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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

#311

Post by mplanchard »

umvi wrote: post #307
orra wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So even a disease that threatens .1% of the population with death The IFR for COVID is likely ten times that, at least in societies with decent numbers of older people. > Almost nobody notices or remembers blips of abnormally high "excess deaths" for a particular year This isn't a bad flu season in a 5 year cycle. The excess deaths caused by COVID last year are not just 'abnormally high'. They're more like once in…

> The IFR for COVID is likely ten times that, at least in societies with decent numbers of older people. Right I purposely picked a disease less deadly than covid that could still overwhelm the healthcare system > This isn't a bad flu season in a 5 year cycle. The excess deaths caused by COVID last year are not just 'abnormally high'. They're more like once in a lifetime abnormally high. Right, and I still maintain t…

This kind of cavalier attitude towards half a million people dying bothers me, particularly when it’s very likely that our death totals are significantly higher than they could have been with better adherence to guidelines, better guidelines to begin with, etc. Those excess deaths won’t be so quickly forgotten by people who have lost family and friends.

Should we be pragmatic in public policy? Of course. You can’t prevent all the deaths, and we’ve got to keep individuals and businesses afloat as well as we can. But we need to go into these discussions with clear eyes about the real cost that each of those lost lives represent, both in a compassionate sense and in a practical sense (a not insignificant proportion of those dying were still working, still contributing to society, were young with many productive years ahead of them, etc.).

I really don’t think we’ll look back on this and think, “Eh, a half a million people died, oh well,” particularly not with a more historical lens, but I could definitely be mistaken.

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

#312

Post by _ph_ »

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-…

So far there was a tight coupling between the number of positive tested people and the hospitalisation count. It was important to base politics on the positive test results because they are several weeks "ahead" of the hospitalisation trend. It would have been foolish to not use those weeks for necessary actions.

Now, with the vacinations, things change a bit. As soon we can show a significant reduction in hospitalisation, of course this needs to taken into respect. But with the vacinations, I would also expect the infection count to drop, as there are good indications that the vacinations reduce the infection count to drop.

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

#313

Post by kaybe »

sjf wrote: post #183
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?

Sure, you think the 0.1% are just waiting for their phase to rollout?

I have to say though, if we were actually making them pay hard for that, I'd be ok with it ethically. You want to skip the line? Sure, that's 2 million+! Then give the money to the one that has to wait instead, but make sure not to allow a free market here to drive that price down. Just thinking.. there surely is an issue somewhere..

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

#314

Post by dev1n »

vorpalhex wrote: post #304
dev1n wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you only care about people if an event is statistically significant?

For public health choices? Yes! 1 in a million events should not be optimized for.

This is not a 1 in a million event. There are studies like my comment above that back this statement whole heartedly. This is a virus with proven neuroinvasive potential that affects large swaths of otherwise incredibly healthy people.

You can't compare these supposed 1 in a million events to something like doing perf testing on a 64 node raspberry pi kubernetes cluster.

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

#315

Post by _ph_ »

Solvitieg wrote: post #253
choward wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree completely. The only reason they used for shutting everything down at first was so hospitals don't get overrun. That's clearly not happening right now in most places. Also, it's not uncommon for the flu to cause hospitals to exceed capacity and we don't shut down for that.

This is what I found bizarre about NZ's approach. Their goals was 0 _cases_ in the entire country. It's a great accomplishment but perhaps unnecessary.

At 0 cases you can fully return back to "normal" life. If you have a small amount of cases, this will always grow exponentially without countermeasures.

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

#316

Post by NovaJehovah »

orra wrote: post #301
NovaJehovah wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the "long covid" stuff is essentially fear mongering. There's no science behind it. The implication is that everyone should be terrified, stay home as much as possible, and wear masks as long as there's any chance of catching covid. Even after being vaccinated. Sure, people flout the restrictions, and they are met with social disapproval for doing so. The worst thing is the hugely negative psychological effect th…

> All the "long covid" stuff is essentially fear mongering. There's no science behind it. That's not true. Studies are showing large fractions, say 10-25% of COVID patients are suffering symptoms after a month. COVID infections have demonstrably damaged pretty much every organ in the body. That's very different from the initial assumption, whence all policy, that COVID is like the flu, and passes in two weeks if it d…

It's not surprising that when a disease almost kills you, it (or the medical interventions that saved you) might leave your body in bad shape.

But this is being spun to imply that it's a serious threat to people who are otherwise in extremely low risk categories for severe covid. There's no solid evidence for that.

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

#317

Post by DanBC »

standardUser wrote: post #190
dev1n wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. People (extraordinarily healthy people) are suffering pulmonary embolisms (and thus hospitalized) weeks after they have been cleared from the virus. There is a very, very, very long tail to this disease outside of the initial 2 - 4 weeks of being sick.

Small percentages of people suffer complications from many different types of illnesses. At a certain point, human beings simply have to live with a small chance of a bad outcome from ailments that are normally mild.

1 in 10 patients die within months of leaving hospital. https://twitter.com/ShaunLintern/status/1362863221305192450?...

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/coronavirus-hospit...

> More than one in 10 Covid patients died within five months of being discharged from hospital, while almost a third of those who survived the virus had to be readmitted, new research has warned.

> Papers released by the governments Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) also revealed half of patients in hospital with the virus suffered complications, with one in four struggling when they got back home.

> Younger patients under the age of 50 were more likely to suffer complications.

ICNARC gives us some age data: https://www.icnarc.org/Reporting

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

#318

Post by orra »

mplanchard wrote: post #311
umvi wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The IFR for COVID is likely ten times that, at least in societies with decent numbers of older people. Right I purposely picked a disease less deadly than covid that could still overwhelm the healthcare system > This isn't a bad flu season in a 5 year cycle. The excess deaths caused by COVID last year are not just 'abnormally high'. They're more like once in a lifetime abnormally high. Right, and I still maintain t…

This kind of cavalier attitude towards half a million people dying bothers me, particularly when it’s very likely that our death totals are significantly higher than they could have been with better adherence to guidelines, better guidelines to begin with, etc. Those excess deaths won’t be so quickly forgotten by people who have lost family and friends. Should we be pragmatic in public policy? Of course. You can’t pr…

> I really don’t think we’ll look back on this and think, “Eh, a half a million people died, oh well,” particularly not with a more historical lens, but I could definitely be mistaken.

Agreed, it's horribly callous.

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

#319

Post by orra »

NovaJehovah wrote: post #316
orra wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All the "long covid" stuff is essentially fear mongering. There's no science behind it. That's not true. Studies are showing large fractions, say 10-25% of COVID patients are suffering symptoms after a month. COVID infections have demonstrably damaged pretty much every organ in the body. That's very different from the initial assumption, whence all policy, that COVID is like the flu, and passes in two weeks if it d…

It's not surprising that when a disease almost kills you, it (or the medical interventions that saved you) might leave your body in bad shape. But this is being spun to imply that it's a serious threat to people who are otherwise in extremely low risk categories for severe covid. There's no solid evidence for that.

> But this is being spun to imply that it's a serious threat to people who are otherwise in extremely low risk categories for severe covid. There's no solid evidence for that.

It's a numbers game.

When hundreds of millions of people are infected, you're still going to get a lot of hard hit people in 'low risk' categories, aren't you?

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

#320

Post by scarby2 »

NovaJehovah wrote: post #283
dragonwriter wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> After some threshold of vaccine distribution, people need to be convinced that it's ok to return to normal life, and that they don't need to cower in fear in their homes or wear masks for years and years. No one has suggested people should cower in fear, and people seem pretty happy going about without masks, or with masks worn in an openly defiant manner (under the chin, off of one ear, etc.) in public places with…

All the "long covid" stuff is essentially fear mongering. There's no science behind it. The implication is that everyone should be terrified, stay home as much as possible, and wear masks as long as there's any chance of catching covid. Even after being vaccinated. Sure, people flout the restrictions, and they are met with social disapproval for doing so. The worst thing is the hugely negative psychological effect th…

> The implication is that everyone should be terrified, stay home as much as possible, and wear masks as long as there's any chance of catching covid. Even after being vaccinated.

Apparently there is insufficient data to back up that the vaccine reduces transmission. That much is mostly true. It doesn't seem like they're trying particularly hard to find out.

Why are we not studying unvaccinated household members of vaccinated individuals and comparing with household members of the unvaccinated. Could be as simple as adding a data collection step after receiving a test result, given that it's pretty much a given you will infect people you live with we should notice a large difference very quickly.

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