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New Concerning Variant: B.1.1.529

yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com

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Re: New Concerning Variant: B.1.1.529

#381

Post by pbaka »

tempestn wrote: post #326
refurb wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They run clinical trials on them to make sure they are safe and effective. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/vaccines-work/effectivenessqa.htm Manufacturers guess which flu strain will predominate and start working 9-12 months early to capture the data for approval. There is no way a new Covid mRNA vaccine will be approved with safety and efficacy data from a clinical trial. That will be take months to complete.

> There is no way a new Covid mRNA vaccine will be approved with safety and efficacy data from a clinical trial. You meant 'without', right?

tbf to OC, I think he got it right ;-) /s

Re: New Concerning Variant: B.1.1.529

#382

Post by pbaka »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #342
legolas2412 wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you imagination is limited. China has done this precisely. They have kept the virus in check while limiting international travel and while being the world's factory. You open up when enough of your population is vaccinated. I wonder why you feel that it is fine to say "too late" for this measure that obviously works. Do you also say too late to lockdowns, vaccine mandates, restaurant and schools closures, and m…

China is an authoritarian state that can almost anything it wants to do to limit the freedoms of its population. That same tactic won't work in (real) democratic countries, especially after 2 years of lockdowns.

Australia, Austria, Germany, Netherlands entered the chat.

Re: New Concerning Variant: B.1.1.529

#383

Post by sgt »

l33tman wrote: post #92
lokl wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the Johns Hopkins COVID-19 Dashboard, as of now, Sweden has had 15,145 deaths; Norway has had 1,050 deaths; Denmark 2,863; Finland 1,309. With populations from Wikipedia (10,402,070 for Sweden; 5,402,171 for Norway; 5,850,189 for Denmark; 5,536,146 for Finland), this yields deaths per 1,000 people of: Sweden 1.456 Norway 0.194 Denmark 0.489 Finland 0.236 Saying Sweden has "just survived" doesn't capture…

The aggregated over-mortality rate for Sweden at this point puts it in the lower part among the EU, at place 21 of 31 compared countries IIRC. The covid-related death-count at 15000 has been more or less constant since May even while it's surging now in the other countries. Besides, people keep comparing Sweden to Norway, Denmark and Finland, which is a bad comparison as the demographies are very different.

That's a bizarre statement. Sweden is almost directly comparable to Norway and Denmark at the very least. Finland too.

Re: New Concerning Variant: B.1.1.529

#384

Post by dot1x »

The Presidential COVID-19 Task Force in Botswana informs that the new variant was first found in 4 fully jabbed travelers. Good to know the "worst variant ever" (as it has been labeled by MSM) is NOT a pandemic of the unvakzeenated.

Re: New Concerning Variant: B.1.1.529

#385

Post by sbierwagen »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #342
legolas2412 wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you imagination is limited. China has done this precisely. They have kept the virus in check while limiting international travel and while being the world's factory. You open up when enough of your population is vaccinated. I wonder why you feel that it is fine to say "too late" for this measure that obviously works. Do you also say too late to lockdowns, vaccine mandates, restaurant and schools closures, and m…

China is an authoritarian state that can almost anything it wants to do to limit the freedoms of its population. That same tactic won't work in (real) democratic countries, especially after 2 years of lockdowns.

New Zealand has a 14 day quarantine for international travelers: https://www.immigration.govt.nz/about-us/covid-19/border-clo...

Is New Zealand an authoritarian state?

Re: New Concerning Variant: B.1.1.529

#386

Post by Wowfunhappy »

Terretta wrote: post #354
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And who doesn’t wear an N95 class mask? I see about 2/3rds N95, KN95, or KF94s, 1/3 useless masks, appearing to be mostly correlated along economic lines ($2/masks vs. $0.50/masks). I can't comment on the rest of the science, but fwiw, I live in NYC and I'd estimate that maybe 1 / 20 people I see on the street are wearing N95/KN95/KF94 masks. Everyone else just wears cloth masks, or paper surgical masks.

Sorry, yes, you’re right, it follows that there would be areas with 1/20 as you describe.

I mean, I’m talking everywhere I go, throughout Manhattan and northern Brooklyn (haven’t been to the other burrows in a long time). Lots of very affluent areas.

Re: New Concerning Variant: B.1.1.529

#387

Post by ricardobeat »

kyrra wrote: post #315
ricardobeat wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The recent Bangladesh study with 350k people found a ~10% reduction in cases, from only 40% mask adoption. The two-cities trial early in 2020 in Germany saw a ~20% reduction. Those are in the number of infections - the number looks low but can make a massive difference in the actual transmission rate. In the German case, after a month infections dropped close to zero.

That study is flawed in many ways. And one thing to point out, if you do take the study at face value, cloth mask do virtually nothing, only surgical masks did something ( AKA the intervention group). The study was not blind, so the intervention group (those that wore surgical masks and showed the large efficacy increase) we're paid money to be part of the group. The non-intervention groups (cloth and control) did no…

I'm pretty sure the cloth masks debacle was settled sometime around Q1 2020, a year and a half ago. Anyone arguing about this needs to find a better hobby. They've been not recommended, or explicitly banned from airlines and other places, for a long time. They just confirmed this in a very rigorous controlled study.

> were paid money to be part of the group

That's simply not true. This is the document describing the intervention to raise mask usage: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mgY6k5SooeMt6PIqwx-7z5LZ...

It says they tested monetary & non-monetary incentives, but if you look at the execution table, it's all "Public Reinforcement". The conclusion was that Nudges and incentives outside of the core NORM [1] intervention had no effect on mask-wearing..

> Recording of masking was done via people observing mask wearing

This is good. It means they observed the overall effect on the entire population. Some previous studies relied on self-reporting which is not as reliable.

> Only around 30 to 40% of cases were actually verified via a test.

You can't force people to take a test. But the rate of positives within the ones that agreed to collection was similar to the overall self-reported one. The study goes into this at length. There is a whole section trying out a different approach where they assign the average soropositivity to non-consenters, instead of excluding them, and that makes the results even stronger.

> The education that came with the intervention group may have caused the older population to stop going out as much, which impacted the result.

That sounds like a very random hypothesis. I can come up with another dozen of these. Maybe it rained more? Too cold? Maybe there was a soap opera on, that 60 year olds love to watch? You'd think a dozen scientists from Yale, Stanford, Berkeley, John Hopkins & others would find a way to control studies for external factors... if it was this easy to challenge results you could do it for basically every paper ever published.

The paper is available for free here: https://www.poverty-action.org/sites/default/files/publicati...

[1] no cost, offering, reinforcing, modelling

Re: New Concerning Variant: B.1.1.529

#388

Post by atoav »

dot1x wrote: post #384

The Presidential COVID-19 Task Force in Botswana informs that the new variant was first found in 4 fully jabbed travelers. Good to know the "worst variant ever" (as it has been labeled by MSM) is NOT a pandemic of the unvakzeenated.

I think the term "pandemic of the unvaccinated" is commonly misunderstood.

What most people think it means is a pandemic that only ravages and evolves among the unvaccinated. This is not what it means however.

What "pandemic of the unvaccinated" means instead is that the unvaccinated population is the key driver for the ongoing spread of the virus. The pandemic however will still infect all people be carried around by all people and evolve in all people. The unvaccinated are just the fuel that starts the fire. If you vaccinate everybody quick and early you can have it like e.g. Israel.

Re: New Concerning Variant: B.1.1.529

#389

Post by Niksko »

blindmute wrote: post #327
Niksko wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you live in a 100% isolated, self sufficient community, your number will be called eventually. If that's the tradeoff you want to make then enjoy your life. But bragging about your life being the same as it was 3 years ago isn't the brag you think it is. Meanwhile, everyone else is living 90% of the life they were 3 years ago, but they'll continue that for a long and healthy life.

I don't think my number will be called. In the US, the hysteria is already fading even in the most liberal areas. In certain states like SC and FL, the people have pretty much decided that the pandemic is over. I really don't foresee this flipping back to lockdown in those areas. Self sufficiency is a virtue, one that I have been cultivating long before any of this happened; owning land and knowing how to use it make…

That's fair, if you're really that isolated then fair enough. Self sufficiency is great if you're able to achieve it, I commend you for that. My point is merely that the behaviours you describe (not wearing a mask, not being vaccinated) are counter to the self-sufficiency you're so fond of. Being that self sufficient sounds like something you wouldn't want to lose because you happened to catch COVID from your irregular contact with the rest of civilization.

Re: New Concerning Variant: B.1.1.529

#390

Post by hnarn »

splittingTimes wrote: post #13

For a fully waxed person, Would it make sense to try to get infected by Delta to build more immunity to fight off that omicron thing? With so many significant variations on the spike protein the vaccines will be no help..

> Would it make sense to try to get infected

No. Never.

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