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*** OFFICIAL *** COVID-19 CoronaVirus Thread. Fresh epidemic fears as child pneumonia cases surge in Europe after China outbreak. NOW in USA (4 Viewers)

They aren't the only ones forecasting a 4th wave in swing states.  The 4th wave maybe hyper localized where Pfizer/JJ was more heavily used over the superior Moderna and you got these people with waning immunity going into peak flu seaon in places where there is still green wood to burn.
Thought we were done?

Hospitalizations dropping sharply now in Texas.   ICU not really budging, but hs peaked.   Should be out of this surge by Halloween.  Not clear there's enough fuel for a 4th yet. 


All and all delta seems like no big deal.  We move on.  By we. I mean the non horse paste eaters. 

No real serious variant is behind this.  Shut it down we done 


Its still over and been over since March.  If you live in a red area. Sorry.  Delta was a non event. 


More or less this,  It's hard to fathom those that still think this is really a big deal or has been since roughly end of March.  If it's a big deal it's either of your own paranoia or you are a horse.  Some people do enjoy watching the world burn though and it's been entertaining.  

 
It's been done since March.  Some morons insist on it not being done for them.  I shouldn't have to clarify surges as being surges for idiots, and conservative talk radio hosts.  
I get what you are saying but a couple thousand people a day dying from it doesn't feel like done to me. You can keep pushing it but I disagree with the narrative.

 
I get what you are saying but a couple thousand people a day dying from it doesn't feel like done to me. You can keep pushing it but I disagree with the narrative.


It's sad for the hospital workers that have to put up with the stress and low pay.  I would agree with that.  For everyone else it's over.  

 
It's sad for the hospital workers that have to put up with the stress and low pay.  I would agree with that.  For everyone else it's over.  
How about the family member and friends of those who have died recently? I mean, it is pretty much over for me, in that I dont' wear a mask anymore, I have started to go see live shows again, I hang out in people's houses, etc. But I tell you, that if my dad got covid and died, or my kids teacher did, or my lunatic cousin did - well, it wouldn't feel like it was over anymore

 
How about the family member and friends of those who have died recently? I mean, it is pretty much over for me, in that I dont' wear a mask anymore, I have started to go see live shows again, I hang out in people's houses, etc. But I tell you, that if my dad got covid and died, or my kids teacher did, or my lunatic cousin did - well, it wouldn't feel like it was over anymore


Dying of this is a personal decision at this point. It can still ruin your day with a shot if you get it, but nobody that is even remotely healthy is dying of this thing with a shot.  These scare hypotheticals just don't work anymore.  

 
Dying of this is a personal decision at this point. It can still ruin your day with a shot if you get it, but nobody that is even remotely healthy is dying of this thing with a shot.  These scare hypotheticals just don't work anymore.  
It's not a hypothetical though. Well, I mean in my case it is, but there are thousands of friends and family members acorss the country who are losing loved ones every day. So while we may like to pretend it is over for everyone but overworked hospital workers, that is just not true.

 
How about the family member and friends of those who have died recently? I mean, it is pretty much over for me, in that I dont' wear a mask anymore, I have started to go see live shows again, I hang out in people's houses, etc. But I tell you, that if my dad got covid and died, or my kids teacher did, or my lunatic cousin did - well, it wouldn't feel like it was over anymore
They made their bed. They need to lie in it.

 
Dying of this is a personal decision at this point. It can still ruin your day with a shot if you get it, but nobody that is even remotely healthy is dying of this thing with a shot.  These scare hypotheticals just don't work anymore.  

 

Scare tactics are working right now on both sides of the debate. Many are still worried sick about getting covid (despite being vaccinated) and many refuse to get vaccinated due to being scared, thus putting their lives at risk.

Fake news on both sides has never been stronger.

 
BREAKING: Moderna protection did not wane at nearly 7 months.

summary nuggets:

  • Two studies were just published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). One looks at Covid-19 in healthcare workers, assessing the benefits of vaccination. The other reports the follow-up data from the original landmark Moderna clinical trial, now taken through the completion of the “blinded phase” during which the participants did not know whether they had received vaccine or placebo.
  • If you look at the graphs of the Moderna study, it’s clear to the naked eye that even 3 months out from a completed vaccination series, breakthrough Covid-19 illnesses were starting to mount. And if you looked into the recesses of the study’s appendix (okay, I already did that for you), you would find that the same was true of all infection, not just documented symptomatic illnesses. Meanwhile, severe Covid-19 remained virtually unheard of among vaccine recipients, even almost 7 months out.
  • This strongly implies that breakthrough hospitalizations that occurred this summer had something to do with waning protection against infection but far more to do with the Delta variant’s ability to simply cause more infections in the first place.
  • These data clearly show that vaccine effectiveness against infection decreased after an early honeymoon period (~6 months after 2nd dose), but that a rise in breakthrough infections did not coincide with a rise in severe disease during the period that the researchers studied.
  • In the case of the Moderna vaccine, the “honeymoon phase” appears to last around 6 weeks after the 2nd dose. After that, a few breakthrough infections started to occur. The great news is that there is no sudden increase in infections the further out you look in the data so far.
  • we know that millions of Americans got vaccinated in the late winter and spring of 2021, a few of whom have had breakthrough cases and among whom an even smaller subset had severe disease requiring hospitalization. But if some of those people experienced breakthrough infection around 4-6 months out from their injections (which we have seen in datasets from Israel and elsewhere) during the Delta period, while the initial cohort of Moderna trial participants did not experience this in the winter and spring, when they had reached the 6-month mark—which today’s trial results explicitly show—then I say again: it’s Delta, folks.
  • Today’s news, though, underscores two points. First, expecting the available coronavirus vaccines to maintain more than 90% effectiveness against infection is unrealistic after the honeymoon phase. Second, the fact that protection against severe disease persists as long as it does (up to 7 months and maybe far longer) for most people means that we can get the answers we need on boosting lower-risk populations without skipping vital steps that will help us assure that safety is maintained and that the presence or absence or any additional benefit is identified.
  • Do these new findings from Moderna imply superiority over Pfizer? After all, Pfizer argued to the US Food and Drug Administration last week that its vaccine protection was waning, and thus boosters were needed. No. The likely scenario is that both Moderna and Pfizer are holding up well. We'll see that when Pfizer releases more data showing results from its trial participants during the winter and spring. So far, Pfizer has provided somewhat less information. In its 6 month follow up trial from last week, effectiveness against severe illness remained very high while protection against Covid-19 illness late in their trial dipped to 84%. Some of Moderna's numbers may look a bit better, but they also reported around 75% efficacy against all infection late in the trial if you look deep enough into their datasets. Overall, it's a wash.
 
Dying of this is a personal decision at this point. It can still ruin your day with a shot if you get it, but nobody that is even remotely healthy is dying of this thing with a shot.  These scare hypotheticals just don't work anymore.  
My family struggled to get my dad care for a non covid related issue for which he ultimately died. I get really angry seeing stuff like this. 

 
Great find, and excellent summary.  Thanks for posting this.

It's probably worth adding that the author of that article sees these data as evidence against boosters for "regular" people at this point.  If breakthrough infections are really just due to the delta variant as opposed to waning vaccine effectiveness, and severe covid is still super-rare among vaccinated people 7+ months out, that argues that there's no special urgency for boosters. 

 
So if I'm #boosted Moderna, does that mean I can bench-press COVID for reps now? :unsure:  *


 

* Dear COVID Gods, I'm clearly kidding. Please don't smite me with a rare breathrough severe infection. 

 
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So if I'm #boosted Moderna, does that mean I can bench-press COVID for reps now? :unsure:  *


 

* Dear COVID Gods, I'm clearly kidding. Please don't smite me with a rare breathrough severe infection. 
Sorry #teamModerna is not accepting transfer applicants at this time.

 
Great find, and excellent summary.  Thanks for posting this.

It's probably worth adding that the author of that article sees these data as evidence against boosters for "regular" people at this point.  If breakthrough infections are really just due to the delta variant as opposed to waning vaccine effectiveness, and severe covid is still super-rare among vaccinated people 7+ months out, that argues that there's no special urgency for boosters. 


Unless a booster helps prevent the vaccinated person's ability to spread.  I think that is something that should still be a high priority during this stage of the pandemic. 

 
  • Do these new findings from Moderna imply superiority over Pfizer? After all, Pfizer argued to the US Food and Drug Administration last week that its vaccine protection was waning, and thus boosters were needed. No. The likely scenario is that both Moderna and Pfizer are holding up well. We'll see that when Pfizer releases more data showing results from its trial participants during the winter and spring. So far, Pfizer has provided somewhat less information. In its 6 month follow up trial from last week, effectiveness against severe illness remained very high while protection against Covid-19 illness late in their trial dipped to 84%. Some of Moderna's numbers may look a bit better, but they also reported around 75% efficacy against all infection late in the trial if you look deep enough into their datasets. Overall, it's a wash.


#TeamModerna can't stop #winning

It's the Tiger Blood of all vaccines

:gang2:
:coffee:   :rolleyes:

 
Great find, and excellent summary.  Thanks for posting this.

It's probably worth adding that the author of that article sees these data as evidence against boosters for "regular" people at this point.  If breakthrough infections are really just due to the delta variant as opposed to waning vaccine effectiveness, and severe covid is still super-rare among vaccinated people 7+ months out, that argues that there's no special urgency for boosters. 
Yup. This is why boosters should be targeted to those that show poor antibody creation performance: the elderly and immunocompromised.  Take the "booster doses" for the regular American Joes and give them to at risk populations in the developing world. 

 
#TeamModerna can't stop #winning

It's the Tiger Blood of all vaccines

:gang2:
:hifive:

So if I'm #boosted Moderna, does that mean I can bench-press COVID for reps now? :unsure:  *

* Dear COVID Gods, I'm clearly kidding. Please don't smite me with a rare breathrough severe infection. 
You are the one person Culdeus is talking about when he says it's over. Go lick handrails at the airport in peace.

 
It sounds like we're doing kind of widespread boosters after all.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday endorsed booster shots for millions of older or otherwise vulnerable Americans, opening a major new phase in the U.S vaccination drive against COVID-19.

CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky signed off on a series of recommendations from a panel of advisers late Thursday.

The advisers said boosters should be offered to people 65 and older, nursing home residents and those ages 50 to 64 who have risky underlying health problems. The extra dose would be given once they are at least six months past their last Pfizer shot.

However, Walensky decided to make one recommendation that the panel had rejected.

The panel on Thursday voted against saying that people can get a booster if they are ages 18 to 64 years and are health-care workers or have another job that puts them at increased risk of being exposed to the virus.

But Walensky disagreed and put that recommendation back in, noting that such a move aligns with an FDA booster authorization decision earlier this week. The category she included covers people who live in institutional settings that increase their risk of exposure, such as prisons or homeless shelters, as well as health care workers.
Link.

Knowing how this process has worked so far, it seems pretty likely that this means that anybody who feels like getting a third shot should be walk into a pharmacy, say that they work in a nursing home or something, and get a booster.  

 
There is a really excellent (IMO) article in The Intercept that updates the debate over the lab leak theory, given the news that EcoHealth apparently wanted to insert a furin cleavage site into SARS-related bat coronaviruses.

A GRANT PROPOSAL written by the U.S.-based nonprofit the EcoHealth Alliance and submitted in 2018 to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, provides evidence that the group was working — or at least planning to work — on several risky areas of research. Among the scientific tasks the group described in its proposal, which was rejected by DARPA, was the creation of full-length infectious clones of bat SARS-related coronaviruses and the insertion of a tiny part of the virus known as a “proteolytic cleavage site” into bat coronaviruses. Of particular interest was a type of cleavage site able to interact with furin, an enzyme expressed in human cells.

The EcoHealth Alliance did not respond to inquiries about the document, despite having answered previous queries from The Intercept about the group’s government-funded coronavirus research. The group’s president, Peter Daszak, acknowledged the public discussion of an unfunded EcoHealth proposal in a tweet on Saturday. He did not dispute its authenticity.


Stuart Newman, a professor of cell biology who directs the developmental biology laboratory at New York Medical College, also said the fact that the viruses weren’t known to be dangerous didn’t preclude the possibility that they might become so. “That’s really disingenuous,” Newman said of the argument. “The people that are claiming natural emergence say that it begins with a bat virus that evolved to be compatible with humans. If you use that logic, then this virus could be a threat because it could also make that transition.” Newman, a longtime critic of gain-of-function research and founder of the Council for Responsible Genetics, said that the proposal confirmed some of his worst fears. “This is not like slightly stepping over the line,” said Newman. “This is doing everything that people say is going to cause a pandemic if you do it.”
The article also quotes lots of scientists who continue to be pretty confident that SARS-CoV-2 evolved naturally and jumped to humans through some as-yet-undiscovered mechanism.  That certainly remains plausible.  Also, I have absolutely no background on this topic whatsoever, so I'm in no position to adjudicate a "this guy says this thing but this other guy over here says otherwise" debate among academic virologists. 

But as an intelligent layman, it's starting to seriously strain credibility to think that it's just a coincidence that a novel bat coronavirus emerged in humans a few miles away from a BSL 4 lab that does research on novel bat coronaviruses and that this particular bat coronavirus just happens to feature a really strange abnormality that makes it more infectious to humans and that nobody could explain where that abnormality came from, except that now we know that WIV's American colleagues were proposing to cultivate exactly that type of virus a year before a virus matching that description emerged a few miles from the BSL 4 lab that employs the people the American researchers regularly work with.  I mean, could it be a coincidence?  Yeah, sure, I guess so.  But surely we should all update our priors at this point and make "lab leak" our default assumption, right?

 
Also worth noting that, according to this story, if things had gone just a little differently the world might currently be reeling from the "Chapel Hill virus."  Of course if a lab on that campus had started a global pandemic, it would have only been like the third or fourth biggest scandal in UNC history, not such a huge thing.

 
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There is a really excellent (IMO) article in The Intercept that updates the debate over the lab leak theory, given the news that EcoHealth apparently wanted to insert a furin cleavage site into SARS-related bat coronaviruses.

The article also quotes lots of scientists who continue to be pretty confident that SARS-CoV-2 evolved naturally and jumped to humans through some as-yet-undiscovered mechanism.  That certainly remains plausible.  Also, I have absolutely no background on this topic whatsoever, so I'm in no position to adjudicate a "this guy says this thing but this other guy over here says otherwise" debate among academic virologists. 

But as an intelligent layman, it's starting to seriously strain credibility to think that it's just a coincidence that a novel bat coronavirus emerged in humans a few miles away from a BSL 4 lab that does research on novel bat coronaviruses and that this particular bat coronavirus just happens to feature a really strange abnormality that makes it more infectious to humans and that nobody could explain where that abnormality came from, except that now we know that WIV's American colleagues were proposing to cultivate exactly that type of virus a year before a virus matching that description emerged a few miles from the BSL 4 lab that employs the people the American researchers regularly work with.  I mean, could it be a coincidence?  Yeah, sure, I guess so.  But surely we should all update our priors at this point and make "lab leak" our default assumption, right?
Remember when scientists said the "evidence" points to natural?

Have any of them ever said what that evidence was? 

 
There is a really excellent (IMO) article in The Intercept that updates the debate over the lab leak theory, given the news that EcoHealth apparently wanted to insert a furin cleavage site into SARS-related bat coronaviruses.

The article also quotes lots of scientists who continue to be pretty confident that SARS-CoV-2 evolved naturally and jumped to humans through some as-yet-undiscovered mechanism.  That certainly remains plausible.  Also, I have absolutely no background on this topic whatsoever, so I'm in no position to adjudicate a "this guy says this thing but this other guy over here says otherwise" debate among academic virologists. 

But as an intelligent layman, it's starting to seriously strain credibility to think that it's just a coincidence that a novel bat coronavirus emerged in humans a few miles away from a BSL 4 lab that does research on novel bat coronaviruses and that this particular bat coronavirus just happens to feature a really strange abnormality that makes it more infectious to humans and that nobody could explain where that abnormality came from, except that now we know that WIV's American colleagues were proposing to cultivate exactly that type of virus a year before a virus matching that description emerged a few miles from the BSL 4 lab that employs the people the American researchers regularly work with.  I mean, could it be a coincidence?  Yeah, sure, I guess so.  But surely we should all update our priors at this point and make "lab leak" our default assumption, right?
I definitely agree a lab leak related to GOF research is plausible, but it’s not totally wacky to believe SARS-CoV-2 jumped species, just like original recipe SARS and MERS coronaviruses before it. There are other betacoronaviruses (MERS-CoV) and more distant coronavirus relatives with sites amenable to furin cleavage. We just lack the intermediate host and ancestral strain, but these have proven quite elusive with other zoonoses, like Ebola, whose origins are still a bit murky.

Another good example is HIV. AIDS was first described in 1981, but the virus wasn’t isolated until 1983/84, and the link to simian immunodeficiency virus took several more years, until the late 80s/early 90s. So it took roughly a decade to piece the origins together, and that occurred in places much more transparent than China.

 
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Also worth noting that, according to this story, if things had gone just a little differently the world might currently be reeling from the "Chapel Hill virus."  Of course if a lab on that campus had started a global pandemic, it would have only been like the third or fourth biggest scandal in UNC history, not such a huge thing.
https://forums.footballguys.com/topic/673466-stock-thread/?do=findComment&comment=22803183

Check the link above and look at the date. 

I did my own research and even before the theory you mention started gaining traction—I posted it.  Several weeks before I posted this in the stock thread—I pm’d @fantasycurse42 and @chet about the details of my findings—as we were discussing its ramifications about a particular stock.  There is far more evidence supporting a lab leak hypotheses versus the virus evolving naturally.  If the virus evolved naturally—there should be a population of people that can be tracked down to have gotten the virus first. The evidence (which much of it China destroyed or took down from the database) indicates that scientists from the lab were among the first people to have gotten it. Unless people are naive enough to believe that the very virus that they were messing with happened to naturally mutate in the lab that they were working—the unaided “natural” evolution theory does not add up.  The scientific community and multiple governments are incentivized to discredit the lab leak hypotheses because the Wuhan lab did feature international scientists—they all weren’t just Chinese. Secondly—the world of scientific research is greatly propelled and reliant on funding/grants.  If one of the deadliest diseases/events on our planet was found to be a result of a scientific mistake—many people/entities would think twice before putting a lot of money into science again.  

 
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Schools without mask requirements were 3.5 times more likely to have outbreaks compared to schools with mask requirements

 

There were a total of 191 school-associated outbreaks during the study period

8.4% of the outbreaks were in schools with early mask requirements; 32.5% in schools with late mask requirements; and 59% in schools without a mask requirement.

Schools without mask requirements were 3.5 times more likely to have outbreaks compared to schools with mask requirements, even after accounting for confounders (things like county, grade levels present, enrollment size, and Title I status).

 
Schools without mask requirements were 3.5 times more likely to have outbreaks compared to schools with mask requirements

 

There were a total of 191 school-associated outbreaks during the study period

8.4% of the outbreaks were in schools with early mask requirements; 32.5% in schools with late mask requirements; and 59% in schools without a mask requirement.

Schools without mask requirements were 3.5 times more likely to have outbreaks compared to schools with mask requirements, even after accounting for confounders (things like county, grade levels present, enrollment size, and Title I status).
In other news, water is indeed...wet.

Not sure why we refuse to acknowledge this seemingly straight forward tenet of virus mitigation. Frustrating.

 
Schools without mask requirements were 3.5 times more likely to have outbreaks compared to schools with mask requirements

 

There were a total of 191 school-associated outbreaks during the study period

8.4% of the outbreaks were in schools with early mask requirements; 32.5% in schools with late mask requirements; and 59% in schools without a mask requirement.

Schools without mask requirements were 3.5 times more likely to have outbreaks compared to schools with mask requirements, even after accounting for confounders (things like county, grade levels present, enrollment size, and Title I status).
Another study from Cincinnati Children's Hospital.  https://www.wcpo.com/news/coronavirus/childrens-hospital-study-shows-fully-masked-districts-nearly-twice-as-safe-from-covid-19

 
I just looked up my county's detailed public school COVID data.  Looks like maybe 150-200 cases per week.  That seemed like a lot until I saw there are almost 200k students (it's a huge county).  So, ballparking, roughly 1/1000 students are getting COVID each week.  Masks mandated and adult vax percentage around 85% or so.

So far we've had a couple close calls where someone we know had to quarantine, but didn't actually have it, but none of our kids friends have been + yet.  

 
I just looked up my county's detailed public school COVID data.  Looks like maybe 150-200 cases per week.  That seemed like a lot until I saw there are almost 200k students (it's a huge county).  So, ballparking, roughly 1/1000 students are getting COVID each week.  Masks mandated and adult vax percentage around 85% or so.

So far we've had a couple close calls where someone we know had to quarantine, but didn't actually have it, but none of our kids friends have been + yet.  
Our area is around 55% vaxxed.   Parents fighting hard for kids to not wear masks.   Several schools in smaller communities have had to shut down for a bit.  So dumb.

 
Remember when scientists said the "evidence" points to natural?

Have any of them ever said what that evidence was? 
The evidence at that time was that the molecular structure was different enough that it couldn't be  man-made, because to do that they take a known virus, replicate it and then change some of the structure.  The structure of SARS-COV-2 didn't closely match anything they currently had on file. 

 
I like things simple.  Where did the outbreak occur.  What was there.  

But then again I believe natural immunity is better than a shot which the entire scientific community believed until this.  But I know, I know.  I am wrong.

 
I like things simple.  Where did the outbreak occur.  What was there.  

But then again I believe natural immunity is better than a shot which the entire scientific community believed until this.  But I know, I know.  I am wrong.
Then this is likely not the topic (COVID) for you to be discussing :shrug:  

 
Nathan R. Jessep said:
The evidence at that time was that the molecular structure was different enough that it couldn't be  man-made, because to do that they take a known virus, replicate it and then change some of the structure.  The structure of SARS-COV-2 didn't closely match anything they currently had on file. 
So  :tinfoilhat:

That's kinda the idea if you are truly doing something nefarious to the virus, yes? I've always believed it came from the lab so take my opinions with that in mind. I tend to look at China through the view of 1. they do everything for a reason and to benefit China 2. where possible, the military is always involved and looking at how it benefits China's military 3. China is always playing the long game...always. In as far down the rabbit hole as I care to go, China was doing gain of function testing with an ancillary benefit of how best to weaponize a virus for use against...???

Ok, back to sanity.

 
So  :tinfoilhat:

That's kinda the idea if you are truly doing something nefarious to the virus, yes? I've always believed it came from the lab so take my opinions with that in mind. I tend to look at China through the view of 1. they do everything for a reason and to benefit China 2. where possible, the military is always involved and looking at how it benefits China's military 3. China is always playing the long game...always. In as far down the rabbit hole as I care to go, China was doing gain of function testing with an ancillary benefit of how best to weaponize a virus for use against...???

Ok, back to sanity.
Oh I agree, however there were scientists from all over the world at the lab in question. 

 
I haven't checked in on Dr. Campbell for a few weeks.  His youtube video from yesterday is very interesting.

Summary: Myocarditis and Pericarditis may be caused by failure to aspirate injections and injecting the vaccine into a vein rather than the muscle. 

https://youtu.be/nBaIRm4610o

I am curious as to what our medical guys think of this.

 
It sounds like we're doing kind of widespread boosters after all.

Link.

Knowing how this process has worked so far, it seems pretty likely that this means that anybody who feels like getting a third shot should be walk into a pharmacy, say that they work in a nursing home or something, and get a booster.  
Anecdote:  

Colleague of mine lives in Long Island.  Mid 40's, dad of two little ones.  Went to a pharmacy in Long Island to get a booster, they told him no.

He went to a CVS in Manhattan, told them he was high-risk, they gave him booster no questions asked.  

 

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