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Delta Variant

unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com

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Re: Delta Variant

#211

Post by bamboozled »

timr wrote: post #198
bamboozled wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It certainly feels like hangover from the Trump times, and yes, it's insanely political and quite hysterical. Now, people overcompensate, if there is any questioning or hesitancy to take the vaccine, ask questions about origins etc you might be a...Trump guy, or a nut and so you need to be told by the Non-Trump guys what' up, by being downed. It's Kind of like Post-Trum-Stress-Disorder, PTSD. It's really quite fascin…

It's unfortunately pretty common for people adopt an "opposite of what That Guy said" stance on any particular issue. Obviously, taking a position that is the opposite of an illogical person makes you just as illogical, but it's much easier than thinking.

It also feels nice to be part of the "smart crowd".

Also, let's face it, no one likes to lose karma :)

Re: Delta Variant

#212

Post by aeternum »

murgindrag wrote: post #189
aeternum wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many reasons people choose not to get the vaccine. What evidence do you have that the main issue is a distrust of authority? The main authority on this, the FDA has not even officially approved the vaccine and likely won't for quite awhile. For some people it is logical to ask why other vaccines require 10year+ trials and for this a few months was sufficient. While personally, I think the risk of the virus…

Anecdotally, my experience is that the main reason is distrust of authority. It's usually warranted distrust too. Authorities aren't trustworthy. To answer your question: (1) Most vaccines don't have 10+ year trials. A year is not even the fastest; the flu on 1957-1958 has a vaccine developed in 4 months. (2) Most medical trials are slower since everything is done sequentially, since there is no rush. You can do an a…

I meant to say risk of virus greatly outweighs the risk of the vaccine. But I still disagree that we should force that choice on everyone.

1) Did that 1957-58 vaccine use existing tech? My understanding is that other RNA vaccines and therapies were already under FDA trials with ~10 year time-frames since the method is new.

2) Why is sequential better, because it is considered safer?

3) Yes, short-term we know it is extremely safe. But there are zero people that have had the vaccine much over 1 year. Long-term effects are unlikely but it's just not scientifically correct to say that this vaccine is better studied than any other just because of the number of doses administered. Duration matters a lot.

Re: Delta Variant

#214

Post by bamboozled »

OzyM wrote: post #210
bamboozled wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you can still infect other people? It's a non-sterilizing vaccine?

Non-sterilizing vaccines still reduce viral load, decreasing the amount of active viral particles in circulation. There are plenty of vaccines we use to curb epidemics that aren't full sterilizing vaccines. For the COVID-19 U.S. vaccines in particular: > Preliminary data from the clinical trials among adults ≥18 years old suggest COVID-19 vaccination may also protect against asymptomatic infection.[0] [0] https://www…

Cool, so if everyone else takes it, I won't really need to and I'll likely be safe?

Everyone seems absolutely hell bent on taking it immediately, so if that's the case, it's pretty good news for those who'd like some more time to evaluate.

Re: Delta Variant

#215

Post by blindmute »

motohagiography wrote: post #155
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 hate having to be skeptical of this stuff, because the consequences of skeptics being accurate are even more horrifying than the pandemic. This is so challenging because when you look at each number he uses, and then compare it to its base rate, you can see why hesitancy levels are 30-50% in regions of developed countries. If you are among that cohort of people in your region who are not vaccinated, should you get…

Great idea, just comply with evil so you can maybe fight it later. But right now, be sure to comply.

Re: Delta Variant

#216

Post by Leary »

tpoacher wrote: post #145

I honestly don't know how to feel about Tomas Pueyo. He's very opinionated about what he writes, and has gained good readership and influencer status on this topic. It's clear in his writings that he fancies himself as an "amateur of expert insight". He may be 100% correct. He may also be 100% wrong. It's hard to tell (let alone without invoking the conditional fallacy). However, the most lasting impression I have of…

This was the epidemiologist who suggested Herd Immunity as a strategy for the UK?

Then regardless of how weakly he presented himself on TV, Pueyo was more right than that epidemiologist who civilly advocated for a policy that would've killed hundreds of thousands.

Re: Delta Variant

#217

Post by jackmodern »

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…

death rate won't spike until the fall when there is less sun and less vitamin D in people's blood to prevent severe covid.

Re: Delta Variant

#218

Post by skadamou »

Without debating the whole article, I found this one excerpt to be somewhat indicative of his writing more broadly:

"Unfortunately, I turned out to be right. The short explanation is that the viruses that tend to win do so because they reproduce faster. Such a virus will grow faster inside a person, and will make that person more infectious, faster. It will also kill that person faster."

This is a fairly vague statement with broad implications (and a pinch of hubris) supported with insufficient evidence. I appreciate that he is trying to simplify a complex issue into lay-mens terms but I worry that writing like this only adds fodder to the anti-science movement because it is full of quasi-truths.

Re: Delta Variant

#219

Post by bamboozled »

aeternum wrote: post #192
bamboozled wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for writing this, I'm still on the fence about taking it for this reason, it was rushed and the longer term implications are certainly still not fully understood. Edit: Again with the downvotes, it's a fact . No one has had this vaccine for 3,5 or 10 years. The long term effects cannot be fully understood until such time has lapsed and studies have been completed. Here, the creator of mRNA vaccines discusses t…

Here's the thing to consider though: The vaccine codes only for the spike proteins of the virus. You can look up the RNA strands within the vaccines and their translation to protein, it's a relatively short segment of RNA. RNA has a very short lifetime itself. If you do get exposed to Covid, your cells will be exposed to those very same spike proteins and more. Thus the vaccine should theoretically be much safer than…

Yeah, it's pretty well covered in the link I posted, and there is more data too.

Re: Delta Variant

#220

Post by derbOac »

bvaldivielso wrote: post #54
pier25 wrote: post #41

These new variants were to be expected as the vaccines seem to be accelerating these mutations. My understanding is that the COVID vaccines train the body to recognize the outer protein layer of the virus. In consequence when that changes (because of mutations and natural selection) the body becomes less effective at recognizing the virus. Geert Vanden Bossche[1] has been warning about this for months now. He says it…

As far as I understand (I don't have any background in biology), mutations will happen regardless of whether people are vaccinated or not. There might be mutations that make the virus circumvent some vaccine protections, but those mutations would take place even if we weren't vaccinating people. Nothing about the vaccines "guides" the virus towards specific mutations. Mutations are random. If this is correct, why wou…

It's not so much that vaccination is iatrogenic, it's that when you have a sizable percent vaccinated, but a sizable percent not, you're kind of in this worst of all possible worlds from an evolutionary standpoint.

If worldwide vaccination rates were very high, it would drive viral transmission down to negligible levels and effectively slow the rate of evolution by decreasing the viral population size to something very small.

If there were no vaccine, we'd be back where we were, but there would be no vaccine to evolve against as a selection pressure.

When you have, say, 50% vaccination, you have a sizable population to evolve in, and the vaccine as a pressure selecting random mutations.

If the vaccine is very effective in preventing asymptomatic transmission as well as symptomatic infection, it might not be such an issue. This might be why the delta variant seems to not be doing much in vaccinated individuals. But it seems vaccinated individuals do still transmit the virus asymptomatically at some nonnegligble rate, and then you have a sizable nonvaccinated population.

What I'm worried about now isn't so much the current state of the delta variant, it's where things are headed. Specifically, how this evolves in (1) the unvaccinated populations, and (2) what the future might hold for vaccine resistance in the future.

It's one reason I'm sort of angry with the FDA for playing this power game about approving a booster vaccine. It's not their job to evaluate the need for the booster, it's their job to evaluate the safety and efficacy of it. By the time they change their minds about need, it might be too late.

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