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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

#321
post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious about your data set. The correlation of cases to deaths using data from covidtracking.com for the US over the past year is 0.28-0.3 when I ran it. I slid it by two, three and four weeks.

I'm not sure that a simple sliding correlation really captures how treatments, protocols, and behaviors have changed over time. Leaving aside the winter holidays case peak (which is much more multi-modal than the others), I see two peaks: * A peak of cases around Apr 11, followed by a peak of hospitalizations on Apr 22, with a peak of deaths also around Apr 22. * A peak of cases around Jul 22, followed by a peak of h…

Totally agree. I ran it for New Jersey with the similar results, but it is brute force. Scratching the surface quickly leads to many more variables. For example, more testing would lead to more cases. Then, of course, we'd need to look at how the testing was done (eg random or hospital entry) and what test it was.

I really wish that stochastic testing were discussed more seriously.

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

#322
post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plane crashes of the last century deeply inform regulation of planes this century. It's why we have so few plane crashes despite massive increases in passenger-miles flown.

I strongly doubt the planes of today present the vulnerabilities of last century. Those lessons were leant and applied. Today's airplanes have different issues and policy should better be about the current issues (and crashes) otherwise it would be outdated and obsolete. But my analogy was about recommending flying or not flying: you should base that recommendation on the safety of today's airplanes, not on the crash…

His point was the regulation of planes, not the planes themselves. Which is effectively what forms the "safety of today's planes" that you are looking for.

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

#323
post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty contagious, to be fair. Still, I think you're right when you say perhaps unnecessary: some countries have successfully suppressed COVID without eliminating it. That said, it's some but not many countries. I'm a bit ambivalent. Regardless, it certainly wasn't necessary for NZ to close their border to asylum seekers.

Edit: [removed]

> Media are reporting that wealthy migrants are still being welcomed

Ouch, that article links to one from May 2020. It said the Avatar film crews were allowed to fly in, whilst families were separated.

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

#324
post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

Framing an "average age of 40" as "an older demographic" seems a bit misleading, as the average age of human beings in America is 38. We're not talking a few sickly senior citizens here (which, even if we were, I wouldn't feel justified in writing off, but it's not).

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

#325
post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yes, just like a lot of people die in car accidents every year. People have always been willing to take some risk for the sake of freedom and a better life.

The lie here is that it's anything other an extremely minor risk for the large majority of people.

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

#326
post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> No, it's not. It's “essential workers”, which....

Not to be impolite, but _I am absolutely correct_.

See here [0] for the detail, on which I quote, "in Phase 1c, persons aged 65–74 years, persons aged 16–64 years with high-risk medical conditions, and essential workers not recommended for vaccination in Phase 1b should be offered vaccine."

Further, if you read the double asterisks note at the bottom of that page, you'll see this, "On December 20, 2020, ACIP voted 13 to 1 in favor of the Phase 1b and 1c allocation recommendations."

Finally, if you look at the chart on the lower half of the page, you will see that _group 1c includes 199 million people_ (32 + 110 + 57 ), which is, after the 75 million people in groups 1a & 1b, darn near everyone.

So if you think I'm wrong, offer proof, not an interpretation. With proof, I'll gladly admit error, but the facts are very clear.

[0] - https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm695152e2.htm?s_cid=...

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

#327

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.

Because zero is magic. If you know your number of cases doubles every week when you aren't locked down, it seems as though it hardly matters what you do right? Five cases, six cases, ten cases, it's going to get out of control no matter.

But if your base is zero then double that is still zero. That's why they've pursued elimination and why it has worked.

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

#328
post #85
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…

> the US's ban of AZ is most glaring People said the same thing about the US's ban on thalidomide until it turned out they were right. In this case I'm ok with a little conservatism on the part of the FDA. The US is already in 4th place on vaccinations per capita, just barely behind the UK, without either of those policies. Copying from my comment below, a bunch of other examples of times when the FDA was right and E…

Completely factual post (with sources) downvoted to oblivion.

Well done HN.

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

#329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A lot of the people claiming to have debilitating "long COVID" were never actually tested positive for COVID in the first place. Do you have a citation for this claim?

I was talking about the innumerable "long COVID" media coverage where some ordinary person is invited to tell the whole story of how they got ill, felt terrible, and still feel terrible, but nowhere did they actually go to the doctor and get a formal positive COVID test. They are just guessing that they had this disease that was going around. And now dedicated Facebook groups etc. are popping up whose membership has…

There is a big difference between "formal positive COVID test" and "just guessing". For the case I mentioned above, tests were effectively unavailable at time of illness. But later on, multiple doctors said that from the symptoms and the follow-on illness, it was probably COVID.

Your insistence on denying distinctions like this makes you look like a person arguing a case, not somebody trying to jointly get at the truth. Which from my perspective, makes you much worse at arguing your case.

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

#330
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…

> lifting lingering vaccine bans (the US's ban of AZ is most glaring)

AstraZeneca vaccine was seeing rejections for a variety of reasons even before the South Africa variant which it doesn't work well against began spreading, and that variant is now in a lot of the US. If that's what you are referring to, whether or not there is a special “ban" on it in the US, I don’t see it as something that makes a lot of sense to add to the mix in the US now.

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