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Neutralizing antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 variants after infection, vaccination

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191–200 of 267 posts

Re: Neutralizing antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 variants after infection, vaccination

#191
post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lockdowns were just meant to be for two weeks to “flatten the curve”, remember?

Who ever said 2 weeks? They serve the exact same role they did at the start. If we'd open stadiums now the exact same thing will happen, that happened 1 year ago. Lockdowns will continue until we either reach herd immunity naturally or through vaccines or we have a treatment/mitigation for the disease.

Every offical that was selling the initial lockdown. Just have to get the R0 below 1, remember? You really think the masses would have been OK with a year of lockdowns and the despair that entails up front?

Your conclusions don't match reality. States like Florida have open stadiums and are fairing the same as states like California that insist on totalitarian overreach.

Re: Neutralizing antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 variants after infection, vaccination

#192
post #149
post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why? Why would any government want to justify longer than needed lockdowns?

Rather then some government conspiracy , I think it's easily explained by media pushing fear to get clicks, leading to people supporting unnecessary measures. I still talk to people who are afraid to even do outdoor dining after they have gotten their second dose (plus 2 weeks incubation). People like that vote, post, and message their representatives, leading to where we are now.

Media is funded by advertisers, the same advertiser that would greatly benefit from the pandemic ending. Zoom and Slack are probably the only stocks that directly benefit in the current situation and I don’t see any ads for them anywhere. Cruise lines are on the other hand huge advertisers and are suffering severely right now. Why would they want the media to keep causing mass hysteria? And if the government is opposed to the media on this, why would they issue health guidelines that say we should isolate?

Re: Neutralizing antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 variants after infection, vaccination

#193
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is something for you to consider: this is the new 'normal'. That world you lived in 18 months ago? Gone. Not coming back. There is no 'end point', it just goes on and we learn to adapt. Eventually we get better at it, learn more about what is and is not a risk, and a few things start to look like the 2019, but most things don't go back. This is the reality you need to adjust to.

Why are you saying this with such an absolute certainty without providing a convincing argument?

I am not saying it is certain, but there is a distinct class of people who expect everything to go back to the way it was and to do so immediately. They need to consider the possibility that things might _never_ return to the way they were. It is possible that all of the vaccines will work better than we expect and covid-19 will become a mostly-controlled intermittent disease that eventually becomes background noise like influenza (still a killer, but almost a part of the landscape), but it is equally possible that it takes more work for a longer period to get it under control.

The person I was responding to was demanding an 'end point to all of this' and I was suggesting that maybe there isn't one. I don't need to provide proof, only to show that it is possible and the request for some sort of definitive planned end to all of the containment and mitigation work is an unreasonable and childish demand.

Re: Neutralizing antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 variants after infection, vaccination

#194

We've been vaccinating people since December. There ought to be statistical evidence now of whether and how much vaccinated people still get sick from Covid and its variants. Why do we still hear that epidemiologists have no idea about this? For example, everyone being tested for covid or being admitted to the hospital for covid, should be asked if they've been vaccinated, when, and which vaccination. 70 million peop…

There ought to be statistical evidence now of whether and how much vaccinated people still get sick from Covid and its variants. Why do we still hear that epidemiologists have no idea about this?

How much energy do you want to put into tracking so that you can draw better conclusions?

We have good evidence that people don't become symptomatic, because that is easy to track. But we haven't generally been constantly testing to see how many caught it and fought it off. Or how many could have spread it to unvaccinated people while they were asymptomatic. Which are both very useful for epidemiologists to know for modeling purposes.

Re: Neutralizing antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 variants after infection, vaccination

#195
post #14

This is good news. Now maybe Fauci should rethink his idea that people need to wear their masks for another year even after getting vaccinated. One of his reasons was because of worry about the variants.

Wearing masks have benefits beyond covid. Think about how many lives per year we could save from the flu let alone other airborne respiratory viruses if mask wearing was normalized.

It has been both enlightening and pleasant to not have caught any symptom-causing diseases in the past 12 months. Unknown whether mask wearing played a part of course.

Re: Neutralizing antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 variants after infection, vaccination

#196
post #14

This is good news. Now maybe Fauci should rethink his idea that people need to wear their masks for another year even after getting vaccinated. One of his reasons was because of worry about the variants.

He's mostly just managing expectations. One problem starting to trouble public health professionals is the wish of vaccinated people to ditch masks even before enough people are vaccinated to reach herd immunity: since it is not easily visible if someone is vaccinated (and even then...) the appearance of more and more unmasked people in stores etc. could lead to a breakdown in adherence. There will come a time, in ea…

Also people lie about things such as whether they're vaccinated.

Re: Neutralizing antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 variants after infection, vaccination

#197
post #7

A January 2021 study in the annals of internal medicine estimating the death rates of non institutionalized patients of .26 percent with age breakdowns . https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-5352?utm_source=...

That seems pretty low compared to what is happening here in Belgium. We are at 22k deaths with +/- 25% of a 11M of the population having been infected (based on serology and statistical estimates).

Seems low compared to New York City as well. NYC has already had 30,564 deaths. Even if the whole population had already been infected, that would put the death rate at around 0.36%

Antibody surveys suggest around 40% have been infected which puts the death rate around 0.91%

Re: Neutralizing antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 variants after infection, vaccination

#198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These anecdotes are useful to remind us that many covid survivors still suffer from its damage. The data doesn't quantify these things yet , so cynical people, maybe people especially like you, might do well to pay them attention. Just because you're unlikely to die from covid, doesn't mean you won't be part of the 10% who retain symptoms past 3 months. It's not a binary outcome.

"Of these, the vast majority (>99.9%) resolve with no major sequelae." Citation needed. > 99.9% is an extraordinary number and probably needs extraordinary support.

"99.9%" is usually what you see when people are talking about the numbers of people in their whole population who haven't died from it yet. I appreciate the problems in test data when talking about case-mortality, but population-mortality is utter nonsense.

Not to mention that in many places the whole population-mortality is now more than 0.1%. 0.2% of the UK has died from Covid. A few places are worse than that, and many places are on a trajectory for 1% if they can't control it.

Re: Neutralizing antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 variants after infection, vaccination

#199
post #149
post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why? Why would any government want to justify longer than needed lockdowns?

Rather then some government conspiracy , I think it's easily explained by media pushing fear to get clicks, leading to people supporting unnecessary measures. I still talk to people who are afraid to even do outdoor dining after they have gotten their second dose (plus 2 weeks incubation). People like that vote, post, and message their representatives, leading to where we are now.

I can likewise draft a theory that media is pushing a narrative of 'the lockdowns are unnecessary, your government is cheating you' in order to stir up controversy and get clicks.

Both your, and my theories hav little predictive or explanatory power.

And if we're dealing with anecdotes, I can also cite that I know people who were not afraid to be going to crowded bars (Check out central California, if you want to see people flouting lockdown, and spending their stimulus checks on partying in, say, Modesto) over the past ~year, despite not being vaccinated. Do you think those people may have been influenced by the media pushing a narrative that lockdowns are unnecessary?

Here's the actual answer to this dilemma. 'The media' is pushing both narratives. You are just paying more attention to one of them, because that's the one you happen to disagree with. There are very few issues where 'the media' boogieman presents a unified front, and COVID-19 has not been one of them.

Re: Neutralizing antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 variants after infection, vaccination

#200
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I can pass on what I’ve learned in the past 12 months as a newly minted virus enthusiast whose peak education in the area was human physiology 101: “In vitro” means testing outside of the human body. Just because a result is confirmed in vitro does not mean it will be replicated when tested “in vivo” (in the actual human).

In vitro literally means “In glass” (like in a test tube). In vivo means “in life” (like IRL)

Strictly speaking, in vivo means "in a living [organism]"; "in life" would be in vita (not a term used for a kind of test).

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/vivus#Latin

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/vita#Latin

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