|
Post by bfoley82 on Jan 14, 2022 12:11:16 GMT -5
at this point, covid and the omicron variant is clearly not a vaccinated vs. unvaccinated issue. most people with omicron in the united states are vaccinated. many of these cases are occurring among the boosted. in many places of the united states and across the world, the majority of hospital admissions are now even among vaccinated. blaming everything on the unvaccinated is divisive foolishness and needs to stop if we are to emerge from the pandemic as a healthy society. Based on zero medical training, I think everyone is mis-using the term "vaccine" If I get a polio vaccine, I'm not getting polio. If I get a COVID shot, I still might get COVID, especially Omicron, but I'm significantly less likely to get seriously ill Nothing to do with medicine, More of a math thing with hypothetical numbers. If Omicron is half as likely to cause hospitalization in any group, but three times more contagious, then there will be more hospitalizations ----------------------------------------- I'm not sure what HC is doing for testing, but if it's some sort of rapid test, I think they should do any basketball tests in the morning instead of 6:00 PM on a game night I am pretty sure they are doing PCR tests which are more accurate and take time for the results. It has been which is required by many schools to access campus.
|
|
|
Post by sader1970 on Jan 14, 2022 12:11:57 GMT -5
dado, would you share with us where in the world, and more specifically, the United States, that the majority of hospitalized covid patients are vaccinated? I've not found that anywhere and as a sampling, Time has a couple of charts of various U.S. states where the numbers are not even close. NY, for example is unvaccinated hospitalized at 14 times greater than vaccinated. Others, 2-1, not as great but still much greater. time.com/6138566/pandemic-of-unvaccinated/
|
|
|
Post by longsuffering on Jan 14, 2022 12:43:38 GMT -5
at this point, covid and the omicron variant is clearly not a vaccinated vs. unvaccinated issue. most people with omicron in the united states are vaccinated. many of these cases are occurring among the boosted. in many places of the united states and across the world, the majority of hospital admissions are now even among vaccinated. blaming everything on the unvaccinated is divisive foolishness and needs to stop if we are to emerge from the pandemic as a healthy society. Based on zero medical training, I think everyone is mis-using the term "vaccine" If I get a polio vaccine, I'm not getting polio. If I get a COVID shot, I still might get COVID, especially Omicron, but I'm significantly less likely to get seriously ill Nothing to do with medicine, More of a math thing with hypothetical numbers. If Omicron is half as likely to cause hospitalization in any group, but three times more contagious, then there will be more hospitalizations ----------------------------------------- I'm not sure what HC is doing for testing, but if it's some sort of rapid test, I think they should do any basketball tests in the morning instead of 6:00 PM on a game night It might not have been tests solely that cancelled the game. I believe your post referenced a Covid outbreak on the Holy Cross team. Players could have been coughing and sneezing when the team gathered for their pre-game meal which forced HC's hand.
|
|
|
Post by dadominate on Jan 14, 2022 13:23:03 GMT -5
dado, would you share with us where in the world, and more specifically, the United States, that the majority of hospitalized covid patients are vaccinated? I've not found that anywhere and as a sampling, Time has a couple of charts of various U.S. states where the numbers are not even close. NY, for example is unvaccinated hospitalized at 14 times greater than vaccinated. Others, 2-1, not as great but still much greater. time.com/6138566/pandemic-of-unvaccinated/appreciate the curiosity, sader1970. UNITED STATES peer-reviewed studies haven't caught up with omicron yet, but a study of over 600,000 patients in the National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C) published in JAMA (PMID: 34962505) in late December revealed the following: - 84 percent of the vaccinated patients were seen as outpatients, while 16 percent required hospitalization - 77 percent of unvaccinated patients were seen as outpatients, while 23 percent were hospitalized this is one of the larger peer-reviewed studies that is a far cry from the 10-15x numbers that have been put forth in media. as more people have been vaccinated than unvaccinated across the us, percentages like this lead to greater raw numbers of vaccinated patients being hospitalized than unvaccinated patients. the published data will catch up to omicron, for which vaccination has provided little protection. there is also "healthy user bias" rampant in this and most other observational studies in that people who get vaccinated generally have other health-promoting behaviors and those that are unvaccinated are more likely to smoke, be obese, and have poorly controlled chronic disease. studies that do not adjust for these factors are seriously flawed, and for some reason, these studies have been published without covariate-adjusted regression modeling or matching. the methodological bar has been lowered to a baffling degree that would never pass muster. CANADA these are some of the most intuitive data that require little epidemiological training to interpret. as of today in ontario: 70.5% of hospitalized patients were vaccinated 50% of icu patients were vaccinated covid-19.ontario.ca/dataDENMARK data throughout europe - which has far better surveillance data and rigorous reporting than the us, which has financial incentives laced in their reporting of cases and vaccinations - reveal similarly concerning issues. this is particularly concerning, as it reveals NEGATIVE efficacy of the covid vaccines. many have been concerned about "original antigenic sin" with repeated rounds of vaccination, that can train the immune system to the original variant and hamper its ability to fight variants. here is a link to the full text, which is available on a preprint server. these servers are CRUCIAL, as publication bias has been particularly problematic with covid. www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.20.21267966v3.fullnote the first figure, with the blue and green lines, that reveal that vaccination after 91 days was associated with higher rate of COVID infection. the danish government also reported on january 3rd that only 24 percent of people hospitalized with omicron during late november/december were unvaccinated - while 76 percent were vaccinated, including 18 percent who were boosted. during the same period, unvaccinated people made up 45 percent of those hospitalized with earlier variants. this is more evidence the vaccines simply do not work as well against omicron as earlier variants. again, appreciate the curiosity as we all need to consider as many sources of information as possible these days as our media, politicians, and regulatory agencies have misled us. i hope covid serves to generate more discernment with respect to what entities we trust and how deep conflicts of interest run.
|
|
|
Post by sader1970 on Jan 14, 2022 14:12:28 GMT -5
Dado, thank you for your response. I will admit that I have not had time to go through all the links but did look at the Ontario one (not Denmark yet, though that's where my HC nephew and his family live and got Covid despite being vaccinated - no hospitalization for them).
The Ontario chart of ICU cases was indeed eye-opening and did show the majority were vaccinated (49.7% being fully vaccinated and 45.2% unvaccinated, the remainder being partially vaccinated).
But, those numbers looked suspiciously low to me (only 372 total cases).
In that same link, it showed that in Ontario 82% are fully vaccinated and only 12% non-vaccinated.
Again, being a history major, I may have this wrong but looks like:
82% full vaccinated generated 49.7% of ICU patients 12% unvaccinated generated 45.2% ICU patients
I would think that if the vaccinations didn't help, they would generate close to 82% of ICU cases. It didn't, which to me means the vaccines are effective against very serious cases.
I'll also posit that of those 12% that are unvaccinated, many are younger folks who are not immuno-compromised. Whether that's the case or not, they've generated 3 times as many ICU cases if this were a level playing field.
Also note, the "fully vaccinated" definition is simply the 2 dose Pfizer/Moderna or 1 dose J&J, maybe or maybe not including a booster.
Again, I thank you for these and I will review closer when I have time. As I learned at Holy Cross, precious few things in life are black & white like we'd like them to be. And, just maybe, that's what has everyone anxious - that are no simple answers and the answers we do get change much too frequently.
|
|
|
Post by dadominate on Jan 15, 2022 8:46:55 GMT -5
Dado, thank you for your response. I will admit that I have not had time to go through all the links but did look at the Ontario one (not Denmark yet, though that's where my HC nephew and his family live and got Covid despite being vaccinated - no hospitalization for them). The Ontario chart of ICU cases was indeed eye-opening and did show the majority were vaccinated (49.7% being fully vaccinated and 45.2% unvaccinated, the remainder being partially vaccinated). But, those numbers looked suspiciously low to me (only 372 total cases). In that same link, it showed that in Ontario 82% are fully vaccinated and only 12% non-vaccinated. Again, being a history major, I may have this wrong but looks like: 82% full vaccinated generated 49.7% of ICU patients 12% unvaccinated generated 45.2% ICU patients I would think that if the vaccinations didn't help, they would generate close to 82% of ICU cases. It didn't, which to me means the vaccines are effective against very serious cases. I'll also posit that of those 12% that are unvaccinated, many are younger folks who are not immuno-compromised. Whether that's the case or not, they've generated 3 times as many ICU cases if this were a level playing field. Also note, the "fully vaccinated" definition is simply the 2 dose Pfizer/Moderna or 1 dose J&J, maybe or maybe not including a booster. Again, I thank you for these and I will review closer when I have time. As I learned at Holy Cross, precious few things in life are black & white like we'd like them to be. And, just maybe, that's what has everyone anxious - that are no simple answers and the answers we do get change much too frequently.
right on, sader70. this is the challenge of the issue in that it is neither a simple solution nor is there is a single solution. i think it's great that more people are digging into the data as you have here. scientists don't have sole domain in considering population-level medical data, and those without training shouldn't blindly defer to "experts". there are many common sense limitations to the presentation of the data. you have certainly pointed one out here for those that are against mass vaccination. while the "hospitals are filled with unvaccinated" is complete nonsense, on the other hand, when most of the population is vaccinated and the percentages of vaccinated and unvaccinated patients in the hospital are similar, there would clearly be a lower risk with vaccination since it is a much larger population. basic math. where the challenge comes in, as i noted in a previous post, is that the characteristics (particularly health-promoting behaviors) of vaccinated and unvaccinated people tend to differ and need to be included for adjustment in regression models. the other challenge is reading into relative vs. absolute risk. we all heard the "95% effective" claims of the covid vaccines at preventing illness. to any honest epidemiologist, this exclusive focus on relative risk felt like pure marketing and was shocking that the absolute risk - e.g. what really matters at a population level - was completely ignored. the absolute risk reduction was about 1%. we now see this playing out here's a paper from the lancet (one of the top medical journals in the world) that gets into this that is in plain language. www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lanmic/PIIS2666-5247(21)00069-0.pdfmost importantly... if i were in your shoes from the class of 1970, i would probably recommend covid vaccination in most cases. while healthy young people generally face little risk from covid, and covid vaccines have never stopped transmission of covid, the risks of adverse outcomes are substantial. like almost everything else in health, covid is not a "one size fits all" situation and we are making a huge mistake by treating it that way. we treat almost nothing else in public health and medicine in that manner. although i would definitely recommend a critical review and following some sources that provide a more balanced approach in this black and white environment. vinay prasad, md, mph is an excellent physician scientist who is highly respected and suneel dhand, md is a colleague who has dedicated a great deal of his time while treating covid patients do providing scientific perspectives from both sides of the debate while being banned by the big tech for doing so (which is ridiculous). profiles.ucsf.edu/vinayak.prasadvinayprasadmdmph.substack.com/www.youtube.com/c/DrSuneelDhandMedStoicLifestyleMedicine/videosas for the boosters, i will caution that regulators from the european union drug safety organization (who are not quite as beholden to pharma as our fda) recently expressed some concerns over repeated boosters. despite the aforementioned financial influence at the fda - approximately half of their budget comes from the pharma/biotech companies they regulate... fox guarding the henhouse? - there were a couple of high-profile resignations over booster shots. we should not be mandating these as we have absolutely no idea what they are going to do to healthyu immune systems over time. www.voanews.com/a/eu-drug-regulator-warns-against-overuse-of-covid-booster-shots/6395174.htmlarstechnica.com/science/2021/09/top-fda-regulators-blast-us-booster-plan-after-announcing-resignations/i have posted far more here than most probably care to read, and am up to my ears in research in this field right now, so anyone can pm me for any more thoughts on covid.
|
|