Biblical Anabaptist wrote: ↑Mon Sep 20, 2021 1:25 pmQuestion. There is a lot of noise about the Delta variant. When someone is tested for Covid, does the test differentiate between the Alpha variant and the Delta variant, or is it simply assumed that most or all current cases are the Delta variant?
Testing for the delta variant is time consuming and expensive, so health departments will do a "sampling" where they just test a handful of new cases, and then assume all cases match that percentage.
I'm not sure why there is so much noise about different variants - COVID is COVID. Have you ever sat around wondering which strain of the flu or of the common cold you have? Natural immunity seems to extend to all variants (unlike the vaccine, which doesn't protect against newer variants at all).
ken_sylvania wrote: ↑Mon Sep 20, 2021 1:14 pmIf I'm understanding you correctly, you are saying you are not making the claim that there's no difference in effectiveness - you're just repeating what the authors of the paper have stated, which is that there's no difference in effectiveness. Is that what you're saying?
Yes, that's exactly what I was saying in that quote. That the authors did not find a difference in effectiveness in their analysis of the data.
Josh wrote: ↑Mon Sep 20, 2021 11:59 am
The data simply supports what nett is asserting. Breakthrough infections exist. Re-infections with COVID don't. The vaccine is less effective than natural immunity. The end.
This is simply false. Many thousands of people have caught Covid twice and sometimes three times, including some who participate on this very forum. Are they all lying? So re-infections with Covid clearly do happen. It might well be the case that they are less common than breakthrough infections of vaccinated people. That is not a question that I have personally taken a deep dive into because the idea of catching Covid to avoid getting Covid seems rather self-defeating. And I’m not searching for any excuse to avoid the vaccines.
There is a lot of data out there on the re-infection rates for people who have previously caught Covid. But most of it was gathered prior to the recent Delta wave so only really applied to catching the Alpha variant twice. It appears that re-infections are becoming more common with the current Delta wave which stands to reason because the Delta variant is much more infectious. And possibly because natural immunity, like vaccine immunity, wanes over time.
Question. There is a lot of noise about the Delta variant. When someone is tested for Covid, does the test differentiate between the Alpha variant and the Delta variant, or is it simply assumed that most or all current cases are the Delta variant?
Ordinary PCR tests or rapid tests that you would normally take to check for Covid are able to detect all of the Covid variants, but they do not distinguish between which variant you have. So all you get back in terms of results is a positive or negative result. They won’t tell you what variant is present.
To identify specific variants requires more sophisticated genomic sequencing, which is something that many regional health department and university labs can do. But they normally just collect a small subsample of cases in a region for genomic sequencing so they can get rough estimates of the spread of the different variants. I don’t know what the exact percentages are, but maybe only 1 out of 100, or even 1 out of 1000 Covid cases get subsequently sequenced to determine the variant present.
Right now I think it is mostly all Delta variant present in the US and the previous Alpha variant has all but vanished. But there are also other new variants popping up as well.
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A fool can throw out more questions than a wise man can answer. -RZehr
ken_sylvania wrote: ↑Mon Sep 20, 2021 1:14 pmIf I'm understanding you correctly, you are saying you are not making the claim that there's no difference in effectiveness - you're just repeating what the authors of the paper have stated, which is that there's no difference in effectiveness. Is that what you're saying?
Yes, that's exactly what I was saying in that quote. That the authors did not find a difference in effectiveness in their analysis of the data.
Of course they didn't - that's a "forbidden" conclusion, and no scientist that doesn't want to lose their job is going to make such a claim.
But at least the data was presented so we could make that decision for ourselves.
Josh wrote: ↑Mon Sep 20, 2021 1:27 pm
No, there's not data supporting what you're claiming. Point to any reliable data showing people who get COVID twice (where they get both symptoms and a positive COVID test). It simply doesn't happen. Re-infections are a unicorn.
Most alleged cases of re-infection involve getting a different respiratory disease (possibly a different coronavirus). It is surprising when someone thinks they are re-infected, go get a test, and it comes up negative, but re-infections simply are not something that happens.
Breakthrough cases, on the other hand, are extremely common, which is why the vaccine is worse than useless.
There are dozens of studies out there that are examining the rate of Covid re-infections and it is most certainly not zero as you claim. Here is one such study from April that looked at reinfection rates for the Alpha variant. The numbers have only gone up since then with the Delta variant and the waning of natural immunity as time goes by. https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspec ... fection-84
Yes, having previously caught Covid does provide strong natural immunity. But it is not 100% as you claim.
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A fool can throw out more questions than a wise man can answer. -RZehr
ken_sylvania wrote: ↑Mon Sep 20, 2021 1:14 pmIf I'm understanding you correctly, you are saying you are not making the claim that there's no difference in effectiveness - you're just repeating what the authors of the paper have stated, which is that there's no difference in effectiveness. Is that what you're saying?
Yes, that's exactly what I was saying in that quote. That the authors did not find a difference in effectiveness in their analysis of the data.
Well.... OK then.
To me, that's a distinction without a difference, but whatever...
Ken wrote: ↑Mon Sep 20, 2021 1:43 pmThere are dozens of studies out there that are examining the rate of Covid re-infections and it is most certainly not zero as you claim. Here is one such study from April that looked at reinfection rates for the Alpha variant. The numbers have only gone up since then with the Delta variant and the waning of natural immunity as time goes by. https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspec ... fection-84
Yes, having previously caught Covid does provide strong natural immunity. But it is not 100% as you claim.
Ken wrote: ↑Mon Sep 20, 2021 1:43 pmThere are dozens of studies out there that are examining the rate of Covid re-infections and it is most certainly not zero as you claim. Here is one such study from April that looked at reinfection rates for the Alpha variant. The numbers have only gone up since then with the Delta variant and the waning of natural immunity as time goes by. https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspec ... fection-84
Yes, having previously caught Covid does provide strong natural immunity. But it is not 100% as you claim.
To quote Bootstrap, "statistically, that's zero".
I try not to quote Bootstrap! I’ll leave that task for you.
In any event, the large-scale study I quoted above, which was originally published in the Lancet found that people who had previously caught Covid had an 84% lower chance of catching it again compared to a control group of unvaccinated people who had never caught Covid. That represents significant immunity to the disease. But it isn’t 100%. And the number is actually falling with the new more infectious variants and natural waning of immunity over time.
0 x
A fool can throw out more questions than a wise man can answer. -RZehr
Ken wrote: ↑Mon Sep 20, 2021 1:43 pmThere are dozens of studies out there that are examining the rate of Covid re-infections and it is most certainly not zero as you claim. Here is one such study from April that looked at reinfection rates for the Alpha variant. The numbers have only gone up since then with the Delta variant and the waning of natural immunity as time goes by. https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspec ... fection-84
Yes, having previously caught Covid does provide strong natural immunity. But it is not 100% as you claim.
To quote Bootstrap, "statistically, that's zero".
I try not to quote Bootstrap! I’ll leave that task for you.
In any event, the large-scale study I quoted above, which was originally published in the Lancet found that people who had previously caught Covid had an 84% lower chance of catching it again compared to a control group of unvaccinated people who had never caught Covid. That represents significant immunity to the disease. But it isn’t 100%. And the number is actually falling with the new more infectious variants and natural waning of immunity over time.
that number is falling? Show me the data please.
The April study has 50% of the reinfections as asymptomatic? Sounds like a lot of false positives. they also used PCR tests from prior to cycle threshold adjustments that occurred late last year. With that in mind, you can attribute the findings of that study mostly to test error noise.
The Clinic study is much more reliable, because their testing procedures basically eliminated false positives.
ken_sylvania wrote: ↑Mon Sep 20, 2021 1:14 pmIf I'm understanding you correctly, you are saying you are not making the claim that there's no difference in effectiveness - you're just repeating what the authors of the paper have stated, which is that there's no difference in effectiveness. Is that what you're saying?
Yes, that's exactly what I was saying in that quote. That the authors did not find a difference in effectiveness in their analysis of the data.
Well.... OK then.
To me, that's a distinction without a difference, but whatever...
Bootstrap is demonstrating the precise art of doublethink. The study clears shows a difference, the authors do not conclude that there is a difference (because it would be wrongthink), therefore we conclude there is no difference.
