anybody vaccinated yet?

some clarification needed here

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

We get colds and flu more than once because the virus that causes it mutates so that our immune system doesn't recognize the virus. How long the immunity lasts is driven by decay of immunity and whether the virus mutates enough that the immune system no longer recognizes it.

There is a credible hypotheses that there is immunity in the population to this virus as a result of prior infection with a similar virus.

Trial participants will be monitored to answer the question of how long vaccine immunity lasts.

Thanks...

John in NM

I did simplify my comment, something we do when making a point, but also due to an admittedly casual understanding of the subject on my part. I have no doubt you have a better grasp of this than I.

Re: Cards on the table

TomD

"There's the tell"

For one thing the Swedish government doctor who promoted that "plan" when asked if it was the right one said to ask him when it was over. They were well aware that there was no one Swedish plan and that later events could force a change. But it was represented as some fixed course that the Swedes had departed on and somehow were trying to convince the rest of world was the correct course. And it worked fine while it worked. Which is to say they got through the earlier part of the pandemic with lower economic damage, and at a medium level of mortality. That was a success, but the fake news was comparisons to other countries and the idea that Sweden was advocating for their approach as ideal elsewhere. International comparisons are bogus.

Re: Mad Cow

TomD

"Many of the trial participants are also regular blood donors."

That is an interesting filter. I have tried to give my blood over and over, and always get turned down, now I am on meds that mean there is no hope. The final straw even before that is when our blood supply, which because we are so small (my PHD sister used to work in quality assurance for the red cross) is cleaner than the US, erected the barrier at one point of anyone who had traveled to the UK during certain years, due to mad cow. So one thing we know about blood donors is they are healthier than most of the rest of us and their mileage may vary. What does not kill a blood donor may actually not make me stronger. Just generally.

more misinformation

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

As a long time blood donor in the US I can assure you that extended travel to England will preclude you from ever giving at my blood center. I have a good friend who immigrated here from England and his blood will not be accepted.

Every time I give blood I am asked where I have traveled. I provide the information, my travel is checked against known sources of contamination and then I am allowed, or not. The screening form must have 100 lines on it.

My son in law with over seas military duty is also excluded. Your statement that the US blood supply is somehow less safe than Canada needs more proof than you supplied.

Your correlation of Trial participation and blood donation has nothing to do with vaccine safety and everything to do with how you feel about your contract with society. We see clearly what your attitude is. Unnecessary to clarify it further.

We have a saying here on the farm,

if you are in a hole quit digging.

You are up to your eye balls. Stop.

Derek - how would you know?

David Weaver

"it works" or "doesn't work" - they're not to that figure yet.

It may turn out to be wishful thinking in regard to the vaccine having long-term efficacy - i don't really know.

To my knowledge, I haven't had covid. If I'd had covid, one simple reason that there's no reason for the vaccine to be mandatory is that I wouldn't get it after having covid.

What would be the point now?

I think we'll get 80% participation in the vaccine in the US on a voluntary basis. I'd rather let this kind of thing develop voluntarily among groups so that the deniers get to see the effect on the groups who aren't vaccinated. This should play out pretty quickly.

Sweden made a calculated move. For some reason, we were all pretty much in the dark about a vaccine until the election was over. I doubt that was coincidental, but that's what happens when you rail against an industry as a politician. In the absence of a vaccine, I'd have made sweden's move, personally. There is excess mortality attributable to it in the short term, but what's the long-term implication?

Now that there are vaccines, we have a lot of drivers calling the shots through the rear view mirror. I'm not particularly interested in that.

Still waiting to get my vaccine, but it's a cultural difference here - things that are mandatory by government and criminal punishment are less preferable to me than getting to a similar or same point more or less by observation (and ridicule).

"Lib baiting" is a Sport

Jim Matthews

People wouldn't speak like this in Public.

This attitude is likely a byproduct of why our Man in Alberta needn't worry about communicable diseases.

Re: Derek - how would you know?

Derek Cohen (in Perth, Australia)

David, it is well documented in medical journals, which I read.

Another friend of mine died of Covid today (not in Australia).

Regards from Perth

Derek

Reinfection argument...

David Weaver

..is pretty weak at this point. There are only a few individual cases described in terms of reinfection, but given the enormous number of people in the US who have had covid, we have heard of few.

We now know a couple of dozen people who have had covid (unfortunately, some were older and are now deceased). I haven't met anyone who has had covid twice, including people who have poor habits.

I'd like to see data on two infections in one individual where a second one was due to a different variant than the first (given the large number of variants, this shouldn't be difficult).

If I'd had covid already, I'd be in no rush to get a vaccine. I haven't had it already, so I'm in a rush to get a vaccine.

I expect people will become reinfected over time, knowing little about diseases but seeing, of course that getting the flu or a cold, or in my case, bronchitis - it's not like it doesn't happen again later. So far, with the huge number of covid cases, follow-up cases with severe results are nearly unseen. I'd say rarely enough that the instances where they're mentioned could be error rate. But who knows in the short term - this is a long-term issue.

I've also seen mention that in measured reinfections, generally the second go around is asymptomatic, which is important. Asymptomatic patients are given mythical status in their ability to be super spreaders in news stories, but the data attached to actual spread probability is small for asymptomatic and much higher for someone symptomatic (this shouldn't be a surprise if the symptomatic person is sneezing or coughing).

I can only mention one case where I've seen this (there's more than this, but I don't know the people as well). My sister's kids had covid, two of them. One was symptomatic (very mild fever for one day), which triggered testing of everyone else in the family. One of the other kids was asymptomatic, but positive. The third kid, no covid. The parents, no covid. The two kids who ended up with positive tests traveled for sports and likely got infected at the same time (vs. one infecting another). It's very unpopular to mention a case like this, because two people in the same house had covid and nobody else ever tested positive (living in the same space, same rooms, etc). Why didn't they? Probably because there was no sneezing or coughing. If they had been sneezing or coughing and living in the same space, do we believe that nothing would have spread to the remaining three? I don't.

One of the biggest arguments for the vaccine in my opinion isn't that it does something to the population different than someone who has already had covid, but that it also reduces severity of infection (so far) and should for people who get covid. Less severity generally means less chance of spreading.

80s TV flashback!!

David Weaver

couldn't help it seeing that title.....one of the shows that I thought was goofy even in the 1980s and I was just a young child at the time!!

not the point...

David Weaver

I guess it's really pointless to have any discussions about any of this. My point is that sweden doesn't have herd immunity and we have no long-term experience with vaccination yet regarding efficacy and overall deaths.

We have groups that have stayed closed and limited cases and groups that haven't.

It becomes an emotional argument, and saying that you know someone who died of this doesn't change what I'm suggesting above. I live in an urban area in the states - of course we also know people who have died of this, and you don't have to go far to find them.

I guess I'm sensitive to the difference between saying "likely" or "my opinion in the long term this will ___" vs. literally sitting mid-scenario and announcing who failed. Maybe that's a consequence of mathematics courses. Proof is proof. Likely and waiting for the conclusion is a different thing.

The very dumb thing about this whole event is that it crosses into a political discussion. I don't think Sweden's move is unreasonable as long as they are making decisions based on real things occurring or not (which they seem to be doing). But in the end, they could be found to have had worse experience than societies that were closed and have had a few layers of vaccines. This is reality, and we are coddled as a society, and showing it by people losing their objectivity about life for us really being a series of odds, and there's not a whole lot we can call before the clock has expired with 100% certainty.

I choose the vaccine path (hopefully it will be available to me sooner or later). I think it's a bit presumptuous to dictate to other societies what calculated moves they should make. It's their business.

Why is it such a burden to people to be dealing in the world of what's likely or not vs. fully mature outcome proof?

Re: 80s TV flashback!!

John in NM

Heheh.... not that I didn't watch TV in the 80's, but I'd never heard of this show. Just an expression to me that means "no surprise"

I'm guessing this show had some precocious kid involved?

worse.....

David Weaver

If I'm remembering titles correctly, the child was a robot with no sense of humor or something like that, and edie mcclurg was the nosy neighbor who thought there was something amiss (and they were trying to hide that she was a robot).

I don't remember the premise, but it was on for a while.

Those were the days before the majority had cable (i know, i know, for people who have streaming TV services now and say "I don't have cable now!!"), and if you didn't have something else lined up at prime time, you would re-read the paper and watch whatever was on.

(we don't let the kids watch much TV now, but as a child of parents born in the 40s, TV was one of the great free never ending services that kept kids calm once they were in the house).

..

something just popped into my head. I don't have cable (but netflix and prime) and am anxious enough that I have trouble sitting and watching TV if there is anything else that could possibly be done.

But, I've noticed now with the .2 and .3 channels, there are gobs of 50s through 90s TV shows on. I think I've even seen alf scheduled on what used to be TV land (that's now only on cable as far as I know, or not carried here). I've never ever seen a mention of a small wonder rerun.

while we could poke fun at the clothes and hair (I have no leverage there), the show logo is what really screams out to me "cabbage patch kids on sale at the mall, and dad just found out they carry mccullough chainsaws at kmart now, a sure sign of their increasingly bright future. After we find a few pairs of pleated jeans for school this year, let's go pick up one of the 7 amp black and decker circular saws and a wicker chair at jamesway"

That is worse alright...

John in NM

Kind of like Short Circuit but without the budget for a robot, but heck, it gave them a premise to work with for a season (guessing that the title doubled as a description of it's duration? )

I remember watching just a few things, over and over, in the 80's. Reruns of Star Trek, Mash, 3's Company, WKRP, etc, this was mostly afternoons. Then just the occasional show in the evening, like once or twice a week. Oh, and the Dr. Who reruns on the PBS station

One day I was watching a rented DVD of some 80's detective show, and the horrible 80's wall paper in the victim's apartment was the same as what was in the bathroom at the staff cabin of the telescope where I worked.... almost kept the DVD another week to show the boss as evidence for the need to redecorate. Couple years later the septic tank backed up and provided a much more compelling reason to redecorate than I ever could have done....

Man, I just realized what a backhanded insult I wrote out - less convincing than a backed up septic tank!

Orange Julius,  after?

Jim Matthews

"After we find a few pairs of pleated jeans for school this year, let's go pick up one of the 7 amp black and decker circular saws and a wicker chair at jamesway"

I resemble that remark.

I went to a local staging of "Mamma Mia" two years back - prepared to snark and wisecrack.

I wept openly, shameless in my nostalgia for a time that never was. All this brought on by a score of Abba tunes I detested as a kid.

For me, that score brought home that I would never again be so boundless in my optimism, broad in my interests and content with my prospects.

The mall on Saturday.

It was excellent.

Never was rich enough..

David Weaver

...to stop and get something at orange julius. That kind of thing was off limits with my parents - and then someone told me it was orange juice with raw eggs.

If it cost more than a dollar, I would never have been allowed to imbibe.

...

But, I did manage to scrape together my allowance for several months and pitch in for half of the cost of a pair of reebok pumps. Victories like that were few.

My parents retired in their early 50s. It wasn't until my mid teens that I came to figure out that their line of "we can't afford it" was not exactly the right words.

And that's gone by the wayside now, too. Parents are admonished now if they fib to their kids about such things.

Everything from about 1981 to 1996 is fresh in my memory. I'd imagine anyone 10 years older doesn't remember much of this other than the orange julius.

Re: Never was rich enough..

John in NM

Hell, that maybe was no fib. Retired at 50 they probably were only able to do so by the habit of strict economy.

Although my parents weren't retired that early, my mom didn't work and my dad was a self employed contract geologist - so he was home a lot and got paid well for just enough time in the year to average out to about what I got as a full time entry level geologist after college. The difference is his house, truck, and car were all paid for and my sister and I paid for our own college educations.

The health insurance market is the only reason I'm still working at 50, otherwise I could do the same as your parents may have done because I am very frugal when it comes to everything outside of tools and wood.

I never tried an orange julius. Seemed kinda gross to me, I like tart citrus and anything bought at the mall I assumed was going to be sweet.

I learned for the first time today..

David Weaver

...since the orange julius booth was a giant brown area of unknown to me (with orange lettering) that the claim to fame for the julius was to do just what you said - take the tart and acidic flavor away from citrus and make it more palatable for the mass market.

Reminds me of sweet wine.

"sir, can you recommend a good sweet wine". (i asked this years ago at the state store because my spouse doesn't like dry reds).

"no, there's no such thing".

Orange julius sounds like the wines that are in the fridge at the liquor store (you're right about the line, though - my parents never had their plans laid out to retire early until they got the urge all at once, but they knew that keeping money aside would be useful. They were better at it than I am to some extent, but my kids, I guess, won't need to hide big red letters printed on the inside of their coats.

"IRREGULAR"

seems fitting - I share jim's sentiment of the optimism as a kid and somewhere that yielded entirely to hypervigilance.

I think the stamp fits me better than the coat back then. Maybe it was fortune telling.

Re: anybody vaccinated yet?

Buck Nall

Having read several of the opinions down below, I thought

this was a find place to enter:

AS I'M 81+yrol, perfect health, can't remember last Dr. visit!

I'm 6'4" about 250lb. don't hurt or ache.

With my age bracket, yes I'll take vaccine if offered.

Also know THIS may be my last correspondence here.

Am I begging/applying for MERCY, just stating the facts.

Of course a prayer request in my favor is appreciated.

This post/? about being vaccinated has/is the

longest I remember seeing/reading.

It's good when thoughts and opinions can/are exchanged.

OK ELLIS BACK TO YOU & YOURN

Decisions and proof

Wiley Horne

David,

“ Why is it such a burden to people to be dealing in the world of what's likely or not vs. fully mature outcome proof? ”

Your post is thought-provoking—enough to spin off a few subtopics as well.

Here’s a thought about the decisions we have all been making and observing:

To have any chance of slowing a geometrically-spreading contagion, one has to act now, not later. Waiting for proof does not defer action til later—do nothing is an act right now. An act to accept geometric spread right now.

There’s nothing deep about this—we all make decisions everyday on incomplete knowledge. We have to. You’re a mathematician, so I’ll put it this way—we’re all Bayesians in our lives.

Beyond this point, it does fet political, so I’ll stop here .

Wiley

Re: Decisions and proof

David Weaver

Wiley, I think you sense I have more disagreement than there really is. I think the reasonable course of action is to take the vaccine. If 70% of the population or more takes the vaccine, then the exponential spread doesn't occur.

I don't believe it should be mandatory by law, because I don't think it's necessary for it to do its job. It's also very premature to talk about mandatory when the rollout to the willing has been exceptionally poor, and there is no doubt, death that will be associated with slow political moving (such as claims that we need to go through a legislative process to allocate money to train people to administer the vaccine - come up with the money, figure it out later).

I have an aversion to things that work well when voluntary being made mandatory. I also would be willing to bet that the vaccine non-taker cohort is being overblown by the media because it can make people angry or upset. If uptake of the vaccine is 80% voluntary in 90% of the country and 50% in some small areas, guess which ones we'll hear about.

At the rate that the governments are moving, my suggestion that a complement of the non-takers will be convinced by data isn't necessary by policy -it will occur due to tardiness (that is, there will be enough time to calculate death rates and morbidity before the voluntary takers are even through).

You're right, I"ve got experience with exponential modeling. My limit with this whole thing is and was always when hospitals are overwhelmed. Limiting travel the last two months would've gone far further than making the vaccine mandatory at this point. That's what's causing hospitals to be overwhelmed - my point about the hospitals is simple. When people can't get oxygen or prompt treatment, then there are unnecessary covid deaths. I think if we'd have continued on the track that we took in april through may, many of the hospitals would've had a different issue (I think a lot of community hospitals would've gone out of business and closed. From experience here, when they close, the same building rarely reopens, and it's usually in an underprivileged area - the replacement is built in an affluent area causing the people who lost their local hospital to travel much further for care).

My other point is that people use sweden as an emotional point hoping to convince someone like me that something should be compulsory. At this point, we are calling the masters on the 5th hole. A single vaccine resistant variant has us right back in the soup.

(my comment about not having mandatory vaccines with people who had covid still remains - there's no significant data showing reinfection a second time at the same rate, nor is there any data showing reinfection anywhere close to the same severity. If I'd already had covid, I probably wouldn't opt to get the vaccine because there's no reason to).

What is the point? ... *LINK*

Derek Cohen (in Perth, Australia)

David, there are a number of ways to look at the situation. You like to look at numbers. That is your profession. I view things differently, more systemically. Which reflects my profession.

Some here are suggesting that 70% of a population are needed to develop a herd immunity against Covid. However, WHO had this to say...

"The percentage of people who need to be immune in order to achieve herd immunity varies with each disease. For example, herd immunity against measles requires about 95% of a population to be vaccinated. The remaining 5% will be protected by the fact that measles will not spread among those who are vaccinated. For polio, the threshold is about 80%. The proportion of the population that must be vaccinated against COVID-19 to begin inducing herd immunity is not known." (link below).

Does this number crunching reflect an underlying defence mechanism, such as denial or intellectualisation (where reasoning is used to block anxiety)?

The debate about mandatory vs voluntary vaccination certainly has the cathartic power to bring out this emotional conflict. And it shows up in the best and worst in humankind. Matters becomes somewhat black and white when people are stressed.

The best include the many health workers around the world who are on the front line and provide their services in spite of the great risks to themselves and their families. The best are the people who recognise that they need to minimise risk to others, and willingly follow regulations, such as sanitation and social distancing. There have been good things coming out of Covid, such as increased communication via the Internet, and concerns for the welfare of family and friends. Some communities have learned to pull together, and many have become aware that they can make a difference if they reach out to others.

The worst are those who are egocentric, narrow-minded and selfish in their outlook. They refuse to accept that they are links in a chain, and instead show a defensiveness and aggressive attitude when they believe their rights are intruded upon. They believe that they have the right to be individuals at a time when others are desperately trying to work as a team. Many adolescents have this outlook for a period, which we put down to a stage of social and emotional immaturity. I deal with ODD (opposition and defiant disordered) youngsters all the time ...identifying as a rebel, resenting authority. What do we call adults with this same attitude? Those that rail at wearing masks in public, for example?

The world is not simply divided into these two groups, however it seems this way at this time.

Regards from Perth

Derek


https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/herd-immunity-lockdowns-and-covid-19

Re: "Lib baiting" is a Sport

Joe shelton

And again, Jim, I enjoy following you around even when I don't understand what you're saying.

I hope you keep on talking "...in parables and dark sayings...".

Hey, folks, let's remember: civility

This has been a lively topic, and rightly so. But let's recall our first rule here: civility. This means, in a subject like this, that we present our ideas and arguments; but we don't attack or insult anyone in the process. Respect, please.

It's not just the deaths

Bill Houghton, Sebastopol, CA

The group of folks that are being called "long-haulers," people who are infected, survive (with or without hospitalization), but live with a cluster of symptoms for months or maybe forever (we don't know yet), have been getting more notice in the news of late, and rightly so. This particular population seems to run across a much broader age range than the (risk of) death.

A month or so, I ran into an acquaintance I hadn't seen since March at the hardware store. She told me that she'd been one of the early cases here - that is, in March - and that she's still dealing with symptoms. I don't recall all of them, but she described a burden of effects, starting with brain fog.

And the value of the public health measures is, in my judgment, confirmed by some of the unintentional experiments in areas where just about no one wore a mask and nothing shut down - and, before people knew it, the hospitals were shipping people out of state because they'd hit capacity.