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Delta Variant

unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com

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Re: Delta Variant

#81

Post by shkkmo »

raphlinus wrote: post #57

Some counterpoint. A lot of the assertions, particularly the fact that delta is dramatically more transmissible than ancestral type, are reported as fact in the mainstream, but the evidence for this particular claim is thin. It certainly is true that delta is outcompeting the other strains. But inferring higher transmissibility from observational or ecological studies is not really sound. Most of the increases can be…

The evidence cited in the article is not just looking at prevalence graphs, it is a study that looks at within household transmission rates and thus public social distancing and mask wearing would have no effect.

And your [3] source explicitly warns against using their findings to compare infectiousness.

> I don't believe 'infectiousness" is necessarily the ideal term here. B.1.1.7 (Alpha) could be intrinsically more 'infectious' than previous 'non-variant' lineages in circulation (e.g. higher risk of initiating an infection with the same infectious dose of virions). 4/

Re: Delta Variant

#82

Post by idownvoted »

raphlinus wrote: post #57

Some counterpoint. A lot of the assertions, particularly the fact that delta is dramatically more transmissible than ancestral type, are reported as fact in the mainstream, but the evidence for this particular claim is thin. It certainly is true that delta is outcompeting the other strains. But inferring higher transmissibility from observational or ecological studies is not really sound. Most of the increases can be…

> is not really sound

Thomas Pueyo re-iterating the "Indians having to burn the Covid dead"-Lie or removing the Indian-Graph from his fearmongering "Delta-is-rising-rapidly-everywhere" chart - I mean it's not like he's hiding his deceitful intentions or is it?

Here's his same chart with India included: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/biweekly-confirmed-covid-...

Here's his chart with the less fearmongering "per-capita": https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/biweekly-covid-cases-per-...

But surely, Thomas knew very well why he selected the data the way he did.

Re: Delta Variant

#83

Post by GateCrasher »

adventured wrote: post #13
littlestymaar wrote: post #5

> I don’t think people are paying enough attention to Delta In the US probably. In Europe Delta has been followed closely even in mainstream media for at least a month.

In the US the Delta variant has been in the news non-stop for months. Once the vaccines began bringing the pandemic under control here, the Delta variant as the new big risk is what the news media began focusing on heavily. That began shortly after case counts exploded dramatically higher in India and gained coverage the further it spread around the globe.

The Netherlands has a decent vaccination rate (38.5% fully vaccinated, something like 66% has received their first shot). The delta variant is wreaking havoc here. The number of cases went from 500 to 10 000 in 3 weeks... Yes this coincided with very poor decision making on the government side (deciding to open all clubs/bars for people who had a negative tests), but still something to be taken serious.

So far the # of hospitalizations have stayed low, but if the delta variant continues to spread through groups of people who have been reluctant to vaccinate, this might change.

Re: Delta Variant

#84

Post by sauwan »

pattrn wrote: post #78

The author links the following paper as a source for his comments: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3868853 . Unless I'm reading it incorrectly, the mortality rate of the infected, unvaccinated population is 0.5% (131 / 26,632), and the mortality rate in the infected, vaccinated population is 2.5% (33 / 1,410). Does this mean that the vaccine decreases your chance of contracting the virus, but incr…

I'm guessing that vaccinated people get tested at a much lower rate when they're feeling cold like symptoms, so the denominator there is probably significantly reduced.

Re: Delta Variant

#85

Post by programmarchy »

pattrn wrote: post #78

The author links the following paper as a source for his comments: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3868853 . Unless I'm reading it incorrectly, the mortality rate of the infected, unvaccinated population is 0.5% (131 / 26,632), and the mortality rate in the infected, vaccinated population is 2.5% (33 / 1,410). Does this mean that the vaccine decreases your chance of contracting the virus, but incr…

I think you’d need to separate out the populations by age demographics to make that hypothesis because the vaccinated population could be skewed towards older people.

Re: Delta Variant

#87

Post by shkkmo »

dqv wrote: post #65
neogodless wrote: post #59

Hmm @dang this doesn't seem controversial, or shouldn't be. We should be curious about the details of a dangerous strain of a virus, and learn more about it. I'm not sure if this deserves to be "[flagged]" but perhaps I'm missing the bigger picture.

I think it gets that tag after some threshold of flags and then has to be revived. >controversial I would say there is some contention going on in this thread.

I don't see any of the degredation of discussion that usually justifies flagging articles.

Re: Delta Variant

#88

Post by kokey »

raphlinus wrote: post #57

Some counterpoint. A lot of the assertions, particularly the fact that delta is dramatically more transmissible than ancestral type, are reported as fact in the mainstream, but the evidence for this particular claim is thin. It certainly is true that delta is outcompeting the other strains. But inferring higher transmissibility from observational or ecological studies is not really sound. Most of the increases can be…

The article itself leads with the conventional media thinking about Delta, but to me it almost feels like it's a hook to lure in both those who follow or doubt the conventional thinking in order to lead them to develop a better understanding of the actual risks. I very much agree with you about the transmissibility. It's probably not much more transmissible but still enough to out-compete other variants, but there's a lot of other factors that greatly amplify the effective transmission rate. It's interesting the correlation between where the new variants spread and what type of vaccines were deployed there. Immunity against certain variants from past infection and vaccination is going to put pressure on variants to develop in a certain way. We'll probably soon see variants that are more transmissible against the Pfizer vaccine.

Re: Delta Variant

#89

Post by specialp »

specialp wrote: post #77
joosters wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'There are ever present dangers that we just live with like the chances of getting in a car accident and dying' Have you not noticed how we have put a lot of time, effort and money into increasing the safety of road travel? Do you just 'live with' the chance of dying in a car crash, or do you have technology like seat belts and air bags?

Yes and we put a lot of time into making a vaccine. What if I said too many people are dying of car accidents, and they can almost all be completely prevented by lowering speed limits to walking speed. We live with the risk because it is low enough and making everyone travel at extremely low speeds would have a very adverse effect on the economy and quality of life. Safety improvements have been implemented that have…

And not like it should matter but I live in NY where we saw one of the worst spikes of death, am fully vaccinated, had a relative die of COVID, and know others that have. I also posted this early on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22406702 So it isn't like I am nonchalant about the virus. It is just that there is a balance.

Re: Delta Variant

#90

Post by mrmanner »

pattrn wrote: post #78

The author links the following paper as a source for his comments: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3868853 . Unless I'm reading it incorrectly, the mortality rate of the infected, unvaccinated population is 0.5% (131 / 26,632), and the mortality rate in the infected, vaccinated population is 2.5% (33 / 1,410). Does this mean that the vaccine decreases your chance of contracting the virus, but incr…

I read an explanation in another context, that sounded plausible: Mostly people with symptoms get tested, and the vaccines are quite good at preventing symptomatic illness. Thus the share of infected individuals not caught by tests is larger in the vaccinated population, which makes mortality among the vaccinated look worse than it is.

source https://www.ijpr.org/health-and-medicine/2021-05-13/no-the-d...

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