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Covid vaccination linked to 'substantial reduction' in hospital admissions

heraldscotland.com

191–200 of 361 posts

Re: Covid vaccination linked to 'substantial reduction' in hospital admissions

#191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been following "long COVID" reports. Firstly, much of the mass media coverage is misleading, often intentionally so in pursuit of clicks and advertising revenue. A lot of the people claiming to have debilitating "long COVID" were never actually tested positive for COVID in the first place. They are the broadly the same demographic that, before COVID, were claiming to have "chronic Lyme" or whatever. Certainly…

> A lot of the people claiming to have debilitating "long COVID" were never actually tested positive for COVID in the first place. Do you have a citation for this claim?

I was talking about the innumerable "long COVID" media coverage where some ordinary person is invited to tell the whole story of how they got ill, felt terrible, and still feel terrible, but nowhere did they actually go to the doctor and get a formal positive COVID test. They are just guessing that they had this disease that was going around. And now dedicated Facebook groups etc. are popping up whose membership has complaints and claims that are extremely similar to the "chronic Lyme" groups that flourished just before COVID.

I was obviously not referring to actual scientific studies of long-term COVID effects, but as I said, those studies don’t say quite what the more sensationalistic mass-media coverage is saying.

Re: Covid vaccination linked to 'substantial reduction' in hospital admissions

#192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much all countries are distributing vaccine to the elderly / at-risk population first. We're doing that for the obvious reason that the most-at-risk population is most-at-risk, and thus most at risk of hospitalization. Concretely, that means hospitalization rates should decline a LOT faster than community spread. This is going to be less visible in countries that have their shit together and are able to vaccin…

The #1 group in the USA was not "at-risk" population, but doctors, nurses, and other front-line staff. The idea is that these groups are seeing many, many COVID19 patients and therefore have a big risk at spreading the virus around. Once this "Priority 1A" group was vaccinated, then age 75+ individuals were vaccinated in Priority 1B. Even then, Postal Office employees and Grocery Store workers (other "high impact" wo…

Group 1C is pretty much "everyone".

To take directly from the CDC [0], "Other essential workers, such as people who work in transportation and logistics, food service, housing construction and finance, information technology, communications, energy, law, media, public safety, and public health."

Doesn't that cover pretty much everyone on HN ?

[0] - https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/recommend...

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Second, shouldn't the focus be #1 - stop deaths; #2 - stop hospitalizations; #3 Stop the disease (which is what "spreading" actually is)

Re: Covid vaccination linked to 'substantial reduction' in hospital admissions

#193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I take it you haven't been following what's going on with "Long Covid". But even among people who aren't hospitalized, there's lasting harm: https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19/91270 I know somebody who's had this. Despite never being hospitalized, after getting sick they had to take a long medical leave from work in hopes of getting their strength back. That's worlds away from "sick for a few days…

I have been following "long COVID" reports. Firstly, much of the mass media coverage is misleading, often intentionally so in pursuit of clicks and advertising revenue. A lot of the people claiming to have debilitating "long COVID" were never actually tested positive for COVID in the first place. They are the broadly the same demographic that, before COVID, were claiming to have "chronic Lyme" or whatever. Certainly…

Here: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.16.21249950v...

Hundreds of thousands of people. Average age mid 40s and sliced by hospitalized or not. Controlled against people who had the flu during lockdown.

Double digit percentages have issues 6 months on. Unsurprisingly not very different from SARS 1 and those people are still sick since 2003.

Re: Covid vaccination linked to 'substantial reduction' in hospital admissions

#194

Since we're on the topic, shouldn't this (hospital admissions) be the almost singular criterion to influence public policy / restrictive measures? The line I've heard repeatedly is we're waiting for "total" herd immunity, as in ensuring almost all of a population is potentially protected from the virus. Frequently quoting fall / end of 2021, potentially into 2022. Shouldn't the only benchmark be those with medium-to-…

Nobody has figured out what "long covid" is, or how long it lasts. The anecdotes I've heard about the effects to the relatively young mean I'd just assume not open up.

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Re: Covid vaccination linked to 'substantial reduction' in hospital admissions

#195

I may get downvoted for this, but genuinely curious if there's vaccine tourism (not that I'm in a position to get on a jet to get a shot). Eg, if the wait time is long for my group in the US/UK/Wherever, can I book a flight to UAE or Cuba to get a vaccine at the airport?

I don't think so. There's simply not excess vaccines to go around at this point. I imagine this might happen more in the future when a larger percentage of some nations are vaccinated.

Re: Covid vaccination linked to 'substantial reduction' in hospital admissions

#196

I'm really worried that will be "locked down" indefinite even when hospitalizations go down. I'm also worried that when an actually deadly virus hits our shores we'll be more hesitate to do lockdowns. So basically governments used their once in a 50 year lockdown on this. It mainly killed people that were fat (why the US had a higher mortality) and old. Except no one every said lose weight, exercise and get fresh air…

When something with ~30-50% mortality starts doing a COVID there won't be room for anti-vaxxers and anti-lockdown people. With COVID you can get sick and live. With something like ebola you get sick and die, or you go through the most traumatic event of your life. It doesn't leave a middle ground of disbelief. So I think there would be the political will for a second lockdown if our next global pandemic looks like ebola. A second COVID probably might not be scary enough though.

Re: Covid vaccination linked to 'substantial reduction' in hospital admissions

#197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While those 2 things would help, I haven't seen any projections that could possibly put supply or distribution availability at ~400M doses in the next 5 weeks.

We'd need about 278 million doses (in the US). We're approaching 15% vaccinated, out of a population of 328 million.

Probably fewer, since much of the population (at least those under 16) isn't eligible.

Re: Covid vaccination linked to 'substantial reduction' in hospital admissions

#198
post #175
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. People (extraordinarily healthy people) are suffering pulmonary embolisms (and thus hospitalized) weeks after they have been cleared from the virus. There is a very, very, very long tail to this disease outside of the initial 2 - 4 weeks of being sick.

>People (extraordinarily healthy people) are suffering pulmonary embolism What are the numbers?

I've posted elsewhere but

Here: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.16.21249950v...

Re: Covid vaccination linked to 'substantial reduction' in hospital admissions

#199
post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been following "long COVID" reports. Firstly, much of the mass media coverage is misleading, often intentionally so in pursuit of clicks and advertising revenue. A lot of the people claiming to have debilitating "long COVID" were never actually tested positive for COVID in the first place. They are the broadly the same demographic that, before COVID, were claiming to have "chronic Lyme" or whatever. Certainly…

Here: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.16.21249950v... Hundreds of thousands of people. Average age mid 40s and sliced by hospitalized or not. Controlled against people who had the flu during lockdown. Double digit percentages have issues 6 months on. Unsurprisingly not very different from SARS 1 and those people are still sick since 2003.

Yes, indeed, the various studies (and yours is a typical example) show mainly an older demographic reporting symptoms stretching into months, and include the observation that it was mainly (even if not exclusively) a severe course of the disease that preceded lingering symptoms. But a lot of the attitudes that restrictions must be kept in place to prevent "long COVID" are held by younger people who are very afraid of coming down with the phenomenon, yet they are not significantly at risk of it according to these studies.

Re: Covid vaccination linked to 'substantial reduction' in hospital admissions

#200

Until we have challenge trials, how do we know whether or not other variables, such as natural herd immunity and seasonality are not also significant contributing factors to the 'substantial reduction'?

The numbers from Israel seem to show the 60+ age group that has been vaccinated with two doses is seeing a sharp drop in hospital admissions compared to the under 60 group that is still mostly unvaccinated. This should rule out the herd immunity and seasonality arguments. https://i.imgur.com/Tu3ckZN.jpg https://i.imgur.com/1eP5sbi.jpg

This appears to be similar to what’s being seen in Scotland: deaths in the over 85 age group dropping sharply compared to younger age groups.

BBC Scotland article has some more data on the progress of the vaccine rollout and the impact it’s having on outcomes: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-56097899

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