Coronavirus Outbreak

[Biblical Anabaptist]

What's your source for this information?

https://wexnermedical.osu.edu/blog/how- ... his%20way.

Regardless of which vaccine you get, you won’t reach full protection until two weeks after your second or final dose. That’s about how long it takes your immune system to mount an antibody response to the vaccine.

While it is true that "full protection" won't be achieved until two weeks after the second vaccination, some immunity develops early on after the first shot - it is not an all-or-nothing as you might suggest. In the graph, the initial decline in nursing home deaths (after vaccination started) tracks the decline among the general public. After a couple weeks there was an increase in deaths among the general public but a continuing decrease in deaths among those vaccinated in nursing homes. If herd immunity was the cause of the decrease it would have caused a decrease in the general population and the nursing home patients who had been vaccinated. Another graph shows this difference even more clearly:


It's not a matter of "each seeing what we want to see", it's a matter of seeing what is plainly evident and not rejecting the truth simply because it contradicts the anti-vaccination narrative.

Thanks for that. That is the first chart I have seen with that information. Are we to conclude that the overall drop in deaths may only be a reflection of the rather dramatic drop in nursing home deaths?

In MD the current daily positive test numbers are around 1/3 of what they were around the first of the year. As of yesterday approx 26% of the population had received the vaccine, Would you conclude that the decline in positive tests being faster than the rate of vaccination is because those receiving the vaccine are the more vulnerable?

BTW, I am not an anti-vaxxer per se but neither do I get vaccinated for every potential disease that a vaccine has been developed for.

[GaryK]

Good news on the treatment front.

Eli Lilly COVID-19 drug combo cuts risk of hospitalizations, deaths by 87%: study

https://www.foxnews.com/health/eli-lill ... y-87-study

[Wayne in Maine]

Are we to conclude that the overall drop in deaths may only be a reflection of the rather dramatic drop in nursing home deaths?

Not likely all, but given that nursing home deaths are such a large proportion of Covid deaths (less than 1% of the US population live in nursing homes, but they account for 34% of Covid deaths!) it certainly contributes.

In MD the current daily positive test numbers are around 1/3 of what they were around the first of the year. As of yesterday approx 26% of the population had received the vaccine, Would you conclude that the decline in positive tests being faster than the rate of vaccination is because those receiving the vaccine are the more vulnerable?

We had a big spike throughout the US in January, the combination of the general decline in new cases and vaccination will of course bring the positive test rate down.

[ken_sylvania]

To what do you attribute the reduction in deaths if not the vaccines?

The disease has run its course. We are reaching herd immunity. Could the vaccine hasten that? Possibly. But every pandemic of the past has has eventfully" burned itself out" either by reaching herd immunity because there are no more susceptible hosts or we have learned how to contain the disease and sometimes that has been vaccines.

I can assure you that the vaccine is having an impact in reducing the deaths among nursing home patients. "Run its course" and " burned itself out" means that all or most of the nursing home patients that were susceptible have died. The fact is that many, many nursing homes with susceptible populations experienced few or no deaths at all (because of masking, isolation and other practices), and with their residents vaccinated they can open up to visitors without risking exposure to the virus (as they are doing at my wife's Memory Care facility).

I don't know how you can objectively look at the graph that was posted and conclude that the vaccine is not responsible for the reduction in deaths among nursing home patients. Are you suggesting that it is mere coincidence that nursing home deaths began to decline precisely when the vaccine started to be deployed to these patients?

Here's what I had said earlier about the graph. I'm very willing to be corrected on this though if there is a better way to understand this.

That chart seems to suggest something other than vaccines is at work in reducing nursing home deaths. It is fairly well established that the death curve has generally been lagging the case count curve by a couple weeks. In order to believe that the decline in deaths is primarily associated with vaccination, one would have to conclude either that giving the vaccine to already sick people helps to keep them from dying, as the folks who died between Dec. 20th and Jan. 4th were almost certainly already sick by Dec. 20th. Very few vaccines were actually administered in nursing homes before the end of the year, which would suggest that vaccines could hardly have had any measurable impact before Jan. 15th at the absolute earliest, and even that early of a date is probably a stretch.

[mike]

With the Covid Tracking Project shutting down, I'm back to checking worldometers for charts.

Daily new cases aren't dropping as precipitously as they were, but still trending down. We're seeing about the same number of daily new cases as we were last October.



Daily new deaths are still steadily trending downward, now down to near 1,500 deaths per day. We last saw this rate in November.



The overall picture is that although the third and worst wave of the virus is now over, we are now just under the number of daily new cases, and considerably higher in the number of daily new deaths, that we saw in the peak of the second wave of the virus.

The Northeast continues to hold the record number of deaths/million; the states at the very top are unlikely to change at this point.



The three populous states of Texas, Florida, and California have continued to hang around the mid range of deaths/million.

[Josh]

Are you claiming that there had been no deaths at that nursing home until the residents were vaccinated? I think you want us to believe that 11 people were killed by the vaccine. Could you tell us the name and location of this home so that we can read the news reports of this sudden death of 11 residents?

Wayne,

I’ll discuss this offline with you.

I would prefer that you clarify your remarks on the same forum as you made them.

I’m not at liberty to go into further detail further. As far as I can tell, there are no public news reports about this.

[Robert]

https://www.theblaze.com/news/stanford- ... th-mistake

Bhattacharya began the interview discussing the Great Barrington Declaration, which he co-authored. The document argues that COVID-19 lockdowns "are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health. The results (to name a few) include lower childhood vaccination rates, worsening cardiovascular disease outcomes, fewer cancer screenings and deteriorating mental health – leading to greater excess mortality in years to come, with the working class and younger members of society carrying the heaviest burden. Keeping students out of school is a grave injustice." It adds that "keeping these measures in place until a vaccine is available will cause irreparable damage, with the underprivileged disproportionately harmed."

Bhattacharya also noted that "the lockdown harms are worse than COVID" and that "the harm to people is catastrophic." His reasoning is that "public health" means a whole lot more than protection from a virus, and that people need many more things in life in order to stay healthy — not only physically but also mentally and emotionally — such as interaction with friends and the ability to earn a living, which lockdowns have prevented.

[RZehr]

https://www.theblaze.com/news/stanford- ... th-mistake

Bhattacharya began the interview discussing the Great Barrington Declaration, which he co-authored. The document argues that COVID-19 lockdowns "are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health. The results (to name a few) include lower childhood vaccination rates, worsening cardiovascular disease outcomes, fewer cancer screenings and deteriorating mental health – leading to greater excess mortality in years to come, with the working class and younger members of society carrying the heaviest burden. Keeping students out of school is a grave injustice." It adds that "keeping these measures in place until a vaccine is available will cause irreparable damage, with the underprivileged disproportionately harmed."

Bhattacharya also noted that "the lockdown harms are worse than COVID" and that "the harm to people is catastrophic." His reasoning is that "public health" means a whole lot more than protection from a virus, and that people need many more things in life in order to stay healthy — not only physically but also mentally and emotionally — such as interaction with friends and the ability to earn a living, which lockdowns have prevented.

A big mistake with the handling of this was simply that far to much focus/consideration/weight was give solely to "fighting" the spread of the virus. It would have been better to take a lot more considerations into account. But that is what you get when you turn the problem over to the Fauci. That is his bailiwick, so of course that is what he is going to focus on. It isn't his job to take all things into consideration. He should have advised, along with many others.
Compound that by government officials with their authority and responsibility, having nothing really to gain by taking any risk, and everything to lose, of course things are going to get out of whack. Every government official with decision making influence and authority really should have had their pay docked by about 25% or so, until this thing was done. Just to add some balance. And that money saved should have helped fund stuff like bailouts, and business licenses and commercial property taxes.

[RZehr]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/covid-cases- ... 20317.html
COVID cases continue to fall in Florida despite variants, hinting that America could avoid a '4th wave'

So what is happening in Florida? Some force, or forces, seem to be exerting more downward pressure on transmission than whatever upward pressure B.1.1.7 is able to muster.

Immunity is probably the most powerful of these forces. An estimated 30 percent or more of Floridians have already contracted COVID-19, which helps them resist future infection. Roughly 18 percent of the population has received at least one vaccine dose. There’s overlap between these two groups, which means that about 40 percent of Floridians now have some protection against COVID.

In comparison, just 7 percent of Italians have gotten jabbed, and fewer than 10 percent have been infected. Given that B.1.1.7 doesn’t seem to evade either vaccine- or infection-induced immunity, the share of susceptible individuals in a state like Florida is relatively small, and getting smaller with each vaccination.

Then there’s timing to consider. In places like England and Ireland, B.1.1.7 took hold late last year — just in time to intensify surges triggered by cold-weather holiday gatherings. In Florida, however, the variant didn’t gain steam until after the holidays ended and cases had started to fall. Transmission begets transmission, and even an opportunistic variant like B.1.1.7 will have a tougher time reversing a downward trajectory than steepening an upward one.

Florida’s weather has likely worked against B.1.1.7 as well. Researchers are still learning how climate affects the virus, but some studies suggest that when the air is humid, droplets fall to the ground faster, so people are less likely to become infected; other studies have hinted at possible correlations between transmission and sunlight (or pollen, or wind). Regardless of where the science ultimately lands, Florida does have the mildest winters in the continental U.S., with daytime highs that range from 64°F in Tallahassee to 77°F in Miami and overnight lows that tend to linger in the 50s or 60s. Translation: In January, February and March, it’s easier to be outdoors in Florida than most other places.

America’s overall immunity numbers are almost identical to Florida’s: 30 percent infected, 19 percent vaccinated, about 40 percent protected to some degree.

[Robert]

America’s overall immunity numbers are almost identical to Florida’s: 30 percent infected, 19 percent vaccinated, about 40 percent protected to some degree.

If these numbers are correct, this would mean herd immunity is twice as impactful of the downward trajectory of the cases we are seeing right now. Vaccines are helping, but must would seem to be from immunity those who have been infected. If we would not have shuttered, we may have reached this stage much sooner.