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Covid vaccination linked to 'substantial reduction' in hospital admissions

heraldscotland.com

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Re: Covid vaccination linked to 'substantial reduction' in hospital admissions

#201

Post by rcpt »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #199
rcpt wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.16.21249950v... Hundreds of thousands of people. Average age mid 40s and sliced by hospitalized or not. Controlled against people who had the flu during lockdown. Double digit percentages have issues 6 months on. Unsurprisingly not very different from SARS 1 and those people are still sick since 2003.

Yes, indeed, the various studies (and yours is a typical example) show mainly an older demographic reporting symptoms stretching into months, and include the observation that it was mainly (even if not exclusively) a severe course of the disease that preceded lingering symptoms. But a lot of the attitudes that restrictions must be kept in place to prevent "long COVID" are held by younger people who are very afraid of…

I struggle to see how you reached that interpretation of the paper.

Re: Covid vaccination linked to 'substantial reduction' in hospital admissions

#202

Post by dragonwriter »

MR4D wrote: post #192
dragontamer wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The #1 group in the USA was not "at-risk" population, but doctors, nurses, and other front-line staff. The idea is that these groups are seeing many, many COVID19 patients and therefore have a big risk at spreading the virus around. Once this "Priority 1A" group was vaccinated, then age 75+ individuals were vaccinated in Priority 1B. Even then, Postal Office employees and Grocery Store workers (other "high impact" wo…

Group 1C is pretty much "everyone". To take directly from the CDC [0], "Other essential workers, such as people who work in transportation and logistics, food service, housing construction and finance, information technology, communications, energy, law, media, public safety, and public health." Doesn't that cover pretty much everyone on HN ? [0] - https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/recommend... -----…

> Group 1C is pretty much "everyone".

No, it's not. It's “essential workers”, which isn't everyone in the listed sectors but people in the listed sectors whose work cannot effectively be done remotely; approximately, the people that were exempted and allowed to work on site during the strongest lockdowns, where they occurred at all.

> Doesn't that cover pretty much everyone on HN ?

Probably not; lots of people on HN are probably in jobs that can be and are being done remotely. Even if it did, “everyone on HN” and “everyone” aren't the same thing.

Re: Covid vaccination linked to 'substantial reduction' in hospital admissions

#203

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

rcpt wrote: post #201
Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, indeed, the various studies (and yours is a typical example) show mainly an older demographic reporting symptoms stretching into months, and include the observation that it was mainly (even if not exclusively) a severe course of the disease that preceded lingering symptoms. But a lot of the attitudes that restrictions must be kept in place to prevent "long COVID" are held by younger people who are very afraid of…

I struggle to see how you reached that interpretation of the paper.

Average age 40, as you said yourself. And then as the authors of this paper find, "Risks were greatest in, but not limited to, those who had severe COVID-19."

Re: Covid vaccination linked to 'substantial reduction' in hospital admissions

#204

Post by umvi »

aclimatt wrote: post #108

Since we're on the topic, shouldn't this (hospital admissions) be the almost singular criterion to influence public policy / restrictive measures? The line I've heard repeatedly is we're waiting for "total" herd immunity, as in ensuring almost all of a population is potentially protected from the virus. Frequently quoting fall / end of 2021, potentially into 2022. Shouldn't the only benchmark be those with medium-to-…

> You may, and indeed we have, shut it down if a large part of the population were at risk of hospitalization or death

I wouldn't really call 1% of the population "a large part" of it. It's just, our healthcare capacity relative to the size of the overall population is miniscule. So even a disease that threatens .1% of the population with death and 1% with hospitalization is enough to overwhelm the healthcare system. And apparently policy makers aren't willing to let people die due to overwhelmed hospitals - they would rather shut down the entire economy than let that happen.

History will tell if that was the right decision. Almost nobody notices or remembers blips of abnormally high "excess deaths" for a particular year, but everyone notices and remembers economic depressions that last a decade.

Re: Covid vaccination linked to 'substantial reduction' in hospital admissions

#205

Post by dan-robertson »

dragonwriter wrote: post #26
ageitgey wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK is giving both doses. It's just that they are spacing them out at 12 weeks instead of 3-4 weeks. The idea is that this gives more at-risk people substantial protection more quickly.

> The UK is giving both doses. It's just that they are spacing them out at 12 weeks instead of 3-4 weeks. Are they doing that for all vaccines, or just the Oxford/AstraZeneca one? Because that appears to be the recommended and most effective interval for the Oxford vaccine, but not for the others. (Note that the mix of vaccines approved for use differs considerably from country to country; Oxford/AstraZeneca is not i…

There’s not really much data on what the most effective interval is, though I think some data might come out of Israel and the NHS will probably try to conduct some randomised controlled trials. The choices made in the phase 3 clinical trials were driven by trying to pick a sufficiently large dose that the trial would succeed and as short an interval as reasonable to make the trials take less time. For other vaccines, larger intervals have been more effective. Given how unwilling politicians were to speed up rollout, I think aiming for maximum efficacy with minimum trial latency was the best decision the drug companies could have made.

Re: Covid vaccination linked to 'substantial reduction' in hospital admissions

#206

Post by unix_fan »

wcfields wrote: post #179

I may get downvoted for this, but genuinely curious if there's vaccine tourism (not that I'm in a position to get on a jet to get a shot). Eg, if the wait time is long for my group in the US/UK/Wherever, can I book a flight to UAE or Cuba to get a vaccine at the airport?

Definitely. A few famous people in Latin America were flying to Miami to get vaccinated, despite not living in Florida.

Re: Covid vaccination linked to 'substantial reduction' in hospital admissions

#207

Post by dan-robertson »

prox wrote: post #83
mchusma wrote: post #75

The UKs adoption of First Dose First is amazing and inspiring in a time when governments worldwide seem unable to operate effectively. There are 2 things every country can do to save lives that have effectively zero cost and zero negative externalities: - lifting lingering vaccine bans (the US's ban of AZ is most glaring) - first dose first - the evidence is overwhelming at this point. These two things, which could b…

What is first dose first?

See, for example, https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/12/fi...

Re: Covid vaccination linked to 'substantial reduction' in hospital admissions

#208

Post by ceejayoz »

standardUser wrote: post #186
vmchale wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> hospital admissions) be the almost singular criterion to influence public policy / restrictive measures? From a control theory perspective, it's one of the worst measures because it's delayed. Much more efficient to measure cases - then you don't need restricted social life as long.

It's an important metric because earlier indicators aren't as useful. The rate of new cases is tricky because we don't really care if someone gets COVID-19 anymore than we care if they get the common cold, assuming they have only mild symptoms and fully recover. Hospitalizations are the first unambiguous metric we have to know there is a serious problem that may require a dramatic response.

> It's an important metric because earlier indicators aren't as useful.

Sure they are. They're less precise, but they're more useful, because they're more likely to let you combat the spike before it gets out of control.

It's like a smoke alarm. Maybe it's going off because it's over-sensitive and someone just took a shower... but it's a better early warning system than waiting for active flames to appear.

Re: Covid vaccination linked to 'substantial reduction' in hospital admissions

#209

Post by blackbear_ »

tus89 wrote: post #6

More interesting to know does it lead to a significant drop in transmission?

Why is this more interesting exactly? If vaccines remove severe consequences of getting sick then why does it matter if the virus is still around?

Re: Covid vaccination linked to 'substantial reduction' in hospital admissions

#210

Post by ravenstine »

aclimatt wrote: post #108

Since we're on the topic, shouldn't this (hospital admissions) be the almost singular criterion to influence public policy / restrictive measures? The line I've heard repeatedly is we're waiting for "total" herd immunity, as in ensuring almost all of a population is potentially protected from the virus. Frequently quoting fall / end of 2021, potentially into 2022. Shouldn't the only benchmark be those with medium-to-…

Should we have an "end"?

To play devil's advocate, clearly the world can handle a certain amount of locking-down, the social distancing, the mask wearing, etc., so it seems it is better if we just accept these restrictions indefinitely because we can save more people. Maybe we're fine not having mass gatherings, not eating indoors, and not leaving the house without a mask if it means saving the vulnerable. After all, it could be that COVID stays in the body like herpes and creates a different set of problems years later. Until we know for sure, the safest course of action for the public is for them to remain quarantined.

After all, how bad is your life, really? If your life is tolerable, that means the restrictions are tolerable as well.

EDIT: It's like nobody knows what playing "devil's advocate" means anymore. I think it's valid to ask that, if all the measures we are taking are objectively good, whether we should take them from now on.

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