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Delta Variant

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Re: Delta Variant

#71

Post by XorNot »

colincooke wrote: post #43
havkom wrote: post #23

”Now, with Delta, it looks like the figures are 64%, 93% and 93% according to Israel, and 79% for symptomatic infection and 96% hospitalization according to the UK.” I doubt these will turn out to be correct numbers. Looking at recent week’s data in Israel possibly paints another picture (keep in mind while parsing the numbers that there are plentiful many more vaccinated in the population than not in the age groups…

There are some statistical concerns with how Israel came up with their numbers, so I would put more faith in other countries results, at least for now. My best guess is that the 64% is for any detectable disease, not symptoms (i.e. you test positive but don't feel meaningfully different), which means the vaccines do their job at quickly eliminating the virus.

The more important result is although Delta is resistant to being neutralized by existing antibodies, it does not prevent it in serum-trials against vaccinated individuals, the like most biological systems the human immune system is exponential: starting from an effective antibody response, it can overwhelm any nascent infection (i.e. hospitalizations would not be expected to rise).

The number I've seen is a 3-5 fold reduction in the kinetics of neutralization [1] - this is concerning for whether you can spread it, but seems to my eye pretty consistent with hospitalization effectiveness remaining about the same.

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03777-9

Re: Delta Variant

#72

Post by franciscop »

The article purposefully conflates numbers to tell a narrative. I am talking only about EU, and at that southern EU which is where I've been following the numbers closely. Delta variant has been acting for up to 1 month in some regions, and as described in the article yes cases are up very quickly. However, the article says:

> COVID deaths [...] And if you think Europe or the US will be spared

This is not reflected at all with the current numbers and the author is mixing deaths in one country with infections in another. There hasn't been even a single uptick of deaths in EU so far that I've seen, and we are past the potential 2+ week delay from cases to deaths so if it was of importance for EU, we'd see a massive climb in death graphs. That is just not happening, so regarding deaths this seems, so far, not to be a concern at all for highly vaccinated countries.

Yes there are many other concerns for which we want to avoid more infections (saturation of hospitals, potential for more mutations, etc.) which are worth discussing, but this article is instead just conflating numbers. See a comparison taken 2 days ago of "infections" vs "deaths" in Spain, which includes this delta wave:

https://imgur.com/a/A9VFS4G

Re: Delta Variant

#74

Post by joelbluminator »

TaupeRanger wrote: post #36
joelbluminator wrote: post #12

Haven't read the piece but I have read a few things by this guy that made me panic. I don't know if he was right or wrong but he has a tendency to be overly bleak. Yes Covid kills, a lot. Also car accidents and air pollution kill a lot. I haven't gained anything from reading this guy despite all the good info, it hasn't given me any action items and I suspect a politician reading him won't gain anything either.

Why would anyone ever compare an exponentially spreading infectious disease with car accidents? They aren't even in the same realm of concern for public health.

I am saying I am not sure the amount of panic was proportional to the amount of actual deaths.

> At least 30.7% of deaths in India can be attributed to air pollution from fossil fuels--that means about 2.5 million people die every year after breathing toxic air.9

I mean who cares, all I know is how many Covid deaths they are having, probably Indian people themselves are much more aware of Covid than Air pollution. Why? Mostly because Covid is still new and pollution is old and boring.

Re: Delta Variant

#75

Post by matz1 »

alkonaut wrote: post #69
matz1 wrote: post #47

>It looks like the risk of death is 2x higher for Delta than for the original variant: 2x of what ? 2x of low risk is still a low risk.

You literally quoted the answer to your question

The author mentioned the risk is 2x higher but what is the risk of the original variant itself ? The author didn't mention that.

Re: Delta Variant

#76

Post by accurrent »

usrusr wrote: post #62
accurrent wrote: post #18

I've a feeling at the end of the day the only solution will be to scale up the number of medical facilities/personnel/equipment so we can cope with changing and mutating virus. With sufficient care, access to oxygen etc, we may still be able to handle the onslaught of new variants. Vaccines, while very important, will not be a magic bullet unless we can get them to enough people fast enough. This still remains a prob…

Medical facilities already take up a considerable fraction of total productivity. Vaccine production on the other hand is a tiny footnote in the grand scheme of things. Vaccine output could be increased tenfold or more for less effort then it would take to increase medical facilities by only a few percentage points. It's a comparison like getting a second TV for seeing more frames per second vs trying to do the same…

This is true for rich nations. In many poorer nations simple improvements to the healthcare system are far more realistic than creation of a new vaccine plant. mRNA vaccines are currently only produced by very few manufacturers, getting these vaccines to poorer nations is just not happening. In the mean time the vaccine will continue to mutate in these nations. The fact is many poorer nations lack basic equipment like oxygen generation units. This basically spells death for people who would otherwise recover. To put an example. Singapore has had 62K infections but only 32 deaths. Why? Its a small very rich nation. While there were large numbers warded in icu and requiring oxygen supplies, we had the equipment. By contrast anywhere else on earth we see far poorer survival rates.

Re: Delta Variant

#77

Post by specialp »

joosters wrote: post #67
specialp wrote: post #42

I'm not sure what the end game is here. The original plan was "flatten the curve", which meant keep hospitals from getting inundated. Then it became wait for the vaccine. COVID is not going to go away. The vaccine has dramatically decreased the amount of people dying from it. Cases going up without dramatic increases in death or hospitalization might not be a bad thing. The alternative is lockdowns that will never co…

'There are ever present dangers that we just live with like the chances of getting in a car accident and dying' Have you not noticed how we have put a lot of time, effort and money into increasing the safety of road travel? Do you just 'live with' the chance of dying in a car crash, or do you have technology like seat belts and air bags?

Yes and we put a lot of time into making a vaccine. What if I said too many people are dying of car accidents, and they can almost all be completely prevented by lowering speed limits to walking speed. We live with the risk because it is low enough and making everyone travel at extremely low speeds would have a very adverse effect on the economy and quality of life. Safety improvements have been implemented that have not had a very onerous impact on life like having an airbag and seatbelt. And they allow us to drive at reasonable speeds with a reasonable level of safety. But still 40k people a year die in the USA.

So if technology produces ways to make living with COVID less onerous and safer then why not? It is easy for us as mostly tech people to be like yeah lock that down forever. I am still getting paid full pay working from home, and my packages still come to the door. But for a lot of people it is a very large cost to pay. And eventually we will not be able to keep printing money out of it. People need to work and live.

Re: Delta Variant

#78

Post by pattrn »

The author links the following paper as a source for his comments: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3868853. Unless I'm reading it incorrectly, the mortality rate of the infected, unvaccinated population is 0.5% (131 / 26,632), and the mortality rate in the infected, vaccinated population is 2.5% (33 / 1,410). Does this mean that the vaccine decreases your chance of contracting the virus, but increases your chance of dying if you do contract it?

(Note: I understand that the overall death rate from the paper is 0.002% for vaccinated population and 0.012% for unvaccinated population.)

Re: Delta Variant

#79

Post by neogodless »

dqv wrote: post #65
neogodless wrote: post #59

Hmm @dang this doesn't seem controversial, or shouldn't be. We should be curious about the details of a dangerous strain of a virus, and learn more about it. I'm not sure if this deserves to be "[flagged]" but perhaps I'm missing the bigger picture.

I think it gets that tag after some threshold of flags and then has to be revived. >controversial I would say there is some contention going on in this thread.

This is a complex problem. The original post seems to be a collection of facts and information about a thing. The thread should have some discussion about what to do with this information, but of course there has been politicization of issues like this (bizarrely, since I'm not sure who benefits from the disinformation!) But in this case, the flags have the effect of just hiding an informational article, which may be the desired effect if you believe it is politically disadvantageous for facts to be shared and discussed.

There's no way for me to say all that without being on a "side" even if I really do not wish to be, and for the moderators, the issue might be similar, though I suspect some can break down the issue with a clearer lens.

Re: Delta Variant

#80

Post by egeozcan »

dqv wrote: post #65
neogodless wrote: post #59

Hmm @dang this doesn't seem controversial, or shouldn't be. We should be curious about the details of a dangerous strain of a virus, and learn more about it. I'm not sure if this deserves to be "[flagged]" but perhaps I'm missing the bigger picture.

I think it gets that tag after some threshold of flags and then has to be revived. >controversial I would say there is some contention going on in this thread.

The question is, if some people stop believing in computer science and flag basic programming articles, would that have the same effect on CS and Math articles like it did with biology and statistics?

To be more general: Do politicians really have the superpower to stop the spread of any information through polarization?

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