Best Posts in Thread: Misc. Covid, Vaxx, etc,

There's risk to Aztrazeneca and little risk to Sinovac. 1st jab of AZ you have a 1 in 50,000 chance of blood platelet problems. 2nd jab 1 in 500,000. Depends on your age and there is an age layered study around. Sinovac a very remote chance of Guilon Barr(sp?) syndrome, which usually fades. So Sinovac is less risky than AZ.

 

Finally got it to translate. Yes, there are small studies that contradict each other and need some serious review. There are usually two effectiveness ratings. First is catching it while vaxxed and having mild symptoms and the second is hospital and ICU - effectiveness at keeping you out. Sinovac is <50% at you catching it with delta, maybe much lower, but it seems to be more effective at keeping you out of the hospital and ICU. I read pop articles like this, but look for good ones from med journals that are summarized, because half of it is meaningless to me. This article doesn't really tell you anything that we didn't know weeks ago, and it states it poorly.
The big question is what is its effectiveness at keeping you out of the hospital and ICU. Since no Western countries are using it, it isn't appearing where I look except for the large 10.2 million meta study that doesn't included Delta. It had good effectiveness there though. The Thai studies contradict each other and are small, and it isn't clear if they are peer reviewed.

NEJM
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2107715
Results
The study was conducted from February 2 through May 1, 2021, and the cohort included approximately 10.2 million persons. Among persons who were fully immunized, the adjusted vaccine effectiveness was 65.9% (95% confidence interval [CI], 65.2 to 66.6) for the prevention of Covid-19 and 87.5% (95% CI, 86.7 to 88.2) for the prevention of hospitalization, 90.3% (95% CI, 89.1 to 91.4) for the prevention of ICU admission, and 86.3% (95% CI, 84.5 to 87.9) for the prevention of Covid-19–related death.

 

Wife had the Johnson & Johnson jab yesterday, and she feels fine.

 

None so far.

 

You misunderstand the math of the situation.

R0 (pronounced “R naught) is the term that represents how contagious an infectious disease is.

R0 tells you the average number of people who will contract a contagious disease from one person with that disease. It specifically applies to a population of people who were previously free of infection and are not taking steps to resist infection.

When R0 is reduced to a number less than one the contagion will reduce until it disappears.

R0 can be reduced in many ways. Steps to resist infection and reduce R0 include wearing a mask, getting vaccinated, etc. China is an example of how a community can reduce R0 and get the deaths down to basically zero by enacting strict contact tracing and isolation behaviors.

This is why the entire population does not need to be vaccinated to eradicate the disease. A community only needs to vaccinate enough of the population to get the R0 down to less than one. The percentage of the vaccinated population ranges from 50% to 90% depending on how contagious the disease is. Vaccination can be combined with contact tracing and isolation to reduce R0 further.

The result of the current vaccination efforts show that the rate of growth of the number of cases is negative (R0 less than one) therefore we can reason that deaths will be down to basically zero when enough people get vaccinated.

The point being is that we do not need to know the exact number for R0. We only need to know that it is less than one.

 

A study by the CDC of adults above the age of 65 — the population most at risk — found that seniors who received partial vaccination (mRNA) were 64 percent less likely to be hospitalized, but fully vaccinated seniors were 94 percent less likely to be admitted to a hospital for Covid-19. Another study, published this month in Nature, found that the two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine were 88 percent effective in preventing illness caused by the Delta variant that originated in India, but one dose was only 33 percent effective. The new Novavax vaccine is even better, according to trial data, with 90.4 percent efficacy even against variants.

“The second shot is critical,” Dr. Paul Offit, a vaccine researcher at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told NBC News. “We know from the phase one studies that the second shot induces a level of virus-specific neutralizing antibodies that’s about tenfold greater than that after the first dose.”
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/covid-deaths-unvaccinated-1189072/

 

Pat, as far as I know there is no final (scientific) answer to that question (yet).
Most experts seem to agree though that "mix n match" is a workable strategy with covid vaccines.
Personally I don't think a different vaccine will be available in Dumaguete before it's time for my second shot of Sinovac, but even so, if at some later stage I can get a booster shot from a different one, I'll be in line for that.

 

Don't borrow trouble. If you ask nicely, they may respect that. But all of the problems with Sinovac I had were eliminated with the Indonesian study along with Real World experience. It'll very much help keep your body from clogging up the hospital, which is my main objective, along with not catching it because I have enough brain fog already.

 

A 26 yr old Spaniard just won the US Open Golf championship 2 weeks after testing positive for Covid while having to leave a tournament with a 6 shot lead. Amazing.