Coronavirus: COVID-19

[BaronVerde]

I don't have a strong opinion of the sequence. I have nothing to say anyway I'd put the most vulnerable first, the elder, people with preconditions, immune system deficiencies, those vulnerable because or their socioeconomic situation aka the poor and crowded living, those living and working in closed and confined environments to take pressure from the health care system, then health workers, and the rest as they come if they come. I'd hang any poltician on a rusty nail at the wall who jumps the line - with one of their orbits. If you like you can swing them around. But I have no strong opinion

[Vertigo 7]

I meant like the folks that are interacting with the public on a routine basis being the ones that are the most likely to spread infection, or rather be vectors for super spreaders. To me, that's a pretty high priority to contain. As far as I'm concerned, I should be among the last to be vaccinated since I have no need to be out in the public and don't have any foreseeable reasons to be among them any time soon.

[Mightysword]

Finally got an appointment for the first shot this Thursday. It gonna be 2 shots of Pfizer , can't wait

[felter]

I got my first jab several weeks ago and I was like, will it even work on me and they were like, a shrug of the shoulders and a reply of we don't know but what have you got to lose by getting it.

It was several days later I found out why they had no idea if it would work on me or not, it was because they had not done any testing on people with cancer and impaired immune system. I know that because it was reported that they were starting to do trials on people with those conditions a few days after I got the jab and they hope to have an answer on whether the vaccines will work for those people, by the end of the year. I personally think that the testing system for these vaccines has been screwed up and was pretty much flawed, I think they just tested on the minimal amount of people they had to and they only tested on fit middle age people, avoiding anyone who could show a bad result, only using the people who had the greatest chance of showing success. The point that I was even given the vaccine before anyone in my situation was put through a trial to check and see if first it worked and secondly was safe for me to take is ridiculous.

A pretty good web page on how Vaccines alone will not stop Covid spreading.

And just to show how stupid the ones who are running the English contact tracing app, the latest version got banned on both Google and Apple app stores for breaking the rules that they agreed on.

[BaronVerde]

Vaccines will not turn a switch and not result in a 100% protection, that is a trivial thing and not related to COVID and the SARS viruses specifically. Vaccines will gradually and maybe for a limited time immunize individuals and thus keep the virus from spreading. Depending on the vaccine and COVID variant, people are talking of 50% for some up to 95% for others, but I must admid that it is unclear to me if this is individual protection or a derived statistical figure. Exact quantification of the degree and duration of immunization (for an individual and the population) depends on many things and is not known in detail atm, how could it possibly since it is just half a year that vaccines came up and are being rolled out. The process usually takes years to decades but for obvious reasons was greatly hurried.

It is just between very likely and certain that we will have to adapt to new conditions in the future, also but not only COVID related. This is a dynamic process.


I hope the shots brings you guys benefitsss, I still have no idea when and how. But there are only 14 affected of ~90,000 anyway here as of today. Living on an island with well defined entry points has its advantages

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My opinion, people with a smartphone these days don't have their acts together, quite literally

[BaronVerde]

Here's a summary of what's known so far about the clotting.

tl,dr: It is complicated.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/04 ... er-becomes

[mr.WHO]

tl,dr: It is complicated.

No it's not complicated:
- Heparin commonly used in medicine is 100 times more likely to give you clotting
- commonly used hormone birth-control pills is 500 times more likely to give you clotting

Yet none of these two have massive panic campaign.

Corporate wars, that's all.

[BaronVerde]

Borarum ... not so hasty Corporate stuff may play a role, but relying on that info alone is misleading. Sadly politics/economy frequently opposes or abuses science and it is getting ever worse.


Read the article, it *is* complicated, with several disciplines (medicine, biology, chemistry, genetics, population dynamics, mathemagics/statistics) interweaving.

Citing a phrase from the introductory paragraph:

"Causality is more of a journey to certainty than a binary decision, ...”

Edit: btw., other vaccines of other corporations may play a role in similar clotting events, Johnson & Johnson (Thomson & Thompson ) were in the rumours ...

[mr.WHO]

Aparently J&J caused 6 clotting cases in US last 2 weeks.

Here we go again :/

[BaronVerde]

Yep, these are all very isolated cases.

To understand what exactly is going on and to try and avoid complications as much as possible goes from a molecular level all the way up to politics, that's why I linked the article.

[felter]

Looks like J&J are at least concerned about it, where AZ seemed more concerned about covering it up and denying that it was happening.

Meanwhile Brazil is in a pretty bad way, it is also concerning that around 50% of serious cases in Brazilian hospitals right now are people under the age of 40, so the, it only effects old people is now out the window. That Brazilian president is a total numpty, maybe even more so than Trump and that takes some doing. He has done nothing to try and curb the spread of the virus, even to the point where he didn't want them to buy any of the vaccines. While the rest of the world were fighting over who was going to get the vaccines, he was demanding that things get back to normal and that the population needed to get back to work. The good news though, they are going to have a new Christ statue that is bigger than the old one, which is going to save and put an end to the 4,000+ deaths a day that they are currently seeing, I think that they could be well over the 5K deaths per day by this time next week. A lot of Brazilian have had enough of him and I doubt he will win the next election which really is a good thing.

[mr.WHO]

Aparently Guardian published aricle about all 3 Chinese vacination having only 50% protection rate.

At the same time Slovakia was checking Sputnik V content and it's different than the one from published in science article that claim 90% protection rate.
I heard the rumors that while Sputnik V can and had 90% protection rate, Russians have large problem with mass production quality control and/or high quality product cannot be produced in mass amount...only in small laboratory amount.

That's why Russians are pushing to open production line in Bavaria.

[BaronVerde]

Looks like J&J are at least concerned about it, where AZ seemed more concerned about covering it up and denying that it was happening.

They can't 'cover up' something that isn't known at all at that stage. Clotting happens on a scale of single digit per million while clinical trials are with 10s of thousands of participants. So there are two magnitudes missing to possibly detect the clotting during the trial phases. To put it in other words, even if a clotting would happen during trial it could not statistically be bound to the vaccine. There is no 1-sample-statistic (*).

Reasons for the clotting is just now gradually becoming clearer as knowledge advances, but it may take a long time until there is certainty, maybe there never is totally. But yeah, speculatively the type of vaccine plays a role, the mRNA-type vaccines not being affected by this side effect. But speculation isn't science, it must be confirmed experimentally and that takes time.

(*) Edit: contrary to the simplifications spread here it is actually most reassuring that with sample sizes of 3 (USA), 5 (Norway) and 11 (Germany) it is possible to build a hypothesis about the clotting. But a hypothesis isn't certainty (well, for the dumb media it is ), it must be tested in a reproducible way to find any causal chains or probablities, avoiding generalizations and prejudice.

[Mightysword]

(*) Edit: contrary to the simplifications spread here it is actually most reassuring that with sample sizes of 3 (USA), 5 (Norway) and 11 (Germany) it is possible to build a hypothesis about the clotting. But a hypothesis isn't certainty (well, for the dumb media it is ), it must be tested in a reproducible way to find any causal chains or probablities, avoiding generalizations and prejudice.

One of the most difficulty part of statisticians - how to explain correlation and causation is not the samething.

[Vertigo 7]

(*) Edit: contrary to the simplifications spread here it is actually most reassuring that with sample sizes of 3 (USA), 5 (Norway) and 11 (Germany) it is possible to build a hypothesis about the clotting. But a hypothesis isn't certainty (well, for the dumb media it is ), it must be tested in a reproducible way to find any causal chains or probablities, avoiding generalizations and prejudice.

One of the most difficulty part of statisticians - how to explain correlation and causation is not the samething.

Two words with different meanings aren't the same thing? Mind blowing revelations.

[Alan Phipps]

"how to explain correlation and causation is not the same thing" - "Two words with different meanings aren't the same thing? Mind blowing revelations."

@ Vertigo 7: That's not so self-evident to people who don't understand the difference of their meanings and either equate them or think them very similar in application and impact.

[clakclak]

So Angela Merkel just got her AstraZeneca shot. I have been a strong critique of Merkel over the years, but assuming she actually got it, which I think is highly likely, I must say that was the move of a real leader. Her government said the vaccine was safe to take for people her age, it was her turn to get vaccinated and she did lead by example. Even though I spend hours upon hours raging against her policies, I think she is going to be missed once Söder assumes the position of chancellor later this year (that is unless the greens somehow manage to wrestle it away from the CDU).

[Tamina]

Haven't people in political key positions got a shot in most countries already ? I fail to see the importance of this event, honestly

[clakclak]

Haven't people in political key positions got a shot in most countries already ? I fail to see the importance of this event, honestly

Merkel did not use her political status to take her shot ealier than the average citizen, that is why she only gets her shot now, as Germany is really really slow when it comes to vaccines. She waited in line like a normal citizen. Maybe it is stupid to praise her for doing what should be normal, but I rarely see high ranking politicians willing to follow the same rules other citizen have to follow too. Certainly wouldn't see Biden, Putin or many others be willing to wait their turn and then take one of the most controversial vaccines, when they have the option to take whatever they want whenever they want.

Or to say it in another way: Merkel for once acted like she was meant to act.

[Mightysword]

Certainly wouldn't see Biden, Putin or many others be willing to wait their turn and then take one of the most controversial vaccines, when they have the option to take whatever they want whenever they want.

Eh I think most leaders I had seen did the same thing? I don't know how old Angela is and what is the phase roll out for Germany, but so far most leaders -not gonna say all because there is probably a few exception out there- did not cut the line, and just take the vaccine inline with whatever phase designate for their country. Remember most of them are fairly old, so they would fall into the first phase of the vaccination anyway whether they're politician or not, and Biden is "ancient". If anything, if he didn't take the vaccine early, the only example he would set is a stupid one.

As for taking the most controversial vaccines ... I think that's a Germany thing, the last few months there have been a lots of "noise" from Germany, so it makes sense Angela felt the need to do something there. There is no need for leaders of other countries to do something similar. Sure, if it's one thing if they outright deny a shot from a certain vaccine, but neither would it serve any purpose for them to go out of their way to take a controversial one. Germany thanks to their back and forth / conflicting announcements in the last few months need that, other countries don't.

I mean, in the US that whole "presidential" vaccine by all living presidents (minus Trump) were meant to set up an example too. The suspicion focus on a few specific vaccine now, but did you forget a few months ago there were a general suspicion on ALL vaccine? These guys took the first dose in part they are first in line anyway due to their age, but also to show the public they had nothing to fear.