Coronavirus

[GeddyWrox]

[GeddyWrox]

(I just back-paged some scary info from AW. Click back and read it.)

[AdmiralKird]

@AdmiralKird I've seen R0 values for delta anywhere from 6 to 9.

https://covidactnow.org/?s=21521078 has the infection rate (number of people an infected person is infecting - their definition) for every state/county which from my understanding is pretty much the same as the effective R value.

I don't think their infection rate calc is accurate. From their site on how it is calculated:

This one is a bit complicated. To calculate the infection growth, a mathematical model combines trends in daily new cases from approximately the last 14 days, with estimates for other variables, such as how many days on average occur between infection and transmission.

It looks like their model is being fooled by Florida not always reporting new daily cases on a daily basis, which will ruin one of their input values. Somethings not right with it. It uses NYT data which shows a 14 day increase in cases of 84%. How do you get the average infected person only infecting an extra .31 people if cases for the same horizon are going up 84%? It doesn't add up.

[thrill]

My experience is entirely anecdotal, but people are dropping like fliesin Florida. Especially conservatives in their 60's who are still in the work force. We have lost two employees in the last two weeks who were men in their 60's and unvaccinated. Difficult to muster too much sympathy, beyond empathy for the grief experienced by their loved ones, when there was a free and easily available vaccine that they refused to get for political reasons.

Delta is absolutely decimating every population it gets into in FL right now. It's way worse than it was last summer before people (our governor and conservatives) arbitrarily decided that it "was over" and it's taking a big toll.

[GeddyWrox]

Lots of good info in this article about booster shots.

https://www.vox.com/2021/7/24/22591591/ ... -americans

As the pandemic wears on, some Americans could need booster shots

The Biden administration now believes that fully vaccinated people who are older or immunocompromised may need a booster shot.

Though all three vaccines authorized for use in the United States — Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson — are highly effective in preventing Covid-19 infections, recent data suggests that the efficacy of Pfizer’s two-dose vaccine can wane slightly four to six months after vaccination, according to the New York Times.

However, a booster shot could lift antibody levels even more substantially than the current two-dose regimen for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, and could be especially beneficial for people 65 and older and those who are immunocompromised.

People who are immunocompromised may receive significantly less immune protection than the general population after two vaccine doses, increasing the upside of a potential third shot.

According to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisory committee, which met earlier this week to discuss the potential need for booster shots, about 2.7 percent of the US population is currently immunocompromised in some way, whether due to ongoing medical treatment like chemotherapy, their status as organ transplant recipients, or another reason.

Immunocompromised people are also more likely to become severely ill from Covid-19, and they have a markedly higher chance of experiencing breakthrough infections despite being vaccinated — a concern magnified by a delta variant-fueled resurgence of Covid-19 cases in the US.

As things stand, data from Pfizer indicates that its vaccine — the first to be authorized in the US, and still the most common among US vaccine recipients — declines from 95 percent to 84 percent effectiveness against symptomatic infection after four to six months, according to the Times’ Sharon LaFraniere.

Data from Israel, where Covid cases are once again rising, suggest that an even sharper decline in effectiveness against symptomatic infections is possible — but even then, the vaccine remains “more than 90 percent effective in preventing severe disease,” and the small sample size means there is still uncertainty about Israel’s findings.

“The goal of this vaccine is not to prevent mild or low, moderate infectious disease,” Dr. Paul Offit, a member of the Food and Drug Administration’s outside advisory committee, told the Times. “The goal is to prevent hospitalization to death. Right now this vaccine has held up to that.”

A booster shot administered at the six-month mark could increase antibody levels as much as tenfold, according to data released earlier this year by both Pfizer and Moderna, underscoring its potential value to older and immunocompromised people.

Israel is already offering a third Pfizer shot for immunocompromised residents — though millions of Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip have yet to be vaccinated — and Pfizer has previously suggested that a booster shot could be needed in the US.

Regulatory questions abound

Though the US currently has tens of millions of surplus Covid-19 vaccine doses on hand, making a third Pfizer or Moderna shot available to millions of immunocompromised or elderly Americans likely won’t be a quick process.

Currently, all three Covid-19 vaccines in use in the US are being administered under an emergency use authorization, or EUA, issued by the FDA, which sets specific regimens for each vaccine: two doses several weeks apart for both Pfizer and Moderna, and a single dose for Johnson & Johnson.

Changing that, according to the Washington Post, would require either full FDA approval for the vaccine or an amendment to the EUA. And until that happens, the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices can’t go forward with recommending a third shot for vulnerable populations in the US.

According to the New York Times, “doctors would have vastly more leeway to prescribe a booster for their patients” once the vaccine is fully approved by the FDA.

However, there are some potential workarounds to get third shots in arms more quickly. According to Dr. Amanda Cohn, chief medical officer for the CDC’s immunization and respiratory diseases center, the US is “actively looking into ways ... to potentially provide access earlier than any potential change in regulatory decisions” — including through “a study, or through an investigational new drug format.”

As the Washington Post reported after the advisory board meeting earlier this week, that strategy could open up access to a third shot under the FDA’s compassionate use program, which “would require enrolling individuals in a clinical study where additional doses can be given.”

President Joe Biden also struck an encouraging tone on the prospects for the FDA’s full vaccine approval in coming months, at a recent town hall in Cincinnati, Ohio.

“They’re [the FDA] not promising me any specific date, but my expectation, talking to the group of scientists we put together... plus others in the field, is that sometime, maybe in the beginning of the school year, at the end of August, beginning September, October, they’ll get a final approval,” Biden told CNN’s Don Lemon on Wednesday.

[G. Keenan]

Hopefully Delta does here what it did in the UK, huge spike followed by a pretty steep decline. It spreads so easily that maybe it burns through the population faster. The UK has a higher vaxx rate than we do though, so perhaps it will take longer here to start its decline.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

@AdmiralKird I've seen R0 values for delta anywhere from 6 to 9.

https://covidactnow.org/?s=21521078 has the infection rate (number of people an infected person is infecting - their definition) for every state/county which from my understanding is pretty much the same as the effective R value.

I don't think their infection rate calc is accurate. From their site on how it is calculated:

This one is a bit complicated. To calculate the infection growth, a mathematical model combines trends in daily new cases from approximately the last 14 days, with estimates for other variables, such as how many days on average occur between infection and transmission.

It looks like their model is being fooled by Florida not always reporting new daily cases on a daily basis, which will ruin one of their input values. Somethings not right with it. It uses NYT data which shows a 14 day increase in cases of 84%. How do you get the average infected person only infecting an extra .31 people if cases for the same horizon are going up 84%? It doesn't add up.

Regardless of the accuracy, they seem to be pretty consistent with their methodology so it provides a relative look at spread even if it's an imperfect calculation of R. Rather effective R correlates exactly to the infection rate is irrelevant. What's important is the data pretty clearly shows a very ugly picture wrt spread in communities.

I posted data from San Diego County last week which iirc has a 70%+ fully vaxxed rate among eligible citizens. Last friday they were at 29 daily new cases per 100K residents according to coviactnow.org. And, it was 20 when looking at the trailing month's data provided by San Diego County. Over the weekend, they've jumped up to 40+ daily new cases / 100K and their infection rate has leveled off at 1.2. You can look specifically at that county and see the infection rate (which is going to correlate pretty highly with spread, again, regardless of perfection) is at a rate almost unmatched in their county at any point of the pandemic.

All that to say, agreed it may not be perfect, but the data is reliable enough to make comparisons and no matter how you look at it or what you look at, the picture being painted is quite ugly.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

Hopefully Delta does here what it did in the UK, huge spike followed by a pretty steep decline. It spreads so easily that maybe it burns through the population faster. The UK has a higher vaxx rate than we do though, so perhaps it will take longer here to start its decline.

Except it hasn't really declined back to previous levels.

The UK 7 day rolling average of new cases peaked at 25K or so in November, then declined, then peaked again at 50K+ in January, then declined to ~2k through May before peaking at ~45K with Delta in July. But, they've only declined to ~25K cases daily and even that number is on the uptick again....ina country with a nearly 70% vax rate. Of course, they 'reopened' on July 19th, so that's going to impact the numbers. But, regardless, they're still seeing new cases 10x higher than they were in May. And, that's after the decline.

[G. Keenan]

Hopefully Delta does here what it did in the UK, huge spike followed by a pretty steep decline. It spreads so easily that maybe it burns through the population faster. The UK has a higher vaxx rate than we do though, so perhaps it will take longer here to start its decline.

Except it hasn't really declined back to previous levels.

The UK 7 day rolling average of new cases peaked at 25K or so in November, then declined, then peaked again at 50K+ in January, then declined to ~2k through May before peaking at ~45K with Delta in July. But, they've only declined to ~25K cases daily and even that number is on the uptick again....ina country with a nearly 70% vax rate. Of course, they 'reopened' on July 19th, so that's going to impact the numbers. But, regardless, they're still seeing new cases 10x higher than they were in May. And, that's after the decline.

I think what was odd about the UK was they were predicting case numbers would continue rising, but they instead decreased. Decreased to a higher level than May, apparently, but for whatever reason the upward trend with Delta they were expecting did not continue as long as anticipated.

[G. Keenan]