The Delta variant

ceadaoin.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117729327#Comment_117729327

Yeah, "implications", but real world experience is showing that acquited immunity is a lot more protective than vaccines. For example

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/309762

ceadaoin.

Just to add, I should have said "solely" through vaccinations. He is in favour of boosters and protections just for those who are vulnerable or who had j&j, not everyone, and to let it spread. He is acknowledging that vaccines do not prevent the spread and are not likely to result in herd immunity .

Sorry don't know how to to actual quotes on the new site. This is the translation

"The epidemiologist believes that it is now necessary to try to achieve herd immunity to the coronary virus by letting it continue, but to try to prevent serious illness by protecting vulnerable groups. He says the goal at this point cannot be to eradicate the virus from society.

One and a half months after the abolition of all domestic operations, a record number of people have been diagnosed infected in recent weeks, despite the fact that the majority of the population has been vaccinated.

Þórólfur Guðnason said in Sprengisandur in Bylgjan this morning that it is disappointing that herd immunity has not been achieved with vaccination. He says that only one other way is able to achieve herd immunity, to allow the virus to spread throughout the community

Þórólfur says that he has talked about it since the beginning of the epidemic that the coronary virus mutated. This has now happened with the arrival of the Delta variant across the border.

He says, however, that the vaccination was not in vain. "The vaccination has prevented a serious illness, there is no question about that," says Þórólfur.

Þórólfur says that it is necessary to respond to how many people become infected after vaccination. "We just need to shuffle the cards and come up with new plans," he said.

"We really can not do anything else," says Þórólfur when asked whether the nation of seventy to eighty must be allowed to become infected to achieve herd immunity.

Some need to be revaccinated Þórólfur says that the priority now is to give booster doses to those who have responded poorly to vaccination. "We need to try to vaccinate and better protect those who are vulnerable, but let us tolerate the infection," he said."

"I think it is quite clear that Janssen's defense is weaker than that of other vaccines," says Þórólfur. He says it is a priority to give those who received the Jansen vaccine a booster dose. Then, for example, teachers and the elderly need to be given a booster dose as soon as possible.

"It is not a priority now to vaccinate everyone with the third dose, as we also need to think: Maybe we should get a new variant? Do we need to be vaccinated with another vaccine? ”He says. Þórólfur says that the fight against the virus will be characterized by such uncertainty.

Will not propose hard action "We need to somehow navigate this way, and we are now in this, not to get too many serious illnesses so that the hospital system does not collapse, but still try to achieve this herd immunity by letting the virus somehow run."

Goldengirl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117730704#Comment_117730704

He is not saying let it run through everyone though , boosters to elderly and vulnerable and protecting them is not the same as the original Swedish approach .

mariab21

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117730704#Comment_117730704

https://twitter.com/VirginMediaNews/status/1424837892434706434?s=19

The hospital system is on the verge already as the Govt had no plan for now.

The private hospitals need to be taking over straight away

ceadaoin.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117730160#Comment_117730160

Just to reiterate, I wasn't lying. The doctor is acknowledging that vaccination is unlikely to result in herd immunity. Fact. He is saying the way to that is to allow people to become infected. Yes, I should have said from vaccination alone or similar but its no reason to discredit my entire point that vaccines arent the way out, especially since Delta.

Yes, he says boosters but NOT for everyone, like some other countries are suggesting (and as an aside, they are now seeing people who received boosters becoming infected in israel). Only for those who had a one shot vaccine or otherwise immune compromised individuals. His point stands that allowing people to become infected is the only remaining way to herd immunity

brickster69

Looking more and more likely Israel's data is not far off the mark

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/09/moderna-may-be-superior-to-pfizer-against-delta-variant-breakthrough-odds-rise-with-time.html

brickster69

Israel switching to Moderna now for everyone over 18 and those waiting on second doses

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israel-shifts-to-moderna-vaccine-as-minister-warns-delta-won-t-disappear-soon-1.10017431

ceadaoin.

Why not just mandate one of each vaccine for everyone? Cover all bases.

McGiver

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117730668#Comment_117730668

12-20% of Covid patients have long term cardiac sequalae, various cardiac myopathies including myocarditis. Then there are nephrotic and other long terms sequalae.

Only a lunatic would support "naturally gained immunity" in this context. Covid is infection is dangerous even if you're young and not hospitalised. You absolutely don't want to catch it. Yes, infection provides immunogenicity but this is a very poor trade-off given the potential sequalae!

jackboy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117731853#Comment_117731853

A little bit disturbing. Many of our vulnerable got the Pfizer. If infection numbers get high enough the hospitals could easily be over run. Booster shots need to be prioritised now.

brickster69

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117734315#Comment_117734315

Very, the problem is now there will be no new data coming out of Israel that will help anyone because within a short time all the vulnerable people will have had a booster there. The USA are just wandering around in a blind panic and the UK did a 12 week gap between doses so you cannot compare any data to them either.

So looks like a lot of people will be flying blind from now on.

brickster69

Early days but some promising news from Israel for a change

https://www.jpost.com/health-science/covid-90-percent-of-patients-treated-with-new-israeli-drug-discharged-in-5-days-675961

JTMan

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117731895#Comment_117731895

Very interesting that Moderna is becoming preferred over Pfizer due to apparent lesser waning than Pfizer.

The Pfizer data was very transparent on waning, you could see the waning on a month by month basis.

The Moderna waning data was less transparent with no month by month waning data supplied, just efficacy after 6 months but granted Moderna appears to have far less waning.

I would think that the chances that we are going to have a Winter wave of Pfizer-waning infections is high, albeit it would be mainly mild infections.

JTMan

Good God ... the Florida Delta wave is worse than a horror movie ...

https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1425155135370502147

nocoverart

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117734543#Comment_117734543

Usually hate generalising, but aren’t Floridians seen as a bit unhinged and therefore mocked by the rest of U.S? which shocked me at first because Disney, Palm Trees, Miami and so on. Anyways, says more for the lack of Vaccine uptake over there than Covid/Delta itself. We should be proud of ourselves over here TBH.

L1011

There's the "Florida Man" thing of being able to find reports of every weird occurrence, but much of that is down to Florida having no reporting restrictions on police and court actions and very open data.

But not all of it. It is a fairly strange place away from the tourist attractions

brickster69

Looks like Israel starting boosters for everyone over 40 soon. No doubt they know what they are doing but everything does seem a bit panicky

https://www.jpost.com/health-science/covid-vaccines-efficacy-drops-for-all-3rd-shot-weighed-for-40-ash-676514

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117734543#Comment_117734543

It's appropriate that the casedemic is being compared to a horror movie, a work of fiction.

We live in an age of scary graphs and manufactured hysteria.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117741126#Comment_117741126

isn't "Florida Man" fairly aged as well? I always presumed it had entire towns that were effectively god's waiting room.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117741557#Comment_117741557

Sure 120 deaths a day is nothing to be concerned about

If Pfizer is dropping to 42% after 5 months the how is AstraZeneca and jaansen faring ? 😱😱

brickster69

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117742260#Comment_117742260

I think this has been the largest study with Delta for AZ yet. Problem is with the gap between 1 st and 2 nd doses a full six month study wont be due for a couple of months

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2108891

Okay people need to cool their jets about waning immunity. Most of the data recently is observational in nature. Measuring efficacy in using real world data is very difficult and can be inherently flawed for a number of reasons:

• Differences in behaviour in between vaccinated and unvaccinated.
• Differences in demographics.
• Difference in risk factors.
• Inconsistency in testing between both groups
• Incorrectly conflating efficacy against infection, against disease and against hospitilzation. (Topol is the worst for this)
• Comparing vaccinated to unvaccinated is not the same as immune to not immune. At this stage of the pandemic it's quite likely a large portion of unvaccinated have acquired immunity from infection which will influence data.

This can be seen somewhat in data from Israel where data suggests protection from infection is in 20-30 age group is non-existant. Also efficacy went from 64% to 16% in only a few weeks. Given the half-life of antibodies is 3 weeks this violates the rules of immunology. Another clear example can be seen in the study from Mayo Clinic mentioned earlier in the thread. The rate of infection rises in June/July in the vaccinated group corresponding with the rise of Delta. In the unvaccinated however the rate of infection in the same period goes significantly DOWN. This doesn't suggest waning immunity but rather a change in behaviour in the control (possibly a greater increase in caution due to rising cases compared to vaccinated). This obviously has a notable (and somewhat catastrophic) effect on perceived efficacy.

The most important measure of efficacy to observe is of that against severe disease as this is more resistant to bias. Currently data from Israel suggests that is still holding up exceptionally well. Particularly as cases increase in unvaccinated populations.

Israel have decided to push ahead with the 3rd dose. I suspect it's at least partially influenced by the fact their rollout has stalled as cases continue to rise. Whether or not there will be a clinical benefit we will know in a few weeks. For what it's worth I do believe we will see a booster rollout for the vulnerable over the winter.

kirk.

Is Covid 0 gone out the window now because of this

Seems those experts are looking like fools

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117742003#Comment_117742003

Yeah, there are entire areas with four and five figure populations and no schools. And not many roads - everyone uses golf carts as they're too old to drive.

Pete_Cavan

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117742260#Comment_117742260

Do you have a link for the Pfizer vaccine dropping to 42% after 5 months? That seems a bit of a "if my auntie had balls" type question.

The picture is certainly not very good for symptomatic infection rates , taking into account the different studies out there from different countries -> the guy below gives a range estimate on mRNA vaccine effectiveness (and Moderna is better than Pfizer in this regard)

Also, Long Covid percentages on breakthrough infections seem to have similar % to no-vaccine infections

https://twitter.com/erictopol/status/1425492860619481098

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117743262#Comment_117743262

His interpretation is not accurate and if you read the replies he gets quite a bit of pushback:

https://twitter.com/mugecevik/status/1425518290852622342?s=20

https://twitter.com/Ryan_Mac_Phd/status/1425533954401218566?s=20

yes but that is about one study of the studies quoted, albeit the biggest sample I think

picture looking a lot less rosy regardless

and his estimate of 50% to 60% he now says is now looking optimistic as more people get to 6 months plus on vaccines and as exposure risk grows with spread of Delta Variant

but some perspective also required - 99% of Covid deaths in the US currently are happening to unvaccinated people

still 90% protection against severe illness

but - I wouldn't fancy getting long covid myself which can occur from any infection, even asymptomatic

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117743334#Comment_117743334

We all know loads of people at this stage who have had the virus. Who do we know with "long covid"? From what I can see, long covid is classed as anyone who feels any way below par more that 30 days post infection.

True long covid is a thing, but it is being massively over counted