Mostly Apolitical Thread for Discussing/Venting our Rational/Irrational COVID-19 Fears and Experiences in 2020

*relief

Number of cases are a poor metric compared to number of hospitalizations (or worse). There are many places - schools, camps, work, etc. - that require regular testing, a luxury by global standards, and I have no doubt those tests are picking up plenty of positives that otherwise might not have been detected. Similarly, there are surely tons of undiagnosed cases out there, but if you don't even know or suspect you have covid then it's not only likely not a bad case, but I think is significantly less likely to be transmitted to another person.

My younger teen kid is halfway into a month-long stay at sleepaway camp. They required all the kids to be PCR tested within 72 hours of arrival, and there are semi-regular tests on site. The staff is vaccinated, but probably only about half or 2/3rds of the campers are old enough to be vaccinated. Maybe less? Still, they sent back notice that they've had no positive tests so far among any of the hundreds of kids or staff, which means they did a good job and can loosen up some of the restrictions they had in place until they got a better bead on the situation. Still doing some testing, though.

if I'm not mistaken, hospitalizations have been trending down too

Number of cases are a poor metric compared to number of hospitalizations (or worse).

Well, no shit, but that doesn't mean we can just hand-wave away rising case numbers in certain states/regions. Hospitalizations and deaths lag behind rising cases - of course I absolutely hope we are spared those metrics heading in the wrong direction, but c'mon, number of cases is still a metric we need to pay attention to.

number of cases are a predictor of future hospitalization/death increases and help determine where clusters may be located, as well as help forecast whether a 'spike' is occurring. Yes, our methodology for determining cases has always been flawed, but that doesn't nullify the value of numbers outright.

they also help us understand whether a certain variant is more virulent than others, if we see a correlation in case increases and hospitalization/death.

Number of cases are a poor metric compared to number of hospitalizations (or worse). There are many places - schools, camps, work, etc. - that require regular testing, a luxury by global standards, and I have no doubt those tests are picking up plenty of positives that otherwise might not have been detected

National testing is down though

also there aren't many countries that are randomly testing civilians en masse symptomatic or not, so in most countries, the numbers are only going to be as good as the people who sought out a diagnosis. people who just silently suffered through COVID and never got tested or were asymptomatic won't show up there either but that doesn't invalidate the number of cases as a stat. it is important.

just the fact of tracking it day by day gives it validity, even if it is an imperfect measure

yup.

fwiw secondary schools in the uk are each testing hundreds of kids twice a week and have been since april

i mean, i say twice a week and what i mean is 'once, maybe twice if we get around to it' but still, kids get sent home if they test positive, then their parents get tested etc - it's a lot of data points

Anecdotal but had this from someone I know yesterday:

My old school today decided to test two year groups, year 7 and 8. They suspected poor discipline from students/parents in getting the job done. That's about 360 children.

They found over 50 positive cases.

Both year groups sent home.

Worse. They had 3 positive cases from staff.

Well!

Unvaccinated people made up all of Maryland’s reported coronavirus deaths last month, as well as the vast majority of new cases and hospitalizations, the state reported Tuesday — data that public health officials say demonstrates the effectiveness of vaccines.

The numbers come as experts try to persuade the vaccine-hesitant to get shots and protect themselves against a virus that has killed more than 22,000 people in the region and nearly 4 million worldwide.

good luck with your son Calz. We've had school and nursery bubbles isolating left right and centre where we are but somehow have scraped through without it - yet. Not betting on finishing the rest of term tbh.

groovypanda - !!! do you think most staff/parents would be double-jabbed by now?
I'm testing approx every week/10 days/ if I feel I've been in contact with more ppl than normal. Not hugely convinced that LFTs will pick up every case.

They dismantled the outdoor part of the rally due to lack of interest.

lol and ty

Worth a read:

One of the ironies of a successful vaccination campaign is that the more people who are vaccinated, the more cases there will be among that same population. In a perfectly vaccinated world, 100% of cases would be among vaccinated individuals until the virus no longer has a pool of hosts in which to survive. This is expected and should not be considered evidence of failure or cause for fear about new variants being detected among breakthrough cases.

It follows that we must gauge variants not by their “dominance” but rather by whether they have the ability to overwhelm local health systems. California’s health system is not at risk of being overwhelmed by the delta variant. Instead, pockets of nonimmune individuals are at risk, and we must focus on targeted, local vaccination campaigns for vulnerable communities and those with questions about vaccine safety and efficacy.

Finally, given the astonishing inequity of the worldwide vaccination campaign, we should expect new variants to emerge as long as there is a lack of collective action to address the vast majority of the world’s population who remain at risk. We know that bringing vaccines directly to people works and we know that California’s vast resources can be put towards assisting the global fight against COVID-19 in places where there is little, if any, immunity. Advancing global vaccine equity — at this stage of the pandemic — as the U.N. secretary general said in February is the “biggest moral test” before us at this time.

https://www.sfgate.com/california-politics/article/Delta-variant-California-COVID-19-masks-open-where-16296087.php

OKAAYY Juvenile, Mannie Fresh, & Mia X hopped in that CLASSIC BAG & remixed “Back That Azz Up” for the dating app BLK to encourage vaccinations! 😩👏🏽🔥pic.twitter.com/d2BnP9I6kM

— 935 KDAY (@935KDAY) July 7, 2021

Vaxx That Azz Up

Jab That Vaxx Up

They dismantled the outdoor part of the rally due to lack of interest.

Wasn't the Tulsa rally also the one where the K-Pop teens flooded them with requests for free tickets?

really about to clobber the next adult who says "we should wait and see on vaccinating children" when in Israel, children have a plurality of new infections, and the US and other countries are also starting to skew younger.

in addition to worries about *their* health, they can spread the fuckin thing ya know

also why won't the FDA give full authorization dammit.

also

1) Now that #Israel's Ministry of Health has released more info and data on the 64% estimate of #BionTech #Pfizer effectiveness against infection and symptomatic illness from #delta, my scepticism about this estimate remains fairly intact. Why? https://t.co/25IuHml3FF

— Andreas Backhaus (@AndreasShrugged) July 8, 2021

Yeah, I think who is testing and why and how often is not necessarily getting us the most accurate information.

why won't the FDA give full authorization dammit.

Honestly, what does it matter? The people who are declining the vaccine now aren't gonna change their tune because it's no longer an EUA. A state legislator who's refusing to allow a college to require students to get vaccinated, who is now saying "we can't mandate it because it's an EUA," is just going to make up a different reason once full approval comes.

Are there state legislators with the power to do that? Our public schools all require a host of vaccinations already, I don't see how anyone could stop them from adding another. I mean, it could happen, but I think all but the most ardent (literally) die-hard parents would rather have their kids back in school.

in surveys among the unvaccinated, there is a fairly sizable component of people responding that the need for more testing/FDA approval is the reason they won't get vaccinated. Who knows if that exact proportion of surveyed people would actually get vaccinated, but it wouldn't hurt and if it gets more people to get shots....and there are no prevailing reasons to doubt the safety and efficacy of these shots, it's irresponsible to delay it much longer.

There are a ton of public health experts asking for this right now, including Eric Topol.

https://i.ibb.co/2YWGd24/Screenshot-20210708-121014.jpg

so did wayne not want to do the vaxx ad or

he was a little too wobbly on the issue

claiming the assist for my stats on that one

just going to make up a different reason once full approval comes.

OK. So why not force them to think of a new, even weaker excuse they have top paste to their forehead for everyone to see?

this weeks we can barely get a million shots done in two days. but much like Memorial Day, I'm telling myself people don't make as many appointments around the holiday, or something.....there was also a day that no shots were reported too.

So weird, I got a letter from the IDPH today saying that it looks like I'm overdue for my second vaccine dose. Which, nope. Got it on the date scheduled just fine, thanks.

I'm guessing it means the pharmacy where I got the second dose just dropped the ball on reporting it, but it was weird to see. I wonder how many people might have experienced the same thing and if that impacts the stats at all.

hmm, yeah, that's weird.

meanwhile, more Eric Topol!

Israel, today with 527 cases (486 yesterday), 1 death, continues to have a reduced case rise compared with the UK, per capita@OurWorldInData https://t.co/IzdVO31MAh pic.twitter.com/kXQfXkGqU8

— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) July 8, 2021

hmm. they're starting from a lower base so that's exactly what you'd expect with equally fast exponential growth.

if you switch that chart to a log axis it's rising just as fast in israel as the UK in the last 2 weeks. so it's a "reduced case rise" in an absolute sense, but the rate of growth is consistent with israel being on a UK trajectory. (it may not be, just looking at raw numbers here, good reasons to think it's not.)

https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?yScale=log&zoomToSelection=true&time=2021-05-02..latest&pickerSort=desc&pickerMetric=new_deaths_per_million&Metric=Confirmed+cases&Interval=7-day+rolling+average&Relative+to+Population=true&Align+outbreaks=false&country=ISR~GBR

thx caek

also thoughts from a mathematician who is followed by just about every virologist/epidemiologist I follow (this one's a tweet thread)

If we look at the raw case data for the 20-24s (the group with the highest case rates, and in late May /early June the highest growth as well), there’s an intriguing sign that we may already be at the peak of cases (not just peak of growth). 🤞 pic.twitter.com/ladvtmCklL

— James Ward (@JamesWard73) July 8, 2021

yeah i think 🤞🏻 is the right emoji there. the data doesn't justify much more than that.

he does hedge pretty heavily in the thread

topol don’t let your smile go up in smoke

ja. and i see what he's talking about. he might be right. the uk growth rate does look like it's slowing down a little.

https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?yScale=log&zoomToSelection=true&time=2021-06-17..latest&pickerSort=desc&pickerMetric=new_deaths_per_million&Metric=Confirmed+cases&Interval=7-day+rolling+average&Relative+to+Population=true&Align+outbreaks=false&country=ISR~GBR

i got two things from my phd in astronomy that i've carried with me since i left academia. 1) a good understanding of scale invariance, exponential growth and the important of logarithmic axes, that allows me to spot logical errors like topol's, and 2) debt.

sad lols @ #2 :(

I don't think Topol is as good at quick-take statistical analysis (someone else also called out the same thing you did in his thread), so I should probably seek someone else out for that. However what he IS really good at it is analyzing the pre-prints/studies that come out re: vaccine effectiveness.

yeah he's good!

I have no specific data or information to base this on, beyond my concerning eye watching rising case counts, but I'm starting to get the bad feeling that elementary kids are still going to be remote in a lot of areas this fall.

Based on the 7-day rolling average in Illinois, cases are up 39% and deaths are starting to rise again too (up 13%). The vast majority of the new cases are in the areas bordering Missouri (which appears to be a dumpster fire for the delta variant at this point) - Region 4 near St. Louis is a little over 6% positive rate, while Chicago region is right around 1%.

what's really not helping with this "third shot booster" debate are media's framing of this as a "what can it hurt?" type scenario, when billions globally haven't received a single shot.

yeah it might not HURT the people receiving the third shot, but it could impact supply that could have been supplied globally. I'm with the scientists on this one - we may find out it's necessary soon, but why rush it?

otm

Yeah there’s zero evidence right now that cases are rising in the US because people aren’t getting a third dose.

the 'rumor' that got traction on my local network is "Israel were the earliest to get most people vaccinated, so the reason for their lower efficacy recently is that their vaccines are wearing off", which.....isn't proven whatsoever, and not exactly something you want to be spreading.

I'm starting to get the bad feeling that elementary kids are still going to be remote in a lot of areas this fall.

I don't believe this, because I think the places where there will be big caseloads in September are the same places where large numbers of people are declining vaccination are the same places where schools were fully in-person when there were big caseloads last September.