Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Covid patients breathe out large amounts of virus early on

news.northwestern.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 185 posts

Re: Covid patients breathe out large amounts of virus early on

#121

Post by taeric »

mrguyorama wrote: post #118
taeric wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I don't know how to make sense of the quote I pulled out, to be honest. Why say that, if everyone that had the vaccine was lower in symptoms? Seems to be the kind of thing you would only say if the vaccinated people in your study were represented across the spread?

It's pretty clear actually. The point the paper is making about vaccine status is this: If you have strong symptoms, you shed lots of virus, regardless of whether you are vaccinated or not. From separate studies, we know that if you are vaccinated, you are less likely to have serious symptoms. Put the two together. Fewer people seriously ill is fewer people shedding lots of virus, and more people vaccinated is fewer…

Having these as carve outs, though, gives me pause there. The claim seems to be that, on average, higher symptoms means more shedding. However, trying to control for any other variable results in no significant finding. This would imply that they did not find a correlation between vaccination and severity of symptoms in their testing.

I'm willing to chalk that up to them not having enough vaccinated people in their study. That fits the caveat they give regarding vaccinated people. It does not automatically support your read, though.

Re: Covid patients breathe out large amounts of virus early on

#122

Post by omginternets »

taeric wrote: post #115
mint2 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edit oops didn’t see it which comment was being referred to at first. the study says severity was controlled for when assessing the impact of vaccination. That leads to an obvious problem as vaccines lead to lower severity.

Yeah, I don't know how to make sense of the quote I pulled out, to be honest. Why say that, if everyone that had the vaccine was lower in symptoms? Seems to be the kind of thing you would only say if the vaccinated people in your study were represented across the spread?

This is consistent with the scenario in which the vaccine trials did not lead to the desired outcome ("the pandemic will be cured by the vaccine"), and so institutional powers tried to dress it up as a success. Note that the researchers and authors of this paper do not need to be involved for this to be true. They simply publish a factual result, but it is somehow deformed/ignored during the course of public service campaigns. "Vaccine lowers severity of symptoms" becomes "vaccines work".

More speculatively, with this in mind, it is troubling to think of how the vaccine safety trials may have been interpreted, and why major pharmaceutical companies insisted upon total civil immunity.

Re: Covid patients breathe out large amounts of virus early on

#123

Post by in_cahoots »

GloriousKoji wrote: post #58
francisofascii wrote: post #2

> COVID patients exhale high numbers of virus during the first eight days after symptoms start...then drop steeply." Eek. Eight days is longer than I expected.

Seems like the CDC reducing the suggested isolation time from 10 days to 5 was a mistake.

My family (2 adults, 2 kids) was all vaccinated and the adults boosted when we got Covid for the first time. We all tested positive for 7+ days, and the baby was positive on Day 10 via a PCR test. Just one data point but 5 days has never seemed like long enough to me.

Re: Covid patients breathe out large amounts of virus early on

#124

Post by mint2 »

taeric wrote: post #121
mrguyorama wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty clear actually. The point the paper is making about vaccine status is this: If you have strong symptoms, you shed lots of virus, regardless of whether you are vaccinated or not. From separate studies, we know that if you are vaccinated, you are less likely to have serious symptoms. Put the two together. Fewer people seriously ill is fewer people shedding lots of virus, and more people vaccinated is fewer…

Having these as carve outs, though, gives me pause there. The claim seems to be that, on average, higher symptoms means more shedding. However, trying to control for any other variable results in no significant finding. This would imply that they did not find a correlation between vaccination and severity of symptoms in their testing. I'm willing to chalk that up to them not having enough vaccinated people in their s…

I don’t think this is quite right of a reading “This would imply that they did not find a correlation between vaccination and severity of symptoms in their testing.”

Instead, I think a more accurate rough understanding of their process is they first backed out the effect of severity and then checked if vaccine was correlated with that adjusted number - they found it wasn’t. They didn’t make an assessment on how vaccines effect severity.

Re: Covid patients breathe out large amounts of virus early on

#125

Post by PaulKeeble »

dekhn wrote: post #99
PaulKeeble wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least 3 big studies looking at this, the most recent of them on 150k people, so very robust numbers. Subsequent infections do increasing damage and each infection increases your chance of developing Long Covid and not recovering. People with existing new symptoms after a Covid infection also get worse very often. Rather than building immunity we are accruing damage and the evidence underpinning it from the VA stud…

Well, if that's true, it would be really bad (in a simple model it means basically everybody gets infected repeatedly and gets more and more damage and then most of the population has long covid). I am not hearing much concern this from my larger medical community. Large numbers in a study is good, but if the study design isn't right, then large numbers won't make up for that. It's absurdly hard to really conclude re…

The VA study in Nature - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-02051-3

Re: Covid patients breathe out large amounts of virus early on

#126

Post by nradov »

LastCovidWave wrote: post #112
mcpackieh wrote: post #7

I know a guy who still wears a half-face respirator every time he's in public even for just a second. I think at this rate he'll be wearing it for the rest of his life, unable to accept a new level of risk and move on with his life. I'd like to help him but I see no possible way, he's convinced that I and 99% of the rest of the public are suicidally insane like people who play literal russian roulette.

There is no living with it. None. There's no immunity. Only continued sickness and damage. Masking is a protection to help stop the spread and if you are not helping, you're in the way of us trying to live without it.

You are spreading misinformation. There is immunity to COVID-19 just like any other respiratory disease.

https://peterattiamd.com/covid-part2/

Our ancestors apparently lived with HCoV-OC43 after it killed a lot of people in the initial pandemic. That virus is quite similar to SARS-CoV-2 in terms of genetics and symptoms. And it's still around infecting people today. So relax, we'll (mostly) be fine.

https://www.slowboring.com/p/covid-1889

Re: Covid patients breathe out large amounts of virus early on

#127

Post by mcpackieh »

elil17 wrote: post #62
mcpackieh wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I know a guy" , as we grew up down the road from each other and I was a groomsman at his wedding. We've known each other for 30 years. This isn't some random guy I see on the street. I see maybe one in a hundred strangers in public still wearing a mask, which is why I mentioned 99% of the public. That's my estimate for how many people gave up masks. I take it you are among the 1% of those who keep it up.

It used to be 80% of people didn't wear a seatbelt. By your logic the 20% that did should have had someone try to "help them" be normal.

> It used to be 80% of people didn't wear a seatbelt.

A few years ago, 80% of people who wore a mask. Which way are these things trending? Wearing a seatbelt has become the normal attitude towards car risk. Wearing a mask was briefly the normal attitude towards risk, but has since become [again] an abnormal attitude towards risk.

If you're so keen to be abnormally safe and think everybody else is being unreasonable, why don't you get your three-point seatbelt replaced with a five-point harness? It's established well characterized technology that undeniably makes you safer You'll definitely be an odd man out rejecting social trends so expect to have people wonder why you're so paranoid. But by your logic you shouldn't care about that.

Re: Covid patients breathe out large amounts of virus early on

#128

Post by belltaco »

GloriousKoji wrote: post #58
francisofascii wrote: post #2

> COVID patients exhale high numbers of virus during the first eight days after symptoms start...then drop steeply." Eek. Eight days is longer than I expected.

Seems like the CDC reducing the suggested isolation time from 10 days to 5 was a mistake.

That happened when Omicron initially hit the US and there were millions of cases a day during the 2021 holiday season. Airlines were running out of staff to run flights. It always felt more of a convenience decision than a medical one.

Re: Covid patients breathe out large amounts of virus early on

#129

Post by taeric »

mint2 wrote: post #124
taeric wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having these as carve outs, though, gives me pause there. The claim seems to be that, on average, higher symptoms means more shedding. However, trying to control for any other variable results in no significant finding. This would imply that they did not find a correlation between vaccination and severity of symptoms in their testing. I'm willing to chalk that up to them not having enough vaccinated people in their s…

I don’t think this is quite right of a reading “This would imply that they did not find a correlation between vaccination and severity of symptoms in their testing.” Instead, I think a more accurate rough understanding of their process is they first backed out the effect of severity and then checked if vaccine was correlated with that adjusted number - they found it wasn’t. They didn’t make an assessment on how vacci…

My read wasn't that they made an assessment of vaccine on severity. Rather, I read that they found that it had no impact on transmission. They found that, on average, self reported severity correlated with transmission. However, they then state that transmission does not correlate with vaccination status.

I could hope that they mean there is no extra relation between vaccination status and transmission above reduced symptoms. I don't know why they would state it in the way they do if that is what they mean, though.

Re: Covid patients breathe out large amounts of virus early on

#130

Post by gumby »

mcpackieh wrote: post #127
elil17 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It used to be 80% of people didn't wear a seatbelt. By your logic the 20% that did should have had someone try to "help them" be normal.

> It used to be 80% of people didn't wear a seatbelt. A few years ago, 80% of people who wore a mask. Which way are these things trending? Wearing a seatbelt has become the normal attitude towards car risk. Wearing a mask was briefly the normal attitude towards risk, but has since become [again] an abnormal attitude towards risk. If you're so keen to be abnormally safe and think everybody else is being unreasonable,…

I don't understand what point you are trying to make. Are people with masks hurting you in some way?
Post reply on HN