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Delta Variant

unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com

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Re: Delta Variant

#101

Post by jibbit »

polygotdomain wrote: post #93
adventured wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I recognize that the Delta variant is serious topic for much of the world, but as a vaccinated person in the US it feels more like media hysteria than anything else. As the article states, for vaccinated people, the risk is low and the Delta variant is likely of little concern, especially when cases are as low as they've been since the start of the pandemic here in the US. However, it seems that the media is pushing…

As a vaccinated person - the risk of dying is quite low. That isn't the only criteria i use to decide if something should concern me.

Re: Delta Variant

#102

Post by babyblueblanket »

davnn wrote: post #99
usrusr wrote: post #32

Is seems kind of logical in hindsight: the first mutation of the predecessor bat/pangolin/whatever virus genome to cross over to humans is an MVP full of "compatibility bugs" that barely achieves R0>1. A few billion dicerolls later many of those "compatibility bugs" have found fixes. Remember the hand washing phase of the pandemic? Aerosol transmission was basically ruled out because it was assumed that spread would…

> full of "compatibility bugs" that barely achieves R0>1 Did I miss something? COVID-19 was highly contagious from the beginning, thus the drastic measures, or not?

It is highly contagious. But not as much as say, the measles.

Re: Delta Variant

#103

Post by fredros »

GateCrasher wrote: post #83
adventured wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 #…

> wreaking havoc

VS

> the # of hospitalizations have stayed low

Who shall I believe?

Re: Delta Variant

#104

Post by dragontamer »

babyblueblanket wrote: post #102
davnn wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> full of "compatibility bugs" that barely achieves R0>1 Did I miss something? COVID-19 was highly contagious from the beginning, thus the drastic measures, or not?

It is highly contagious. But not as much as say, the measles.

COVID19's main issue is that it takes anywhere from 5 to 14 days before you feel symptoms. During this window, it looks like you're still spreading COVID19 around.

Therefore: traditional means of preventing spread (ie: staying home from work and/or school) are ineffective. Measles or Ebola (or plenty of other diseases) have a much smaller window of spreading (because you feel sick sooner).

Re: Delta Variant

#105

Post by ginko »

tremon wrote: post #98
franciscop wrote: post #72

The article purposefully conflates numbers to tell a narrative. I am talking only about EU, and at that southern EU which is where I've been following the numbers closely. Delta variant has been acting for up to 1 month in some regions, and as described in the article yes cases are up very quickly. However, the article says: > COVID deaths [...] And if you think Europe or the US will be spared This is not reflected a…

and we are past the potential 2-week delay from cases to deaths Not everywhere. See here, for example: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/netherland... The Netherlands went from 550 cases/day at the end of June to 10,000 cases/day now. The Delta variant took less than two weeks to spread as much as the EU variant did in two months (Sep 1st - Nov 1st). Of course, it was helped a lot by the government de…

Still, the UK is quite a bit into the delta wave and the number of deaths have barely budged: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/

Re: Delta Variant

#106

Post by mediaman »

franciscop wrote: post #72

The article purposefully conflates numbers to tell a narrative. I am talking only about EU, and at that southern EU which is where I've been following the numbers closely. Delta variant has been acting for up to 1 month in some regions, and as described in the article yes cases are up very quickly. However, the article says: > COVID deaths [...] And if you think Europe or the US will be spared This is not reflected a…

I'm not sure how you assess that he is conflating numbers to tell a narrative. Pueyo discusses fatality rates in the article, specifically that the vaccines appear to still be highly effective at preventing deaths (though much less so for infections) and that countries with high vaccination rates are not seeing high death rates even when infections are growing.

The only area where he says deaths are getting worse are for the unvaccinated: that fatality rates may be significantly higher for unvaccinated individuals due to a faster replication rate of the virus and therefore a much higher viral load.

Re: Delta Variant

#107

Post by selectodude »

jibbit wrote: post #101
polygotdomain wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recognize that the Delta variant is serious topic for much of the world, but as a vaccinated person in the US it feels more like media hysteria than anything else. As the article states, for vaccinated people, the risk is low and the Delta variant is likely of little concern, especially when cases are as low as they've been since the start of the pandemic here in the US. However, it seems that the media is pushing…

As a vaccinated person - the risk of dying is quite low. That isn't the only criteria i use to decide if something should concern me.

As a vaccinated person, I've never really paid much thought to other diseases that could make me, at worst, mildly ill. One may have to enlighten me as to why this one should be different from, say, influenza in my day to day activities at this point.

Re: Delta Variant

#108

Post by polygotdomain »

modmans2nd wrote: post #95
polygotdomain wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recognize that the Delta variant is serious topic for much of the world, but as a vaccinated person in the US it feels more like media hysteria than anything else. As the article states, for vaccinated people, the risk is low and the Delta variant is likely of little concern, especially when cases are as low as they've been since the start of the pandemic here in the US. However, it seems that the media is pushing…

The difference between 95% protective and 88% is more significant than you think if you live in a low vaccinated area. The more exposure to the virus you have the more likely it is you will get infected. It’s the spread we need to concern ourselves with, not just personal protection.

To level set, my comments were mainly targeted at the US coverage of the Delta variant where the vaccination rates are largely due to choice rather than accessibility.

>The difference between 95% protective and 88% is more significant than you think if you live in a low vaccinated area.

..but if I live in a low vaccinated area, the only thing that will help me after getting vaccinated is other people getting vaccinated. Also, the 88% effective rate of the mRNA vaccines against the delta variant is still significantly higher than the non-mRNA vaccines like Astrazeneca against the primary strain. Is 95% better than 88%, sure, but as far as vaccines go 88% is still very effective. The FDA was originally targeting 50-65% effectiveness in their initial approval guidelines.

>It’s the spread we need to concern ourselves with, not just personal protection.

Those two concepts are interlinked. If people are not concerned with personal protection, then it's highly unlikely that they will be concerned about the spread. The best thing to minimize the spread and protect yourself is to get the vaccine. It's that straightforward.

>The more exposure to the virus you have the more likely it is you will get infected

This is the same for everything, not just Covid. As I mentioned, the numbers in the US are very low, so my chance of exposure is already low. In a nation of 330 million people the total number of cases over the last week can fit in a football stadium. In regards to the exposure risk in the US it's fairly minimal.

Re: Delta Variant

#109

Post by selectodude »

Unklejoe wrote: post #58
colincooke wrote: post #35

I will say that on the vaccine front the data provided by Israel seems to be the worst results of the bunch, and while we can't completely rule out their results there is a good chance it's an underestimate of efficacy. Here are some efficacy estimates against Delta from other sources: https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1414254993536786433 Highlights are (symtoms/hospitilization): - Phizer: 79-88%/96% - Moderna (on…

Are you aware of any results for the J&J shot? That's the one I got but it always seems to be left out.

Here you go, straight from the horses mouth. Take that as you will.

"A preprint submitted by the Company today to bioRxiv contains a new analysis from blood samples obtained from a subset of participants (n=8) in the Phase 3 ENSEMBLE study. These data showed that the Johnson & Johnson single-shot COVID-19 vaccine elicited neutralizing antibody activity against the Delta variant at an even higher level than what was recently observed for the Beta (B.1.351) variant in South Africa where high efficacy against severe/critical disease was demonstrated."

https://www.jnj.com/positive-new-data-for-johnson-johnson-si...

Re: Delta Variant

#110

Post by dqv »

neogodless wrote: post #79
dqv wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is a complex problem. The original post seems to be a collection of facts and information about a thing. The thread should have some discussion about what to do with this information, but of course there has been politicization of issues like this (bizarrely, since I'm not sure who benefits from the disinformation!) But in this case, the flags have the effect of just hiding an informational article, which may be…

This is just how it works on HN. It's not the first time an informative article has been flagged and it won't be the last.

All kinds of articles get flagged. You have to check in on /newcomments to find interesting discussions.

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