General Discussion/Q&A on Coronavirus (COVID-19)

[drron]

The UK human challenge results are out. 34 young people challenged with a set dose of a pre alpha covid variant. 18 of the 34 developed covid. 16 were symptomatic. Interestingly 5 of the 16 who did not develop covid got symptoms. They were seronegative.
LFTs were useful in predicting viable virus.

https://assets.researchsquare.com/files/rs-1121993/v1/2f0e9953-432e-4601-b98e-4ae5c08e025d.pdf?c=1644278080%EF%BC%9B2

 

[Must...Fly!]

The UK human challenge results are out. 34 young people challenged with a set dose of a pre alpha covid variant. 18 of the 34 developed covid. 16 were symptomatic. Interestingly 5 of the 16 who did not develop covid got symptoms. They were seronegative.
LFTs were useful in predicting viable virus.

https://assets.researchsquare.com/files/rs-1121993/v1/2f0e9953-432e-4601-b98e-4ae5c08e025d.pdf?c=1644278080%EF%BC%9B2

Hopefully long after the government imprint and legacy is gone, we will have gained a lot of scientific knowledge about infectious viral diseases due to the years long obsession with this one.

 

[Pushka]

What? You have a new government? The Murdock brisbane Courier Mail has 4 stories anti labor (by Bolt, Credlin and others) but essentially no mention of the SA election. Hilarious.

Well that makes a change

 

[JessicaTam]

After a miserable week of the 'flu from well' and -ve results I finally get a +ve PCR result. Go figure.

If my symptoms are representative for a triple vaccinated pax, then I fear for anyone who isn't.

Another week off work - and I might even get back to that trip report.

 

[Quickstatus]

The UK human challenge

An inoculation model would be a good to have to elucidate viral and host behaviours.
Unfortunately numbers were too small to be able to validate such a model.

 

[drron]

So Shanghai with the same population as Australia is being completely shut down because there were 3500 cases in a day. Methinks you could at least add a 0 to that figure.

Shanghai locks down as COVID surges in China's financial hub

Shanghai launched a two-stage lockdown of its 26 million residents on Monday, closing bridges and tunnels and restricting highway traffic in a scramble to contain surging COVID-19 cases.

www.reuters.com

 

[cwphoto]

Question is, ideally, what should we have done?

Protect the vulnerable, leave the rest of us to live our life as normal.

 

[Lynda2475]

Pfizer offers $100m to buy Brisbane company behind app that diagnoses COVID-19

Pfizer offers $100 million to buy a ResApp, a company that has invented a smartphone app it says can diagnose COVID-19 by listening to someone cough.

www.abc.net.au

Interesting, but talking with colleagues who have had covid recently only 1/9 had a cough at all.

 

[Pushka]

Pfizer offers $100m to buy Brisbane company behind app that diagnoses COVID-19

Pfizer offers $100 million to buy a ResApp, a company that has invented a smartphone app it says can diagnose COVID-19 by listening to someone cough.

www.abc.net.au

Interesting, but talking with colleagues who have had covid recently only 1/9 had a cough at all.

I've heard people complain of stomach upsets, very sore throats, fevers, breathless, coughs, but no one has complained of more than one or two. A friends 6 year old, vaxxed, had the stomach version. He was very ill while sitting on the toilet and was dizzy and fainted. He hit his head and the bruise was significant - half his face. So add a degree of concussion. Thirty year old nephew experiencing significant fatigue and sinusitis four weeks post. Double vaxxed.

 

[JessicaTam]

I've heard people complain of stomach upsets, very sore throats, fevers, breathless, coughs, but no one has complained of more than one or two. A friends 6 year old, vaxxed, had the stomach version. He was very ill while sitting on the toilet and was dizzy and fainted. He hit his head and the bruise was significant - half his face. So add a degree of concussion. Thirty year old nephew experiencing significant fatigue and sinusitis four weeks post. Double vaxxed.

Well at my worst I had a very sore throat, cough, headache, lethargy, fever, sweats, breathless. That was a fun couple of weeks.

No stomach upset or loss of taste/smell. I am heading into week 5 with headache, sore throat, lethargy and occasional cough. I am seeing a doctor weekly as we try different things.

Thank science I am triple vacced, as I don't know how I would be without them.

 

[cwphoto]

Thank science I am triple vacced, as I don't know how I would be without them.

 

[Must...Fly!]

I don't want to come across as insulting to either you or @JessicaTam

I think your post is insensitive to how @JessicaTam has been dealing with COVID

However at the same time I think I understand your point even though it is not articulated at all. I have seen an increasing number of posts on social media in the past few months similar to the above, thank god for double/triple/quadruple jabs. The problem is of course that I don't think we can really know if the vaccines have made any difference in the health outcome for the patient. We can make sweeping generalisations based on population wide data, but we cannot be sure of the impact on a single person. There is every chance symptoms and condition would've been exactly the same, better, or worse, vaccination (x2/3/4/5 etc) or no vaccination at all.

I don't think it's scientific denialism to discuss the above, but would be curious to hear the views of others.

 

[Pushka]

I don't want to come across as insulting to either you or @JessicaTam

I think your post is insensitive to how @JessicaTam has been dealing with COVID

However at the same time I think I understand your point even though it is not articulated at all. I have seen an increasing number of posts on social media in the past few months similar to the above, thank god for double/triple/quadruple jabs. The problem is of course that I don't think we can really know if the vaccines have made any difference in the health outcome for the patient. We can make sweeping generalisations based on population wide data, but we cannot be sure of the impact on a single person. There is every chance symptoms and condition would've been exactly the same, better, or worse, vaccination (x2/3/4/5 etc) or no vaccination at all.

I don't think it's scientific denialism to discuss the above, but would be curious to hear the views of others.

Such is the case with absolutely every preventive action we have ever implemented. In the case of Covid we will never know if vaccinated people who develop severe covid may have been the souls who would have succumbed to it. And because every one of us is biologically unique there will be those who are not vaccinated who won't even catch Covid or if they do may not even know it. Pre-emptively none of us knows where that die will fall. People who are vaccinated will continue to die, because we all will die eventually and sometimes may die whilst positive. Doesn't mean the latter caused the former.

 

[drron]

The truth is that the majority of those who are unvaccinated and develop covid have asymptomatic or mild disease. The question should be why do those who have had 3 or 4 doses of vaccine develop symptomatic disease.

Here are the results of mortality from Covid in young people in the UK in the year ending February 2021. The vast majority unvaccinated as the older ages were vaccinated first. In an average 12 months there would be just over 3000 deaths in young people. 25 in that 12 months died of covid. A rate of 2 per million.

Deaths in Children and Young People in England following SARS-CoV-2 infection during the first pandemic year: a national study using linked mandatory child death reporting data

BackgroundDeaths in children and young people (CYP) following SARS-CoV-2 infection are rare. Quantifying the risk of mortality is challenging because of high relative prevalence of asymptomatic and non-specific disease manifestations. Therefore, it is important to differentiate...

www.researchsquare.com

The deaths were reviewed and not surprisingly it was predominantly those with co morbidities including obesity who died.

We find that the odds of severe disease in hospitalised children is increased in those with multiple co-morbidities, cardiac and neurological co-morbidities and those who are obese. However, the additional risk compared to children without co-morbidity is small.

Which children and young people are at higher risk of severe disease and death after SARS-CoV-2 infection: a systematic review and individual patient meta-analysis

Background We aimed to use individual patient data to describe pre-existing factors associated with severe disease, primarily admission to critical care, and death secondary to SARS-CoV-2 infection in children and young people (CYP) in hospital. Methods We searched Pubmed, European PMC, Medline...

www.medrxiv.org

 

[drron]

And why you can't believe Chinese Covid Data. Officially no one has died in this outbreak. But....

Covid China: Elderly deaths contradict Shanghai figures

Official figures claim there have been no Covid deaths in the current outbreak.

www.bbc.com

 

[andye]

I don't want to come across as insulting to either you or @JessicaTam

I think your post is insensitive to how @JessicaTam has been dealing with COVID

However at the same time I think I understand your point even though it is not articulated at all. I have seen an increasing number of posts on social media in the past few months similar to the above, thank god for double/triple/quadruple jabs. The problem is of course that I don't think we can really know if the vaccines have made any difference in the health outcome for the patient. We can make sweeping generalisations based on population wide data, but we cannot be sure of the impact on a single person. There is every chance symptoms and condition would've been exactly the same, better, or worse, vaccination (x2/3/4/5 etc) or no vaccination at all.

I don't think it's scientific denialism to discuss the above, but would be curious to hear the views of others.

I take your point that one can never know what would have happened to an individual but "every chance" is a step too far.
Almost all of medicine is about probabilities and the chance that an individual would have been worse-off without vaccination is quite clear from the data.

 

[cwphoto]

Almost all of medicine is about probabilities and the chance that an individual would have been worse-off without vaccination is quite clear from the data.

Specifically which data?

Over 100k recorded adverse reactions and 2k800 deaths associated with the vaccine in Aus alone is also data.

Nothing is clear.

 

[Pushka]

Specifically which data?

Over 100k recorded adverse reactions and 2k deaths associated with the vaccine in Aus alone is also data.

Nothing is clear.

Where are you getting the data on 2000 deaths in Australia? Currently 11. Adverse effects? At what level of seriousness? I'd expect everyone would have had some kind of adverse effect but most wouldn't think it of any consequence to report it. Of course many are very serious but a tender arm is nothing compared with the heart and clotting issues some have had to deal with.

| Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA)

www.tga.gov.au

 

[Lynda2475]

2k deaths associated with the vaccine in Aus alone

This number is total BS, TGA have to report all vaccine related deaths there have been 11 and all were related to AZ (which whilst still available is not the recommended vaccine for any age group).

Also wrt adverse reactions, for other vaccines you dont typically get emailed 3 follow-up surveys for each dose as there was with Covid. Most adverse reactions were mild (i.e. a sore arm or headache) and resolved quickly.

Further vaccinated people who have die from covid have mostly been elderly and almost all have had serious comorbidities. The excess death rate in Australia since covid began has fallen, so neither Covid nor the vaccines have seen more people dying than woudl ahve typically died in a year pre-covid.

Anyone over 5 who chooses not to get vaccinated is choosing to risk being one fo the few who will get seriously ill if they get covid.

 

[cwphoto]

This number is total BS, TGA have to report all vaccine related deaths there have been 11 and all were related to AZ (which whilst still available is not the recommended vaccine for any age group).

Also wrt adverse reactions, for other vaccines you dont typically get emailed 3 follow-up surveys for each dose as there was with Covid. Most adverse reactions were mild (i.e. a sore arm or headache) and resolved quickly.

Further vaccinated people who have die from covid have mostly been elderly and almost all have had serious comorbidities. The excess death rate in Australia since covid began has fallen, so neither Covid nor the vaccines have seen more people dying than woudl ahve typically died in a year pre-covid.

Anyone over 5 who chooses not to get vaccinated is choosing to risk being one fo the few who will get seriously ill if they get covid.

My mistake, it's ~800: