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Dontshootrude

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Posts posted by Dontshootrude

  1. The UK public health system has been a wealth of information throughout the pandemic.  I've been extremely impressed with them.


    Today they published an in depth breakdown of the breakthrough cases that resulted in death among their population.

    Main points:

    Quote
    • In England, between 2 January and 2 July 2021, there were 51,281 deaths involving coronavirus (COVID-19); 640 occurred in people who were fully vaccinated, which includes people who had been infected before they were vaccinated.

    • The risk of death involving COVID-19 was consistently lower for people who had received two vaccinations compared to one or no vaccination, as shown by the weekly age-standardised mortality rates (ASMRs) for deaths involving COVID-19.

    • "Breakthrough cases" are where infection has occurred in someone who is fully vaccinated, whereas we define a "breakthrough death" as a death involving COVID-19 that occurred in someone who had received both vaccine doses and had a first positive PCR test at least 14 days after the second vaccination dose; in total, there were 256 breakthrough deaths between 2 January and 2 July 2021.

    • 61.1% of breakthrough deaths occurred in males, compared to 52.2% and 48.5% for other COVID-19 deaths and for non-COVID-19 deaths respectively; the median age of breakthrough deaths was 84, compared to 82 for other COVID-19 deaths and for non-COVID-19 deaths.

    • 13.1% of breakthrough deaths occurred in people who were identified as likely to be immunocompromised from hospital episodes or causes of death, compared to 5.4% for other COVID-19 deaths.

    Table 1 is really interesting, and shows how important the second shot is.

    Quote
    Table 1: There were 640 deaths involving COVID-19 of people who had received both vaccination doses
    Count of deaths involving COVID-19 and percentage of all deaths by vaccination status, England, deaths occurring between 2 January and 2 July 2021
    Vaccination status Deaths involving
    COVID-19
    Non-COVID-19
    deaths
    Percent of
    all deaths
    All deaths regardless of vaccination status 51,281 214,701 19.3
    Unvaccinated  38,964 65,170 37.4
    Deaths within 21 days of first dose 4,388 14,265 23.5
    Deaths 21 days or more after first dose  7,289 66,533 9.9
    Deaths within 21 days of second dose 182 11,470 1.6
    Deaths 21 days or more after second dose  458 57,263 0.8

    Source: Office for National Statistics – National Immunisation Management Service, NHS Test and Trace

    Other interesting things to note:

    The fully vaccinated COVID deaths have a median age two years older than the unvaccinated (84 vs 82) and looking at the numbers compared to the unvaccinated, we are talking about very few people relative to the overall population.  98.8% of their COVID deaths are either unvaccinated or not fully vaccinated. It is remarkable how well the vaccines are working.    

    Quote

     

    Table 3: 61.1% of breakthrough deaths occurred in males, which is higher than for other deaths involving COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 deaths
    Number and percentage of deaths occurring by various characteristics for breakthrough deaths, other deaths involving COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 deaths, England, deaths occurring between 2 January and 2 July 2021
      Breakthrough
    deaths
    Other deaths
    involving COVID-19
    Non COVID-19
    deaths
    Median age 84 82  82 
    Male 154 (61.1%)  22,819 (52.2%)  89,498 (48.5%) 
    Female 98 (38.9%)  20,885 (47.8%)  94,901 (51.5%) 
    Clinically extremely
    vulnerable
    193 (76.6%)  32,567 (74.5%)  128,454 (69.7%) 
    Not clinically
    extremely vulnerable
    59 (23.4%)  11,137 (25.5%)  55,945 (30.3%) 
    Limited a lot by
    long-term health
    problem or disability
    80 (31.7%)  12,152 (27.8%)  44,642 (24.2%) 
    Limited a little by
    long-term health
    problem or disability
    80 (31.7%)  12,604 (28.8%)  50,817 (27.6%) 
    Not limited by
    long-term health
    problem or disability
    92 (36.5%)  18,948 (43.4%)  88,940 (48.2%) 
    Immunocompromised 33 (13.1%)  2,360 (5.4%)  18,049 (9.8%) 
    Not
    immunocompromised
    219 (86.9%)  41,344 (94.6%)  166,350 (90.2%) 

    Source: Office for National Statistics – Public Health Data Asset, National Immunisation Management Service, NHS Test and Trace

     

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  2. 8 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

    Moderna flexing nuts on Pfizer.

     

    COVID-19 hospitalizations by COVID-19 vaccine
    BNT162b2 (Pfizer-BioNTech)
    Unvaccinated (ref) 6,960 1,316 (18.9)
    Fully vaccinated** 4,243 135 (3.2) 80 (73–85)
    mRNA-1273 (Moderna)
    Unvaccinated (ref) 6,960 1,316 (18.9)
    Fully vaccinated** 2,975 70 (2.4) 95 (92–97)
    Ad26.COV2.S (Janssen)
    Unvaccinated (ref) 6,960 1,316 (18.9)
    Fully vaccinated** 458 30 (6.5) 60 (31–77)
    COVID-19 ED/UC encounters by COVID-19 vaccine
    BNT162b2 (Pfizer-BioNTech)
    Unvaccinated (ref) 10,872 3,145 (28.9)
    Fully vaccinated** 3,946 314 (8.0) 77 (74–80)
    mRNA-1273 (Moderna)
    Unvaccinated (ref) 10,872 3,145 (28.9)
    Fully vaccinated** 2,656 98 (3.7) 92 (89–93)
    Ad26.COV2.S (Janssen)
    Unvaccinated (ref) 10,872 3,145 (28.9)
    Fully vaccinated** 757 100 (13.2) 65 (56–72)

    Yep.  Their decision to separate the shots by an extra week and tripling the amount of mRNA seems to be really paying off.  

    That said, I got Pfizer in January and I'm still not seeking out a booster.  In my age group it is still working fine.

  3. On 9/1/2021 at 4:02 PM, billfromlaketravis said:

    I'm listening to a podcast that analyzes the government's case: 

    https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bad-blood-the-final-chapter/id1575738174

    It was written/produced/narrated by John Carreyrou. He broke the Theranos Fraud story at the Wall Street Journal. 

    I think she walks. The destroyed hard drive makes it a she said the government said case. 

    That said, the government has a 91% conviction rate in federal court. If I had her money, I wouldn't take a plea either. 

    I'm listening to this podcast right now and I read the book.  Given this is how I make a living it is really hitting home to me.  

    CSB warning: Around 2014 Theranos sent a couple of representatives to our lab to "evaluate" their technology.  They met us in one of our conference rooms, made us sign NDAs and passed around notebooks supposedly outlining their technology.  We flipped through it and listened to their spiel.  Afterwards we said "That all sounds great, but where is your data?  I don't see anything in your presentation materials that remotely supports the claims you are making.  You are welcome to come back with data, or more ideally loan us one of your machines for us to evaluate ourselves then we can talk endorsement and sales."

    We never heard from them again. 

    She deserves to do real jail time.

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  4. An interesting MMWR was published Friday looking more specifically at the efficacy at the big three vaccines against hospitalization/severe disease against Delta and stratified the results by age.  TL;DR: Efficacy against severe disease for all three vaccines is holding up well for those under 75, but there is increasing evidence that those 75 and older will benefit from getting a booster.

    https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7037e2.htm?s_cid=mm7037e2_w#T1_down

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  5. On 9/7/2021 at 9:39 PM, Parliament said:

    Re: boosters.  I'm pretty sure my 1st 2 shots where Pfizer.  Will my eventual booster need to be Pfizer as well?  Or is Moderna good too?  I don't wanna do it wrong and grow hooves.

    This is the subject of multiple studies right now.  Preliminary evidence out of the UK suggests that mixing and matching the different technologies (mRNA [Pfizer, Moderna], adenovirus vector [J&J, Astrazeneca], and subunit vaccines [Novavax]) might drive a better and longer lasting immune response compared to sticking with one company.  This makes a lot of sense because the different technologies are going to stimulate different cell signaling pathways.  For example, mRNA mechanisms are better at stimulating the B-cell driven antibody response whereas the adenovirus vector vaccines are going to do a better job at building cellular (T cell) immunity.  

    gr1_lrg.jpg.9b7c7f5c3c7e4bbdd6cfffd9f2e848f2.jpg

    On 9/8/2021 at 7:59 AM, TexEx15 said:

    Well had to sign my oldest up for a COVID test.  While on the ARC app it also let me schedule my booster - it actually specifically called out boosters starting in September.  Answered truthfully about not being immunocompromised and it only asked if it has been greater than six months from last shot.  At first I thought it was going to limit booster option to Pfizer given the full approval but was able to select Moderna and get scheduled for tomorrow.  I’m just over 7 months out from the second shot.  My Texas CARES number was 994 a few weeks ago.  Any reason not to do the booster?

     

    It probably won't hurt you (we don't have large controlled trials to be sure), but I don't think you will really benefit much.    

    On 9/8/2021 at 1:57 PM, Bevo said:

    He isn't against the booster. I would say he is somewhat on the fence and taking a wait and see approach. A high number of breakthrough cases would probably change his opinion. Conversely, adverse events or a decrease in efficacy/increase in humoral response against lipid encapsulation would lead him to forgo the booster.

    Right, I'm not against boosters, but breakthrough cases are not the metric I'm looking at.  The outcome of those cases is the key metric.  As long as the vaccine is preventing severe disease (which it is) I don't see much reason to get a booster.  And as I've outlined in prior posts there might be advantages to waiting and see how more experiments and trials play out before deciding when to get boosted and which shot to take.  

    There is precedent for using infection outcomes rather than infections themselves in our recommended vaccine schedule.  Pertussis (whooping cough) used to kill thousands of infants.  In the 1930's a vaccine was developed by killing whole pertussis cells and injecting them into people.  It worked well, but because of toxins normally found in the bacteria that were not affected by the inactivation, a small number of people had significant side effects after vaccination.  This lead to the development of the modern day Pertussis vaccine, the acellular Pertussis vaccine (aP), which is found in the combination TDaP and DTaP vaccines.  This vaccine injects a small amount of the actual protein responsible for all the horrible symptoms of whooping cough, thereby programming your immune system to essentially convert Pertussis from whooping cough into an asymptomatic bacteria that can live in your respiratory tract.  Recent studies have shown that people (and monkeys) can transmit Pertussis, and might even be able to transmit it more easily than an unvaccinated person because they have no idea they are sick.  This is why the Pertussis vaccine schedule is so aggressive, particularly in infants.  They get shots at 2, 4, 6, 15 months, another one at age 4, and then intermittently from then on out and in pregnant women.  This aggressive schedule, combined with antibiotics, are the reasons whooping cough deaths have remained incredibly low.     

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  6. 17 hours ago, Huckleberry said:

    He's talking about this:

    image.png.73d6f57198ddda7239734f866343fa67.png

    20/71 = 28% of vaccinated hospitalizations have resulted in death
    186/1984 = 9.4% of unvaccinated hospitalizations have resulted in death

    Now some stupid people will run with that as a reason not to get vaccinated. They will ignore the case rate and hospitalization rate. Hospitalization rate for unvaccinated is 1.90 versus 0.04 for vaccinated, so it's 47.5 times higher. So if you get to the point if hospitalization, the numbers say you're 3 times as likely to die if you're vaccinated. There are lots of possible explanations for this, including that maybe hospitalizations only happen to the extremely vulnerable members of the vaccinated population (who would have been hospitalized if they were unvaccinated as well). Either way, if you're 47.5 times more likely to be hospitalized if you're unvaccinated but then 1/3 as likely to die once hospitalized, you guessed it, this means that unvaccinated people are about 16 times more likely to die from COVID than vaccinated people.

    All numbers only based on the San Diego data, obviously.

    Good post.  To add to this, you need to look at the data on a more granular level.  Those that get vaccinated and die are usually older and have significantly more risk factors than their unvaccinated counterparts.  This isn't happening in healthy populations.

    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1201971221006391

    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1198743X21003670?casa_token=QHZFcwIxbkoAAAAA:H-3DziM-WVQ15B8vmvnh880fhYJIndOQBVihSs1NmJKqH40oQ05asC7s6Tn6AjhF-rzqaXK2tw

      

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  7. 11 minutes ago, midtown said:

    For people running out and getting boosters.  Read the FAQ.  The Texas cares studies states that they do not know the significance of the anti-body number.  I asked this before but maybe someone who understands the vaccines better.  My understanding is that its not the antibodies but its the t-cells left behind with their memory that are the mechanism for fighting an infection.   Anyone?

    You can have memory B and T cells.  There hopefully will also be these things called long lived plasma cells generated after vaccination.  These are B cells that hang out in your bone marrow and secret antibodies continuously.  If we are still detecting antibodies in vaccinated individuals years from now that will indicate that they are present, and will be a very good sign for long term immunity post vaccination.  We have encouraging preliminary data that this may be occurring.

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  8. 6 hours ago, Trey3216 said:

    Because we're never going to crush the pandemic, because it's fucking endemic and just getting going.  

    Crush the pandemic = widespread immunity such that our healthcare system is no longer in danger of being swamped with cases and COVID becomes the next cold virus.  You are right that it will be here forever, but once it isn't able to cause a significant amount of severe disease it is no longer an emergency.

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  9. 1 minute ago, Lobo said:

    BCOM/BS&W, UTSys Med Centers, and Ascension-Seton all informally indicate they expect first shot deployment in December.  Barring some unforeseen circumstance.  You know like stupid Texas parents being stupid Texas parents.  We'll find a way to fuck this up, don't worry.  

    I anticipate the vaccination rates in young kids will be remarkably low unfortunately.  Check out the rates in the 12-18 age group.....it is depressing.  

  10. 5 minutes ago, cactusflinthead said:

    @Dontshootrude I have already gotten dangerously close to replying with what would be appropriate in CR and frowned upon here.

    I appreciate your efforts to educate the vaccine reluctant. That's great. It's not going to work on the vaccine violent. Or how else do I call ones in denial on their deathbed? 

    Maybe you're new around here. We are an aggressively stupid world. People would rather shit out their guts than admit they were wrong.

    Ultimately the "vaccine violent" (great term!) are all going to get it and develop immunity via the high risk route.  Eventually this will end, and COVID won't be a danger to our healthcare system.  It is what it is.  I'm not really concerned about these people on an individual level, particularly once the danger to our overall healthcare system has passed.  It is a classic example of "play stupid games win stupid prizes."   

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