CDC Internal Delta Variant Presentation • Hacker News Board

Re: CDC Internal Delta Variant Presentation

#131

Post by jpster » Sat, Jul 31, 2021, 3:52 PM UTC

lostmsu wrote: post #127

jpster wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Headline on Slide 17 in the deck: Delta variant vaccine breakthrough cases may be as transmissible as unvaccinated case

It does not confirm your point. It says roughly "if a vaxxed and unvaxxed people are equally sick (e.g. same strength of symptoms), they transmit equally". However, vaxxed people get sick ~20x less, so they transmit ~20x less overall. (20x is a bad estimate here, taken from efficiency against hospitalizations)

Not sure how you’re arriving at this translation of what’s on the slide. Can you explain?

Re: CDC Internal Delta Variant Presentation

#132

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jul 31, 2021, 7:56 PM UTC

lamontcg wrote: post #110

arc-in-space wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, I think its recent growth in use is a smooth addition to the language, even if we do already have plenty of synonyms for 'bad'. Speaking of those, your very classy 'stupid' hasn't exactly clarified much either.

It isn't just "bad", it denies knowledge of any cause and shrugs it off. If you're looking at broken tech and you shrug it off as "oh well its just cursed" then you're never going to solve the problem. The frequent posts on this site where someone drilled down through multiple levels and determined root causes of issues and mitigations were not written by someone who though the problem was "cursed". The use of that w…

[deleted]

Re: CDC Internal Delta Variant Presentation

#133

Post by lostmsu » Sat, Jul 31, 2021, 10:47 PM UTC

jpster wrote: post #131

lostmsu wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does not confirm your point. It says roughly "if a vaxxed and unvaxxed people are equally sick (e.g. same strength of symptoms), they transmit equally". However, vaxxed people get sick ~20x less, so they transmit ~20x less overall. (20x is a bad estimate here, taken from efficiency against hospitalizations)

Not sure how you’re arriving at this translation of what’s on the slide. Can you explain?

> No difference in mean Ct values in vaccinated and unvaccinated cases

This refers to registered cases. Registered cases ~ symptomatic cases above certain threshold of symptoms (e.g. if you only have running nose or no symptoms whatsoever, you won't report anything).

Suppose you have two separate groups of 100 people, one with all vaccinated, other with none vaccinated. In each, 1 member is sick and gets in contact with everyone. In unvaxxed group, say, you get 20 symptomatic cases, 30 asymptomatic cases, and 50 are lucky. In a vaxxed group (an example), you get 3 symptomatic cases, 10 asymptomatic cases, and 87 are lucky. Now according to my understanding the slide statement above applied to this though experiment says that every one in the 20 symptomatic cases from unvaxxed group has the same chance (individually) to transmit, as everyone of the 3 symptomatic cases of vaxxed group. But because vaxxed group has 6x less people on stage 2 who could transmit further, overall transmission rate is also almost 6x lower.

E.g. the statement talks about sending chances, and not receiving chances. And overall transmission depends on both.

Re: CDC Internal Delta Variant Presentation

#134

Post by Throwawayaerlei » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 1:17 AM UTC

jpster wrote: post #118

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why hasn't the FDA approved the vaccines, when health experts universally agree they're safe and effective and everyone should get one? I always hate when conversations come to this, because it comes across as a wild hot take, but there's a point where you've just gotta blame organizational dysfunction. It wouldn't be appropriate for the CDC to say "everyone ought to close indoor dining again" or "masks are pointless…

Based on a podcast I heard this week FDA approval also looks at quality assurance of mass manufacturing, storage, supply chains, etc. It’s not just about efficacy and safety of the formulation, itself, but whether they can be assured at scale. It takes time to check all those boxes.

That's required to get an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA), is supposed to be why Novavax is behind schedule due to other cell culture based manufacturers soaking up resources, and why Emergent BioSolutions has never gotten approval for their Baltimore plant to make Janssen doses. Was in fact shut down, AZ/Oxford production at it canceled, etc.

As I understand it the rolling reviews for mRNA vaccine approval are purely a matter of time to prove for real the length of efficacy of them, that's part of the risk/benefit analysis. Can only be done a day at a time....

Re: CDC Internal Delta Variant Presentation

#135

Post by denton-scratch » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 8:19 PM UTC

drcongo wrote: post #94

denton-scratch wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doubling-down on the downvotes: When the checkout queue is moving slowly, some people try to move the queue forward by moving closer tho the person in front, even though the queue hasn't moved. I've noticed that people who do this are always maskless. My local store is near a homeless shelter; homeless people face much greater threats than what amounts to a nasty respiratory virus. But I like social distancing; it te…

I can't work out what your other comment is getting downvoted for. It basically boils down to "some people are arseholes and they behave like arseholes" - which probably tells you all you need to know about the downvoters.

Oh - I'm not at all surprised. Many people have been bitterly opposed to mandatory masking since it was introduced. Among them are influential public figures with a reputation for being able to think, such as Peter Hitchens. It's not just ill-educated people, and they hold these views sincerely.

So I have to accept there's a way of thinking that makes it actually wrong to mask-up.

Incidentally, I walked off the street into a pub the other day, for a straight whisky at the bar - I didn't plan to hang around (nobody was masked, of course, because you can't drink through a mask). Well I was basically called out by this grumpy fella, because I came in masked. I mean, he was joking, but he obviously despised me.