151–160 of 198 posts
If my net worth is 1 cent, and I pick up 37 cents on the street, I’ve increased my net worth over 37-fold. But I’m still worth only 38 cents. Maybe I can buy a gumball. Maybe. 37-fold is meaningless. Unfortunately this press release doesn’t have anything more useful either.
>37-fold compared to pre-boost levels
It's there in the first paragraph. Why are you doing this?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the factors that lead to different immune system responses are very difficult to figure out despite many decades of research into the mechanisms. I totally disagree with this. It is not difficult, they are ignoring it. Zinc deficiency is a well known risk for immunological dysfunction, yet where is all the zinc testing and research during this pandemic? https://www.nature.com/articles/1601479 https://www.annualrevi…
The correlation, if it exists, is marginal and there's even some reason to suspect there's a slight negative correlation. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2021.6993... I have an aunt who's adamantly ant-vax. She goes on and on about how we should all be 'boosting our immune systems' to naturally protect us against the virus. The fact is there's no such thing as boosting a naturally healthy immune sy…
"The estimate was based on the food balance sheets, the bioavailability of Zn in the food supply, the estimated physiological requirement of Zn in individuals, population demographics, and stunting observed in children."
I am not pushing it as a population level mitigation. But what if 50% of people could avoid covid if they fixed their zinc deficiency?
And you even admit "Nutrition may well play an important role for individuals based on their specific needs". So why are they not letting people get tested for nutritional deficiencies? What wold that even hurt?
And I agree that your aunt is an idiot and knows nothing about nutritional genomics.
If my net worth is 1 cent, and I pick up 37 cents on the street, I’ve increased my net worth over 37-fold. But I’m still worth only 38 cents. Maybe I can buy a gumball. Maybe. 37-fold is meaningless. Unfortunately this press release doesn’t have anything more useful either.
Compared to not having the booster (but being previously vaccinated). >37-fold compared to pre-boost levels It's there in the first paragraph. Why are you doing this?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
All this talk about "mild" cases with Omicron are failing to grasp the whole situation at two very important corners: - countries affected so far have excellent immunization rates, i.e. if I take these populations as a reference, I'm just checking how immunized people are affected. Not every country has had either a lot of cases or large/successful immunization programs - if the transmission rate in South Afrika and…
South Africa has extremely low vaccination rates, correct? Edit: Yes, your premise seems to be quite wrong. South Africa has only 26% vaccination rate.
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Pre-covid, if you picked a random hospital at a random point in time in the U.S. there was a 16% chance it would be at max capacity and something like a 30% chance it would be over 80% capacity. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3840149/ It amazes me that hospitals are shutting down, healthcare worker numbers have barely recovered to 2018 numbers, bed capacity is shrinking in many areas and even still peop…
Healthcare workers take many years to train. When they die of COVID, go on long term disability because of long COVID, or burn out because they can't mentally handle watching another willfully unvaccinated person die, that person is irreplaceable in the short term.
HCWs are below where they would otherwise be because of policy.
Aside from that, long covid is psychosomatic. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullar... which means the root cause of long covid is likely misinformation about long covid to begin with (thanks "The Atlantic", for scaring everyone into being sick)
Seems from this case in Norway ( https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.E... ) that Moderna is a tad bit better at preventing infection from Omicron, but when you see the overall number of cases among fully vaccinated people I'm not very optimistic that vaccine with do something at limiting the spread of infection, however I'm optimistic that they will still be efficient to prevent severe disease.
> When asked to grade the severity of symptoms on a scale from 1 (no symptoms) to 5 (significant symptoms), 42% (33/79) reported level 3 symptoms, whereas 11% (9/79) reported level 4 symptoms. None of the cases required hospitalisation up to 13 December 2021. I am extremely optimistic.
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I think you're right overall, but that the data doesn't yet support the conclusion. Omicron got traction in the UK at least a week later than SA, probably 2 weeks, so the death rate will lag by the same margin. We need to compare the death rate in the UK now to the death rate in SA a few weeks ago. All the early indications are that the complete data will support your conclusion when it comes in, but frustrating as i…
So in terms of a government response do we care about data now or are we at the point where we just restrict liberties and mandate vaccines assuming the worst possible scenario every time something changes? I guess if we're lucky when the data shows they over reacted they might give some liberties back and hopefully the vaccine rollout won't result in too many adverse side effects. Common.. This is insanity. I honest…
I'm arguing for correct interpretation of the data. I didn't advocate for any particular action to be taken in my post, so somewhat surprised you inferred such.
>when the data shows they over reacted
When. You seem very sure. Almost as though you've already made up your mind about facts we don't have yet, exactly what I'm cautioning against.
OK, since you seem to want me to argue for something more I'll do so. I support the booster programme based on the same reasons it was already started long before Omicron was discovered. The risks seem extremely low, while the potential benefits seem extremely high. The vaccine rollout here in the UK has been a fantastic success that's transformed our ability to manage the effects of the virus, and I think we need to push forward with it.
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Compared to not having the booster (but being previously vaccinated). >37-fold compared to pre-boost levels It's there in the first paragraph. Why are you doing this?
Neutralising antibody levels are not in a linear correlation with protection from Covid infection or prevention of a severe illness. Lot's of biological measurements have to be interpreted on a log scale. I.e. it is not obvious how much difference that makes. But it definitely improves protection.
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That's the equivalent of 'a mere matter of engineering'. Developing anti-viral drugs is hard, for plenty of viruses we have vaccines but no anti-virals, for RNA based viruses (which mutate rapidely) anti-virals are even harder.
Thank you. I'm not aware of the complications of developing an anti-viral for this disease (and I'm not going to go into the debate around existing anti-virals). I did not intend to be dismissive of the effort involved. I'm coming at it from a place of real frustration. I can't see how this pandemic ends without an effective treatment.
We missed the 'golden window' early on in the epidemic when (for instance like SARS-CoV) it could have been contained. But now we have a real problem. The big difference between SARS-CoV and COVID-19 is that the former first gives you symptoms and then makes you contagious and with COVID-19 it is the other way around. That simple fact alone possible made it impossible to contain this. But we never really tried (except for a very few countries).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The correlation, if it exists, is marginal and there's even some reason to suspect there's a slight negative correlation. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2021.6993... I have an aunt who's adamantly ant-vax. She goes on and on about how we should all be 'boosting our immune systems' to naturally protect us against the virus. The fact is there's no such thing as boosting a naturally healthy immune sy…
That study did not measure anyone's zinc status, it just assumed people were not zinc deficient based on the food supply. "The estimate was based on the food balance sheets, the bioavailability of Zn in the food supply, the estimated physiological requirement of Zn in individuals, population demographics, and stunting observed in children." I am not pushing it as a population level mitigation. But what if 50% of peop…
That's a truly absurd exaggeration. We're talking about a marginal effect on at best a marginal proportion of the population.
>So why are they not letting people get tested for nutritional deficiencies?
"they' (whoever "they" may be) are preventing people from getting tested for mineral deficiencies? Really? How are 'they' doing this?
I'm in the UK so if you're in the US maybe there's a different process, but if you're worried about your Zinc levels can't you just talk to your doctor?