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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

#421

Post by angelzen »

timr wrote: post #369
Terretta wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet, it’s been done: In a First, Randomized Study Shows That Masks Reduce COVID-19 Infections A large study co-authored by Yale SOM’s Jason Abaluck and Mushfiq Mobarak tested the effectiveness of a mask-promotion program in Bangladesh in increasing mask use and preventing symptomatic infections. The study found that masks significantly lower symptomatic infections, especially among older people and when surgical…

That's literally the study this thread is talking about. It's great that they did it -- it should have been done in early 2020, all over the world. We should have dozens of other studies just like it. The fact that we don't is an indication of how hard it's been to pursue any sort of science in this area. Almost nobody funds it, you can't get it published if it doesn't fit the public health narrative, and even if you…

Make that zero. To their credit, the authors of the Bangladesh mask study released the raw data. "The difference between the two groups was small: only 20 cases out of over 340,000 individuals over a span of 8 weeks." Drawing any conclusions from such small amount of data is deeply unserious.

http://www.argmin.net/2021/11/23/mask-rct-revisited

Re: New Concerning Variant: B.1.1.529

#422

Post by righttoolforjob »

legolas2412 wrote: post #325
righttoolforjob wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) It's too late (for this variant). So you can't act reactively. 2) When would you ever open then (since you need a proactive approach)? 3) How would trade look? I can't think of a single way of halting a contagious virus between countries that wouldn't completely shut us down as a race. The cost to humanity would be beyond imagination. Perhaps on the order of 100x-1000x that of corona.

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 has done this precisely. They have kept the virus in check

According to their government...

> for this measure that obviously works

it obviously isn't since the various variations of the virus are spreading

Re: New Concerning Variant: B.1.1.529

#423

Post by righttoolforjob »

sbierwagen wrote: post #385
stjohnswarts wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

New Zealand has cases, so what exactly is your point? The initial argument is that locking borders could prevent the spread of a highly contagious virus into a country. It cannot.

Re: New Concerning Variant: B.1.1.529

#424

Post by tsol »

ed_balls wrote: post #336
biophysboy wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is closer to my area, you're basically right. Viruses copy a lot in immunocompromised people for a long time. Lots of copying is all ya need to make variants.

Since immunocompromised people haven't "produced" super flu variant so far, is it safe to assuming we won't have it with Covid? I may spread faster, but won't be more deadly.

The general tendency is for viruses to become less deadly with increasing mutations. Highly deadly strains kill too quickly to spread well, whereas the common cold kills relatively few but hangs around long enough to keep moving from person to person.

Viruses dont "care" to kill people, viruses only "want" to spread. That's what drives a viruses growth

Re: New Concerning Variant: B.1.1.529

#425

Post by ed_balls »

tsol wrote: post #424
ed_balls wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since immunocompromised people haven't "produced" super flu variant so far, is it safe to assuming we won't have it with Covid? I may spread faster, but won't be more deadly.

The general tendency is for viruses to become less deadly with increasing mutations. Highly deadly strains kill too quickly to spread well, whereas the common cold kills relatively few but hangs around long enough to keep moving from person to person. Viruses dont "care" to kill people, viruses only "want" to spread. That's what drives a viruses growth

That is not true for Covid. It's an upper respiratory virus which infects others before causing symptoms. It's possible to develop a variant that spreads, but kills everybody (highly unlikely in practice). There is no strong evolutionary pressure like in case of SARS-COV-1

Re: New Concerning Variant: B.1.1.529

#426

Post by headmelted »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #362
timr wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's too much uncertainty and I don't know how to quantify and otherwise address risk from stranger You know what would help with this? A randomized controlled trial. This isn't tricky at all, except that we can't do the science because it has become political , because people insist that they know the answer already! And if the study shows what they don't want to see, then they censor it, bury it, downvote it i…

> Also, are you vaccinated? Yes? Then the answer is almost certainly no risk at all. As of the week before last, 28% of all hospitalizations in my state (NM) related to COVID19 involved fully vaccinated people.

Isn’t this statistic in itself a little misleading though? Given that so many people are vaccinated now, the proportion of hospitalizations would be expected to trend higher in that group as the pool of unvaccinated people is shrinking at the same time.

Also, the eldest people (largely those most at risk of hospitalisation) are substantially more likely to have been vaccinated already, no?

Re: New Concerning Variant: B.1.1.529

#427

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

headmelted wrote: post #426
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, are you vaccinated? Yes? Then the answer is almost certainly no risk at all. As of the week before last, 28% of all hospitalizations in my state (NM) related to COVID19 involved fully vaccinated people.

Isn’t this statistic in itself a little misleading though? Given that so many people are vaccinated now, the proportion of hospitalizations would be expected to trend higher in that group as the pool of unvaccinated people is shrinking at the same time. Also, the eldest people (largely those most at risk of hospitalisation) are substantially more likely to have been vaccinated already, no?

In the context of the claim that, once vaccinated, you are in "no risk at all" for symptomatic COVID19, I don't think it's misleading: significant numbers of fully vaccinated individuals can and do become sick with the disease. Ergo, even when fully vaccinated, you still face some risk.

None of this is an argument against vaccination, of course.

Re: New Concerning Variant: B.1.1.529

#428

Post by tldrthelaw »

spookthesunset wrote: post #322
tldrthelaw wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do have another choice, continuing to buy time to add to the arsenal of weapons we have against the virus. Things are only simple when you frame the issue simply; reality is complicated. You need only imagine yourself flickering out to see the value in doing what you can to keep someone from the same fate. We are all alive in our heads just like you are in yours.

You are free to live that existence all you want but that is your own personal risk assessment. Vaccines were the end of the game for governments being able to dictate our own risk assessments. There is literally nothing else we can do besides vaccines and treatments. To suggest it is totally cool to play this game 2 years into this requires an awful lot of privilege.

Just repeating that something is "the end game" doesn't make it so. That isn't how public health works.

There is no certain amount of privilege required to "play this game" for 2 years than 1 year, or 1 month. You're setting up arbitrary lines in the sand and pretending they're laws of nature or maybe government.

I understand 2 years is as long as you want to wait, but we're all doing things we don't want to be doing. Such is the cost of living in a society.

Re: New Concerning Variant: B.1.1.529

#429

Post by kyrra »

ricardobeat wrote: post #387
kyrra wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Cloth Masks: I think you're wrong here? Per the CDC[0] (which all airlines seem to link to), it says:

> Cloth masks should be made with two or more layers of a breathable fabric that is tightly woven (i.e., fabrics that do not let light pass through when held up to a light source).

So cloth masks are allowed. Also, this is an issue that I agree has been settled for a while, but the media/political effort to push it has been minimal, it's always "mask up", without going into the details, which can be very important.

Intervention & Money: The doc you link just says they tried different approaches, but don't seem to details the differences with the different motivational types. It's not clear to me from what I saw that they really dived into this. And when there are any kind of rewards (ie: not blind), you will get different results in the intervention group that you were not expecting (people change behavior).

Observations of Mask Usage: I agree, this is probably the better than survey based (as from what I've seen, people self-report very differently than what they really do). This was a weak critique on my part and I would have to understand what alternatives there are that could be better.

Positivity Testing: I think my original point was moot here as well. I think the better argument here is that we do not know the change that covid had already spread in any given area prior to this test. I understand that they tried to group control and intervention groups that were near one another to try to cut down on this, but it is still a big blind spot for this study.

My other issue here is that there was no random testing done to find asymptomatic cases. This is a huge issue with this virus in general, and it makes our numbers not as good (The UK being one of the few countries that has this kind of data, but it's not truly randomized still).

Older Population Education: See this post on the topic[1]. The point she makes is that the reduction in covid by age group should have been equal if masks worked equally, but the results from the study show that the reduction in cases was mainly in the older age groups.

[0] https://www.cdc.gov/quarantine/masks/mask-travel-guidance.ht...

[1] https://twitter.com/Emily_Burns_V/status/1433122687765856259

Re: New Concerning Variant: B.1.1.529

#430

Post by [deleted] »

bavell wrote: post #399
kaba0 wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Airborne transmission being heavily climate-dependent? We can’t make everything into Florida (and that would be a much bigger problem than any virus in itself :D)

I'd imagine we'd have studies on this by now if that were actually the case though, right? It's been almost 2 years... so it seems like there's something else going on.

[deleted]
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