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Delta Variant

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Re: Delta Variant

#231

Post by blindmute »

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 am unvaccinated and probably will remain so for this particular vaccination. I don't truly believe that the risk of the vaccine outweighs the risk of the virus to me. It's more that I weigh the risk of covid at around zero, and the risk of vaccine at a question mark.

I cannot trust the institutions pushing this vaccine at all. At worst, I trust the opposite of what they say about anything politicized. But let's just say I don't trust them. In the absence of a trusted authority, I can only make this decision based on my own research. Unfortunately I am not qualified to interpret the data meaningfully, and I truly believe that if there was data suggesting that the vaccine was equally dangerous to the virus, it would be suppressed.

What remains is essentially a total vacuum of information. I then have to make decisions based on intuition and the error bars I perceive. What I expect is that the publicized covid numbers are better or equal to the reality, and the vaccine danger is worse or equal. The publicized numbers for covid give me essentially a zero risk of any problems, because I am young, fit and healthy. The real numbers are going to be even better. Meanwhile, the vaccine problems don't seem to be fewer for young people, but just kind of random. I also know what to expect from a respiratory virus, because I've had those a number of times. I have no idea what to expect from a MRNA vaccine, whether there could be problems that appear years later, etc, and I cannot trust any authority that says there is no risk.

There is also the aspect of direct action. If I get covid, darn that sucks but people get sick and that's life. If I get some bad side effects from an untrusted injection, I did that to myself and it will feel mentally much worse. All of this is to say, I don't care at all if I get covid, because I'll be fine. I won't inject myself with an untrusted medicine to avoid that.

Re: Delta Variant

#232

Post by mikepurvis »

happyopossum wrote: post #156
mikepurvis wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a fully vaccinated Canadian, and it matters to me because the vaccines are effective against Delta, but seemingly only barely so— and the longer it continues to circulate the better a chance it has of evolving further and then us all having to go into lockdown and wait for another booster shot that specifically targets whatever the new vector is: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/07/3-princip...

> the vaccines are effective against Delta, but seemingly only barely so What data are you looking at? Even the waist pessimistic data - Israel - shows the vaccine working at great effectiveness.

Fair fair, yeah perhaps "barely" is excessively dramatic— this is mostly just going from coverage like that in the Atlantic piece:

> But even against Delta, full vaccination—with a heavy emphasis on full—is effective. Two doses of Pfizer’s vaccine are still 88 percent effective at preventing symptomatic Delta infections, according to a U.K. study, and 96 percent effective at preventing hospitalization. (A single dose, however, is only 33 percent effective at stopping symptomatic infection.)

It's the "still" in there— basically that Pfizer effectiveness was 95% against OG COVID, and now thankfully it's "still" 88% against delta, but much lower than that and we're back to a place where the vaccine alone is not enough, it would only be able to work in conjunction with other measures like limiting contact.

Re: Delta Variant

#233

Post by sgt101 »

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…

I don't understand VDBossche's assertions - he seems to say that there isn't a single case of population level benefit from vaccination campaigns. But we have seen massive benefit from mass vaccination against Polio, Smallpox, Measles, Mumps, Diptheria and many more. This is on a par with arguing that gravity doesn't make things fall down.

It's worth noting that Delta appears to have emerged in India when and where there was very little vaccination - on the other hand there were a truck load of infections. This is how mutations happen; many cases occur... a mutation may appear and if we are unlucky it may spread. The key part for me is the "many cases occur" part - if the pandemic is brought undercontrol in the sense of few cases happening then there will be less mutations.

Re: Delta Variant

#234

Post by oezi »

bamboozled wrote: post #172
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…

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…

I listened to an interview with the head of the German regulatory body overseeing recommendations for vaccinations. He said that we have never seen side effects of all vaccinations beyond 2 to 3 months. Compare with sinuous venous trombosis risk which was uncovered despite being a 1 in 100,000 risk.

Re: Delta Variant

#235

Post by dragontamer »

CPLX wrote: post #4

I have to admit, I'm a little perplexed about all the discussion around the Delta variant. It almost feels like people are discussing this like it's a plot point in a novel, a new looming threat that comes after Act II, rather than a cold scientific fact. As someone who lives in New York and has been vaccinated for months, should I worry about this? It seems like the answer to that question is no, I shouldn't. Also n…

> As someone who lives in New York and has been vaccinated for months, should I worry about this? It seems like the answer to that question is no, I shouldn't.

No, you shouldn't be worried because you're vaccinated and living in an area of the country that's largely vaccinated. (Even if we don't reach herd immunity, 60% or 70% vaccination rates will protect you more than 30% vaccination rates).

On the other hand: Arkansas has a 35% vaccination rate and is already spiking. There are large swaths of this country which have straight up refused to get vaccinated and they're about to get what's coming for them...

The "Delta" storm has arrived on our shores. We've got one last good push (since it takes over a month to get vaccinated) before the Delta wave washes over our country. Its basically inevitable at this point (not even 70% or 80% vaccination rates will prevent the Delta-based pandemic), but we can at least vaccinate as many as possible to help mitigate the damage.

Re: Delta Variant

#236

Post by [deleted] »

shoto_io wrote: post #188
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 still love to share the UK report about the Delta variant from mid of June. Bottom-line: If you’re 2x vaccinated, hospitalization is highly unlikely for Alpha and Delta variants. See this report, page 44 bottom: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

[deleted]

Re: Delta Variant

#237

Post by alok-g »

gentleman11 wrote: post #194

The article ststes that there were 2M Covid deaths in India. Stats I saw yesterday said 400k. By comparison, the USA had 600k

The actual numbers in India are alleged to be an order of magnitude higher than the official numbers. There have been articles like [1] trying to estimate the actual numbers. The OP is likewise citing an article that's saying actual numbers are six times higher. I do not have access to the cited article to say more.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/05/25/world/asia/in...

Re: Delta Variant

#238

Post by timr »

addicted wrote: post #228
timr wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The latest data is even more dramatic: across the UK, the IFR for Delta is ~1/10th that of Alpha, and the "infectiousness" is about the same. https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1413537810296950786 https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... It is quite clear that for a vaccinated population, it isn't a threat. These are facts that simply aren't being reported by the news media. It's unfortunatel…

Except everywhere I see the media is reporting that 99% of infections are amongst the unvaccinated. So they are all clearly reporting this. And the reality is that there are tens of millions of people who are not vaccinated who are extremely susceptible to the Delta variant. It’s not clear to me what point you’re trying to make by insisting that it is significantly less dangerous to the vaccinated that isn’t being ma…

> Except everywhere I see the media is reporting that 99% of infections are amongst the unvaccinated.

Maybe they do this five paragraphs down. I almost never see this mentioned within the same paragraph as the "highly infectious" claim, which is always at the very top of the story.

> It’s not clear to me what point you’re trying to make by insisting that it is significantly less dangerous to the vaccinated that isn’t being made by every news outlet and government agency that I have been following.

Two things:

1) I am not "insisting"...I'm providing data. Nobody should believe me blindly. I am nobody.

2) If you already know these facts, great! Most people don't.

ok, three things:

3) I'm not sure why you're so prickly about the fact that I'm sharing factual information.

Re: Delta Variant

#239

Post by addicted »

addicted wrote: post #228
timr wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The latest data is even more dramatic: across the UK, the IFR for Delta is ~1/10th that of Alpha, and the "infectiousness" is about the same. https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1413537810296950786 https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... It is quite clear that for a vaccinated population, it isn't a threat. These are facts that simply aren't being reported by the news media. It's unfortunatel…

Except everywhere I see the media is reporting that 99% of infections are amongst the unvaccinated. So they are all clearly reporting this. And the reality is that there are tens of millions of people who are not vaccinated who are extremely susceptible to the Delta variant. It’s not clear to me what point you’re trying to make by insisting that it is significantly less dangerous to the vaccinated that isn’t being ma…

Here’s the current top article under latest updates for COVID in the NYTimes.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/07/13/world/covid-variant-...

Besides the headline, here are some other phrases in it pointing out the difference in impact on the vaccinated and unvaccinated.

> the recommendations of health experts, even as the virus’s Delta variant and other mutations fuel outbreaks in areas where vaccination rates are below the national average.

> Public health experts have said that a strong vaccination effort is critical for the United States to outrun the virus

Re: Delta Variant

#240

Post by sokoloff »

addicted wrote: post #228
timr wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The latest data is even more dramatic: across the UK, the IFR for Delta is ~1/10th that of Alpha, and the "infectiousness" is about the same. https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1413537810296950786 https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... It is quite clear that for a vaccinated population, it isn't a threat. These are facts that simply aren't being reported by the news media. It's unfortunatel…

Except everywhere I see the media is reporting that 99% of infections are amongst the unvaccinated. So they are all clearly reporting this. And the reality is that there are tens of millions of people who are not vaccinated who are extremely susceptible to the Delta variant. It’s not clear to me what point you’re trying to make by insisting that it is significantly less dangerous to the vaccinated that isn’t being ma…

When I listen to or read a media report on Delta “sweeping through country XYZ”, it seems to me that the media is breathlessly trying to generate clicks and views.

The (apparent) reality that Delta appears to have a lower IFR and that hospitalization rate for vaccinated people for Alpha or Delta is extremely low do not seem to get the same level of coverage as context for the click/view-generating reporting.

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