COVID-19 Megathread 6: Return of the Omicron

[emailking]

Had to be a Florida man.

[emailking]

It seems like if we just decide to give a half, single dose, we could vaccinate everyone who wants it within about month.  Given that we are racing against a much more contagious strain now, I am reasonably convinced that this is the way to go.

This is actually a situation where we should trust the social scientists more than we trust the doctors.  Doctors are given very limited statistically training; it is very committed to orthodoxy and giving a binary yes/no result.  Whereas social scientists, because they have to be able to intepret a much wider range of quantitative methodolgies, are more adept at thinking probabilistically about these issues.

The vaccines weren't tested to work at quarter doses. Stop your buffoonery. See the post above you as to why. No more needs to be said.

The post above is exactly what I’m talking about with respect to methodological orthodoxy.  It’s just not suited to a unprecedented global pandemic.  From the very start, we should have been throwing everything we could think of against the wall as fast as we could just to see what sticks.  It’s likely that a lot of these ideas would have actively killed people.  But for every person we killed, we may have saved thousands.

How is this going to save anybody? The reason you have to give 2 doses is because the first dose only primes your immune system. That's why they're 60%ish effective. If you give less than that, they'll be even less effective. It might not even work at all. The best case scenario would be that they're still 60% effective but it's unlikely. Plus how many fewer people do you think will bother with the vaccines if they're only say, 30% effective? It sounds like we'll be lucky if half the healthy population will take them as is. Doctors don't get a lot of training is statistics but there are plenty of statisticians that work for the FDA and Pfizer and Moderna.

[emailking]

Maybe it will work, maybe it won’t. 

It's the won't that's the problem. We don't have time, and resources, to lose.

[emailking]

It's obvious that we should focus on giving a single dose to as many people as possible for now. Obviously a second dose for an ICU nurse or a nursing home resident should be prioritized over a first dose for a healthy person working or going to school remotely in their 20s.

Neither of those is obvious to me.

[emailking]

What evidence do we have that the dose that is being administered is the most efficient dosage? 
(The mere fact that it was the only dosage fully tested is not, by itself, evidence of that.)

I don't know that there is any and maybe it's not. But it's what we've got.

[emailking]

Could the holiday today be part of the drop? I know a lot of places stay open.

[emailking]

I think the percentage on deaths may be off?

[emailking]

I've seen a few doctors say now that the current decrease in cases is like the eye of a hurricane, and the new strains are going to generate a much larger peak in the next few months.

[emailking]

Cancelling something in June seems a bit premature. But it's possible the new strains may swamp progress made with from the vaccines, so we may be dealing with cancellations for a while.

[emailking]

Cancelling something in June seems a bit premature. But it's possible the new strains may swamp progress made with from the vaccines, so we may be dealing with cancellations for a while.

The strains shouldn't be considered anything unusual. This virus is mutating slower than the flu, and several news reports say the vaccine is just as effective with these new strains.

I'm not saying the vaccines won't be effective against them.

[emailking]

Yeah that's the problem. How much more contagious they are.

[emailking]

Don't know about that much, but I wouldn't be surprised to see another large peak.

[emailking]

A lot of medical experts are saying we are due for one more peak in COVID at least that will last from March into probably July or August that will make the other peaks look extremely minor in comparison.

I can believe that, but 5-10 million a day feels like an order of magnitude too high. But yeah I don't know.

[emailking]

I've heard several doctors on MSNBC in the last week say that the worst days of the pandemic are ahead of us even with the vaccines. That's all I have.

[emailking]

There's not going to be another peak as bad as the past couple months. Guaranteed.

Don't see how you can possibly know that. The experts are saying it's possible.

[emailking]

Has it been discussed why this virus is mutating to become worse than it was before, when most viruses generally mutate to be less severe?

Depends what you mean by worse. It appears to be either only slightly more lethal or no change in lethality. But it's more contagious which is good for the virus.

[emailking]

I'm in a conservative area of a liberal state and haven't seen somebody in a store without a mask since April. The Walmart here though (but only there) had people standing at the entrance making sure you were masked, for months. So maybe people just decided to go with it.

[emailking]

That is so bizarre. Like if you don't want the vaccine, ok don't get it. But don't stop others from getting it if they want it.

[emailking]

Russia's Sputnik V vaccine is 91.6% effective against symptomatic Covid-19, interim trial results suggest

After criticism last year for an early rollout, Russia's Sputnik V vaccine is 91.6% effective against symptomatic Covid-19 and 100% effective against severe and moderate disease, according to an interim analysis of the vaccine's Phase 3 trial results.

The preliminary findings were published in The Lancet on Tuesday and are based on data gathered from 19,866 participants, of which around three-quarters (14,964) received two doses of the vaccine and a quarter (4,902) were given a placebo.

Sixteen cases of symptomatic Covid-19 were confirmed in the vaccine group 21 days after participants received the first vaccine dose. Sixty two cases were found in the placebo group -- equating to an efficacy of 91.6%.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/02/health/russia-sputnik-v-phase-3-intl/index.html

[emailking]

Dr. Céline Gounder who is on Biden's task force, said on Brian Williams's show tonight that this is the scaredest she has been since the start of the pandemic, due to the mutant strains. Fauci also said today that the variants could cause another spike but did not have the dire tone that I've heard from several of the experts now.

[emailking]

I'll take the first one I can get. If it end up being J&J I won't lose any sleep over it at that point, but I worry every day that goes by where I don't have one. Others should be vaccinated first though.

[emailking]

I take a men's daily multivitamin.

[emailking]

A poll is a poll. If they think they messed it up they can redo it or reweight or something, but if they think the methodology is sound then you release. You don't hold it back because the results are depressing.

[emailking]

Maybe not, I didn't dig into those details. It could have been for their own benefit and survey might be a better term than poll in this case.

[emailking]

Isn't it just the nature of exponentials? I know we've been having these long tails, but in theory the graph of cases should be a bell curve, and it goes down as fast as it went up.