
This is one of those "obvious" things that mathematically isn't obvious at all.
Any slope of a line could be steeper or shallower, so looking at that alone obviously can't tell you if the slope is 1% shallower than it could be, 5%, 10%, 50%... it's not like we hit "100% of the population has had covid now" overnight.
According to NatGeo "mass die off" is 90% of the population. I'd be alarmed at 6% die off in humans and not even be posting on the topic, but we are at less then 1%. For the unvaxxed.
"Killing each other off" just doesn't fit here.
Some countries reported more all-cause deaths for 2020.
Some states/countries sent Covid-infected patients into nursing homes, which did not help.
UK numbers show that only 1% of Covid-recovered people are reinfected, which is why the EU pass equated recovery with vaccination (which does not prevent infection or transmission).
It would be more accurate if US hospital data was separated into:
Fully vax
Partly vax
Unvax + Covid-recovered
Unvax + Covid-naiveWhere I live, in California, there has been a months-long-and-holding-steady trend that vaccinated people have much lower cases per capita and much, MUCH lower deaths per capita. Total cases went up when we relaxed restrictions which coincided with when vaccines were widespread. That's not the same as vaccinations causing those higher total case numbers! Now total case numbers are going up again due to seasonal factors + omicron having a lot of mutations; it's too early to say just yet exactly how the vax/unvax per-capita numbers will look for this wave when it's over. As of Dec 26, it was tracking pretty similarly, though[0]... it seems to blow up that dude's case: many fewer vaccination doses are being given now than during the last big waves!
EDIT: here are the money bits that I would need to see really compelling evidence to believe are coincidental/misinterpreted/etc:
* From December 20, 2021 to December 26, 2021, unvaccinated people were 3.9 times more likely to get COVID-19 than fully vaccinated people.
* From December 13, 2021 to December 19, 2021, unvaccinated people were 10.1 times more likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19 than fully vaccinated people.
* From December 6, 2021 to December 12, 2021, unvaccinated people were 16.6 times more likely to die from COVID-19 than fully vaccinated people.
Transmission, severity, and death, all. And that's after the omicron variant reached the state, especially for transmission, though admittedly before it has peaked (it possibly hasn't even peaked yet, still).
Bicyclist probably get way more injuries per mile than motorcyclists. It's risky!
Dedicated, fully separated paths with no conflict points have very low fatality rates. Also, even in risky areas there is a net positive effect on mortality.
Cyclists have to figure out safety by guesswork. One thing that's reasonably certain is that cars cause the majority of cycling injuries (not counting mountain biking, which I'm not equipped for). I have a rule of thumb, which is that if a car can crash into another car, or into stationary objects such as buildings, then it can crash into a cyclist. So I look at where car crashes occur: Mostly on higher speed, congested roads, and especially at intersections. My first safety rule is route choice, and I avoid routes with a lot of car traffic. I rarely encounter cars on my commute to work.
From what I can tell, Europe has more regulations and fewer lawsuits.
We do place limits on risking death in our society. I don't know if it can be based on objective criteria. We don't let people drive cars without seat belts, or attend school without certain vaccinations. Widespread exposure to a disease of the nature of COVID, under a flood of misinformation, had exactly zero advocates two years ago.
I don't have an answer, and was deliberately being a bit vague about whether I'm at peace with it or not. I'm willing to leave it at being on the fence.
Why?
If someone in the US continues to reject vaccination, I don't know what to do about it at this point. But there's big populations that haven't been vaccinated because they haven't had a chance. It's crucial to give them that chance.
2. Because the quicker and more widely covid spreads the more chance it has to evolve new variants, and those variants will spread worldwide. So everyone has an interest in slowing it down everywhere in order to protect themselves against potential future variants.
This tautology doesn’t inform me of anything.
Are you this unempathic and selfish in real life?
> Are you this unempathic and selfish in real life?
I do as little as possible for people who do not do for me.
& for those who want to go “buhh we don’t know how duh vaccine will effect their developmental growth either” - I don’t have much to say to you other than I wish you had an education…
This is about more than denying issues. It's about trying to get the whole picture. Ignoring any anecdotes you don't agree with doesn't help you get the whole picture.
I think you misunderstood. The point was that it’s not about picking anecdotes that support your conclusion.
You have to look at broader data collection and studies, not just whatever small bits of anecdata are conveniently nearby.
>A study looking at interventions in 11 European countries found that lockdowns and social distancing in the first wave helped lower the reproductive number (R) to below 1 by early May 2020[2]. R measures how many people one infected person will pass the virus on to. When R is above 1, the number of infections can rise exponentially. When R is below 1, the number of infections drops.
>In this study, the scientists developed a model to predict how many people would have died in these 11 countries, if no lockdown measures had been introduced. Comparing the actual number of deaths counted with the number of deaths predicted by their model, in the absence of any interventions, they found that around 3.1 million deaths were averted across these 11 countries from the beginning of the epidemic up until 4 May 2020. Scientific evidence shows that COVID-19 restrictions reduced virus transmission and, by extension, saved lives
0: https://healthfeedback.org/claimreview/evidence-shows-that-l...
Regardless of what you think of Makary's original opinion, there's no universe in which a prediction of the future from a medical expert should be labeled misinformation. If that's the bar, then ~all of the statistical models used to make scary predictions about Covid are also "misinformation", as are 95% of the things Anthony Fauci says on cable news.
"Politicians are holding children hostage in the basement of a pizza place" => clearly incorrect factual statement.
"I think that Covid infections will be far below their current numbers by summer" => opinion about the future.
(Regarding the particular claim advanced by health feedback here: it's a "fact check" based on a single paper, written by Neil Ferugson's group, that attempts to validate the predictions made by...Neil Ferguson's group. There have now been many others that say the opposite [1]. At the very least, you'd hope that a reputable "fact-checking" site would discuss these to present a balanced picture of the debate. Health feedback doesn't bother.)
[1] https://www.aier.org/article/lockdowns-do-not-control-the-co...
So I'm really not even sure where to start. Perhaps I should start with the fact that, under the best possible interpretation, you're treating the conceptual nuance of prediction vs. statement of fact as if it completely discredits the ability if Health Feedback to accurately parse COVID research. That is totally out of proportion to what would actually be proved by that argument.
It's also, I believe a distinction that is basically without merit as a commentary on what does or doesn't count as misinformation. Predictions most definitely do contain misinformation, serve to spread misinformation, can be based on bad reasoning that it is appropriate to criticize well ahead of the events they are predicting. In this case, the WSJ prediction turned out to be false and it was perfectly appropriate to call it out for the misinformation it was, and seeking cover by litigating whether the misinformation was retrospective or forward looking without defending the accuracy or underlying reasoning is asinine.
>Regarding the particular claim advanced by health feedback here: it's a "fact check" based on a single paper, written by Neil Ferugson's group, that attempts to validate the predictions made by...Neil Ferguson's group.
And this is so unhinged I almost don't even know what to say. There's nothing untoward about doing research that weighs on other research you have done; it's in collaboration with other partners and peer reviewed. If something was actually wrong with the study you could come out and say so instead of making captain of the JV debate team insinuations about hypothetical possibility of impropriety.
None of this is true. Frankly, I'm not even sure what the middle part means...herd immunity is not a "strategy"; it's just a fact. It's like claiming that "gravity" is a "strategy" for landing an airplane.
> So I'm really not even sure where to start
It's always good to start with something that isn't a fabrication and an ad hominem.
Their "Herd Immunity Strategy": Keep the elder parts of the population locked up and let children and younger parts get it without vaccination: https://gbdeclaration.org/
"In October 2020, AIER sponsored the “Great Barrington Declaration,” a controversial statement advocating for a herd immunity strategy in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The World Health Organization and other health experts have suggested a herd immunity strategy would be “unethical,” dangerous, and deadly."
More info: https://www.desmog.com/american-institute-economic-research/
Again, herd immunity is not a "strategy". It is a fact. Global vaccination is also a "herd immunity strategy", in that it tries to achieve herd immunity in the population.
But now that I've cleared that up, you should also know that's not what the GBD says. Maybe you should actually read it, instead of repeating what other people say about it?
This willingness to rely on hearsay explains a lot why you're eager to dismiss a page full of links to studies (which is honestly the only reason I used the AIER page), instead of, you know, considering that there might be a debate here.
Obviously, it's much easier to pretend that you're right when you impugn any source that disagrees with your opinion, for disagreeing with your opinion.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00728-2
if you are right, fix the Wikipedia entry ;)
Did you check who co-signed it? Mr Banana Rama, Dr Johnny Bananas, Dr Johnny Fartpants, Dr Person Fakename, Harold Shipman, Professor Notaf Uckingclue, and Prof Cominic Dummings.
Also the study your sit you are in good company ...
And does not address any articles published in that year that showed effects. Here's one: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2405-7
You can find way more than the "sources" your article cites. AIER is partisan and does not give you "the evidence."
But the model probably relies heavily on extrapolation. It is like an election forecast. That can have merit, but doesn't really lead to a definitive result.
Moreover, those who get better nevertheless contribute to the stresses that are stretching health care system and economy to its limits. These stresses cause second order harms to those having to go without care as resources are mobilized to support those who "will be fine."
Suppose 990/1,000 people that took a pill where fine and the rest died. Clearly it’s a serious risk even if you’re almost guaranteed to be fine. Looking at anecdotal evidence would show “most people where fine”/“10 cases of people dying!” But let’s change the numbers 999,999,990/1,000,000,000 took a pill and 10 died, now is it a serious risk or roughly as dangerous as driving to work? You still have “10 cases of people dying!” but it’s nowhere near the same thing.
The vaccine that was pulled very much came down to anecdotes vs numbers of injections in a cost benefit analysis. Presumably it would have still been administered to the elderly if their where no alternative vaccines. But as their where alternatives it wasn’t worth putting people at even such low risks.
You can download the data and crunch it... https://vaers.hhs.gov/data.html though note:
> Reports may include incomplete, inaccurate, coincidental and unverified information.
> The number of reports alone cannot be interpreted or used to reach conclusions about the existence, severity, frequency, or rates of problems associated with vaccines.
E.g. if 100 people walked out the door and had a heart attack the next day, you need to understand the base rate of heart attacks to know whether 100 is high, low, or normal. Then you need to put that number in the context of statistical significance, e.g. p < 0.05 means an up to 1 in 20 probability that your data is there by random chance, and if you look through all the AEFI data you'll analyse much more than 20 types of adverse event, so you'll most likely find an adverse event or two that looks statistically significant but fails to replicate in any studies.
> A report to VAERS generally does not prove that the identified vaccine(s) caused the adverse event described. It only confirms that the reported event occurred sometime after vaccine was given. No proof that the event was caused by the vaccine is required in order for VAERS to accept the report. VAERS accepts all reports without judging whether the event was caused by the vaccine.
(crunching some data... Death... Death of pet is listed as one of them? well... ok)
And just looking at that data its... self reported. For example, running it for the current vaccines there's one death reported for a person under 6 months old which is rather surprising since it's not authorized for that age range.
Anyways, the thing is that doing the "simple" query on this shows that 2,694 age 80+ died after receiving the vaccine. That needs to be calibrated against the question of "how many people aged 80+ would die in that time range without either covid or the vaccine being present?"
And that is exactly the problem that you're describing.
The key thing is its there and if people want to approach the data using the proper statistical rigor... the data is there.
The relevant pipeline blog post: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/get-ready-false-si...
> Bob Wachter of UCSF had a very good thread on Twitter about vaccine rollouts the other day, and one of the good points he made was this one. We're talking about treating very, very large populations, which means that you're going to see the usual run of mortality and morbidity that you see across large samples. Specifically, if you take 10 million people and just wave your hand back and forth over their upper arms, in the next two months you would expect to see about 4,000 heart attacks. About 4,000 strokes. Over 9,000 new diagnoses of cancer. And about 14,000 of that ten million will die, out of usual all-causes mortality. No one would notice. That's how many people die and get sick anyway.
> But if you took those ten million people and gave them a new vaccine instead, there's a real danger that those heart attacks, cancer diagnoses, and deaths will be attributed to the vaccine. I mean, if you reach a large enough population, you are literally going to have cases where someone gets the vaccine and drops dead the next day (just as they would have if they didn't get the vaccine). It could prove difficult to convince that person's friends and relatives of that lack of connection, though. Post hoc ergo propter hoc is one of the most powerful fallacies of human logic, and we're not going to get rid of it any time soon. Especially when it comes to vaccines. The best we can do, I think, is to try to get the word out in advance. Let people know that such things are going to happen, because people get sick and die constantly in this world. The key will be whether they are getting sick or dying at a noticeably higher rate once they have been vaccinated.
The referenced tweet is: https://twitter.com/Bob_Wachter/status/1333966348972539904?s...
I love basing my opinions off of shitty data.
I would not be surprised that the anti-vaxxers know more about VAERS than the general population.
Do you think it is worth getting the vaccine if you’ve already had covid and it wasn’t a big deal?
As in if you have firsthand experience that covid didn’t affect you much, wouldn’t that maybe be a valid reason to just say I’m not going to get vaccinated even though the risks of adverse short term effects are small (still don’t know about long term but probably small is my guess)
That said, quite a few people that had COVID before end up suffering far more the second time. As long as we are talking about individual cases, the first person do die of omicron was in their 50’s and had COVID before but never got vaccinated. But again even if we are talking about a 25 year old athlete you only get ~70 * 365 days, why spend more of them sick than you need to?
No reason to undermine a response that clearly was comparing one anecdote with another. Considering how children have been amazingly spared the effects of sars-cov-2 it is hard to see that they seem to have held the lions share of the mandates to slow the inevitable spread. And still do as the vaccined did not provide the high immuinty they initially promised.
The vaccines do an amazing job reducing hospitalizations among the vulnerable, it is not clear they have much benefit for the toddlers, and may even be harmful. Lets move on.
Externalities are real, and as such the discussion is about acceptable risk. So yes, in the most ridiculous and obvious sense it includes your kids, but you're assuming a lot too, and I question whether you're willing to reason critically - rather than emotionally - about school policy.
Not just kids learning verbal skills and to speak with masks on, but non-verbal-receptive kids, who rely more on facial expressions and visual cues.
For them, it's a double-whammy, because you're delaying their speaking and language/ listening skills further, but also depriving them of the alternative forms of communication that they rely on to cope with the primary deficits.
And that's before getting into whatever effects decreased socialization overall will have.
[1]https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/03/24/covid-...
Compare [2] to an estimated 216 deaths ages 0-4 and an additional 156 ages 5-17 from the flu in 2018-2019.
Those aren't perfectly comparable -- we took serious additional measures against covid that we don't take against the flu. On the other hand, how much actual masking of the 4 and under set is going on in preschool or kindergarten?
[1] https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Deaths-Focus-...
I dunno what the right measures are to take for kids that young, but the difference we're seeing between the flu measures we (mostly don't) take and some anti covid measures for young children is hard to explain.
And any time someone says, um, the data appears to show that covid is not actually that dangerous to young children, you get people (who I'm 99% sure don't lock their kids in the house for flu season) having a fit that you're risking their lives.
Many many many people are getting omicron and having relatively mild infections. It is not the same variant. That doesn't mean it's 100% safe, obviously, but it certainly appears to be safeer.
Nobody says that if they know what they’re talking about.
The phrase is actually “The plural of anecdote is not evidence”. You can Google it if you don’t believe me.
You can’t collect a couple of anecdote and pretend it’s data.
I always thought the phrase was "The plural of anecdote is not data" but it looks like that is a misquote:
Nelson W. Polsby PS, Vol. 17, No. 4. (Autumn, 1984), pp. 778-781. Pg. 779: Raymond Wolfinger’s brilliant aphorism “the plural of anecdote is data” never inspired a better or more skilled researcher.
I e-mailed Wolfinger last year and got the following response from him:
“I said ‘The plural of anecdote is data’ some time in the 1969-70 academic year while teaching a graduate seminar at Stanford. The occasion was a student’s dismissal of a simple factual statement–by another student or me–as a mere anecdote. The quotation was my rejoinder. Since then I have missed few opportunities to quote myself. The only appearance in print that I can remember is Nelson Polsby’s accurate quotation and attribution in an article in PS: Political Science and Politics in 1993; I believe it was in the first issue of the year.”
To add another link to the one Bumby has http://blog.danwin.com/don-t-forget-the-plural-of-anecdote-i...
which actually it makes a lot more sense to me this quote than the misquote because >You can’t collect a couple of anecdote and pretend it’s data.
sure but you can collect 10000 anecdotes, put them in a spreadsheet with some information about the people who said it, and suddenly you got data.
I mean that is basically what I thought to myself every time somebody said the plural of anecdote is not data but bit my tongue because not wanting to get into a war over it, and now I find out the original was actually exactly what I thought it should be.
Thanks munificent! Your name certainly applies for me.
"The plural of anecdote is not data."
The methodology of collecting anecdotes matters immensely. Merely collecting anecdotes based on whoever manages to comment in a random thread opens your collection process up to massive selection bias. In fact we even have a name for this process: a filter bubble. Every filter bubble in existence is the result of people assuming that not only is the population of their bubble representative of the average person (it's not), but also that people on either side of an issue will be equally likely to offer their anecdote (they're not).
Without rigorous collection methodology, anecdotes do not sum to data.
(Note that this comment says nothing about the broader topic of omicron severity; I don't have data, listen to people who do.)
But that's not as pithy.
> you can collect 10000 anecdotes, put them in a spreadsheet with some information about the people who said it, and suddenly you got data.
You can, but that's not a controlled study. The anecdotes can't be verified. So that data is not worth citing. I wish it were, which would make science a lot easier.
In New York, hospitalizations among kids quadrupled.
In Washington DC, children’s hospital admissions have roughly doubled.
In Texas, children’s hospitalizations were described as “staggering”.
In Alabama, cases were “like a rocket ship”.
In Louisiana, one doctor said: “We’ve never seen anything like it.”
In Ohio, one associate professor of internal medicine and pediatrics critical care recently told ABC news: “We’re on fire.”
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jan/05/covid-hospit...
In New York, hospitalizations among everyone more than quadrupled. So if kids quadrupled, they are doing better than average:
https://coronavirus.health.ny.gov/daily-hospitalization-summ...
Quotes about staggering, flaming rocket ships aside, if you don't bother to normalize your data to a meaningful baseline rate, you're either not capable of objectively analyzing the situation, or you're trying to mislead.
(It's also worth pointing out that in NY, something like 40-50% of "Covid hospitalizations" are unrelated to Covid, per the state's own statistics [1])
[1] https://gothamist.com/news/new-preliminary-state-data-shows-...
>> of course hospitalizations are going up
It's not the anecdotes that are scaring people, it's the number of kids in hospitals that's scaring people.
It's clearly a very systemic disease affecting almost all organs and long term effects are impossible to tell right now (as opposed to the vaccine btw which cannot by definition create random effects some years later).
• The only <18's they can track is those who get tested
• You're more likely to get tested if in the hospital or showing severe symptoms
• <18's rarely have serious symptoms unless they have comorbidities (e.g. obesity)
• Therefore, most <18's with COVID that they can track were already unhealthy prior to the disease and already more likely to be diagnosed with diabetes or another chronic health condition.
That study doesn't show Covid increases risk of diabetes, it shows that children hospitalized with Covid are more likely to develop diabetes. Two very different things.
Edit: Fixed formatting and spelling from posting on mobile
This hasn't been shown at all, that study can only show that diabetes and Covid are correlated. There's no reason to think the causation doesn't run in the opposite direction.
> What are the implications for public health practice?
> The increased diabetes risk among persons aged <18 years following COVID-19 highlights the importance of COVID-19 prevention strategies in this age group, including vaccination for all eligible persons and chronic disease prevention and treatment.
> "Third, the present analyses lacked information on covariates that could have affected the association between COVID-19 and incident diabetes, including prediabetes, race/ethnicity, and obesity status."
It is also important to note that correlation is not causation and this study only observes a correlation in the data set which may very well disappear after controlling for the aforementioned factors.
[1] https://vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com/p/does-covid19-cause-d...
https://www.aap.org/en/pages/2019-novel-coronavirus-covid-19...
Roll a 100-sided die enough times, and eventually you will get a LOT of ones.
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/hospitalization-7-day-trend
It's an average, some are 55% some are 146%
These kinds of comments baffle me. It's almost as if people can't imagine that other people might have very different experiences, and that those experiences are equally valid.
Pandemics are statistical events. Individual stories are irrelevant because the true picture is always a collective summary of cause and effect.
No one can generalise from personal experience - except possibly those working on the front lines, who have to deal personally with the consequences of poor decisions.
The reality is that when you have a rapidly mutating pathogen, the pandemic is done when it stops mutating and becomes mild enough for health services to return to something resembling normality.
This may or may not happen after Omicron. It might, but it just as easily might not.
Personal opinion is absolutely not a factor in this.
What we do know about covid is for example fatigue and long term lung damage, both which can have very debilitating effects on health, wealth and social well being. Lung damage in particular can be hard to detect without doing an actually study after the infection.
I'm not saying this to downplay the effects of Covid/Omicron, but rather to make the point that long-term damage from "mild" infections is not new. What matters is how many people are affected. Omicron will undoubtedly ruin the lives of some people who recover from the initial infection.
The criteria I would use is if the medical community is recommending testing for damage after illness. I an pretty use the recommendation is not to test the lungs, kidneys, heart, and brain after an influenza infection for people with no other symptoms. I could be wrong, so feel free to correct me here.
I do know however that dive doctors recommend divers to test for lung damage after a confirmed covid infection, even with no symptoms after infection. There is no such recommendation for influenza, so I would hazard a guess that the risk for otherwise healthy divers after an influenza infection is less than of covid. I have yet see a recommendation for omicron, but for now I would be cautious until the data is in.
For covid it is good to keeping an eye on oxygen levels. There are not many good tools to do this, through the skin do turn blue when things start to go very bad. Oxygen capacity can go down a fair amount before there is obvious signs, especially if the patient is laying down. The recommended medicine is pure oxygen which will require a hospital visit.
Personally I am more worried about covid. It is easier to monitor the fever of the flu, the signs for trouble is more clear, and the medical guidelines for when to go to the hospital is well established. Worrying oxygen levels are silent, harder to measure, and the medicine isn't something that people usually have at home. The guidelines are not fully established and there is ongoing research studies on the effects.
I've had a couple different SPO2 meters for a few years, they seem to work pretty reliably.
Not yet as accessible as a thermometer if you're talking about population measures, but since it sounds like this is something that concerns you personally it might be worth getting one.
What does that mean and how is it not self-defeating? As in presumably one avoids covid due to its adverse impact on quality of life. But if you're willing to fully sacrifice your quality of life, then my assumption must be flawed.
What's the value you're maximizing here?
this doesn't diminish the importance of the tie, but rather should just reveal that what we've always known about covid remains true - its a serious disease and having other underlying medical issues makes it significantly worse.
i would bet against any conclusion however that having covid makes kids more likely to develop diabetes.
With proper discipline, it is straightforward to avoid it.
I do agree with you about that being a defeatist attitude.
On the other hand, I wish we knew more how this is transmitted. People eating indoors isn't the main vector of transmission. And masks don't help much either. And eventually getting a booster every 6 months won't do much either
Bronchitis is not a communicable disease.
Bronchitis is inflammation of the lining of the bronchial tubes which is typically caused by either smoking or viruses.
If you don't smoke, then what you got from your young daughter was almost certainly a virus.
Could have been influenza, or the common cold, or covid again.
I haven't looked into it in enough detail to be making any categorical recommendation to parents, but it's worth pointing out that this is one case where omicron is not cause for optimism.
Even if they never contract COVID, you still have to worry and plan around the unknowable - can I take that meeting two weeks from now? I may have to be home quarantining with my kids. And since by definition you don’t know when or if that will happen, you have no way to quell that anxiety. It just exists as constant background noise you never had before. It’s debilitating.
I also hope the collective we makes progress on understanding the nature of long COVID and can find a strategy for mitigating its consequences. Anecdotal accounts of the bewildering and depressing range of affects it is having on some people (last estimate I saw, 30% of cases, but that's pre-omicron AFAIK) make me very much wish to avoid omicron, and keep my kids free of it if possible (very unlikely given our collective decision in the US that it is now "endemic.")
You're making it sound like contracting covid is a one-and-done thing.
Yet, it isn't. Far from it. People already caught it multiple times, from multiple strains, some with deadly consequences.
Furthermore, thus non-chalant approach to covid actually contributes to it's spread and consequently increases chances that an unmanageable strain pops up. I mean, since the initial epidemic at Wuhan, we already saw the inception of at least two new strains which were deadlier and more contagious.
There's reason to be optimistic about Omicron, but one of the things that irks me is people getting ahead of themselves with that optimism (e.g. get taking preliminary reports that it could be milder as "it is milder so we don't have do anything anymore.").