The Vaccine Thread

[Penelope]

17 hours ago, ktgrok said:

well, all the stuff Ive read about younger people being more effected by the new variants was actually about people in their 20s and 30s, so kids not being hospitalized is good, but doesn't really have anything to do with what is being said about the variants. 

Also, whenever I hear people saying, "we don't know enough yet to worry" I want to scream "by the time we do know for sure, it will be too late! AGAIN!"

I don’t know about the cases in young adults, but when I’ve seen that, there doesn’t seem to be data behind it. Now there might be some, but I’m just saying that it’s mainly in news articles. which frankly, I take with a grain of salt anymore.

The reason I posted about pediatrics is because the posts about Michigan or variants I was responding to had something quoted about pediatrics. I’m glad that this probably isn’t the case.

This disease is bad enough. It is much worse the older you are (one study found that this is about 90% of the risk), and then particular risk factors make up most of the rest. 
Even if it were as much as 20-30% more virulent for everyone, which I think right now seems less strong of a case than the transmissibility being higher the increases in severe cases in the 20 year olds would still be very small, because the absolute numbers are already very small. 
 

Not saying not to take it seriously, but only. what else do we do to take it seriously, other than what we are already doing? It’s the same stuff: vaccinate, mask at the least until all adults who want to can get vaccinated or until cases are much lower-there might be debate about that, but for NOW, we should mask- and be careful.

Edited April 11, 2021 by Penelope

[Not_a_Number]

Just now, Penelope said:

I don’t know about the cases in young adults, but when I’ve seen that, there doesn’t seem to be data behind it. Now there might be some, but I’m just saying that it’s mainly in news articles. which frankly, I take with a grain of salt anymore.

Nope, people have posted links to actual data. With numbers. It's not hard to measure things like "cases in young people." Here's the breakdown of hospitalizations right now: 

https://infogram.com/younger-patients-flood-hospitals-1hzj4o383q1jo4p

As you can see, the young people make up a greater percent of hospitalized patients. You can calculate absolute numbers if you like using the raw numbers: 

https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/local/2020/05/16/tracking-michigan-covid-19-hospitalization-data-trends/

[Penelope]

12 hours ago, Spy Car said:

There isn't much statistical significance when N=1, but the one person I  know (and mentioned previously) who seems to be suffering from long Covid (one of my son's teachers) is probably 30 years old, tops. Young, fit, energetic, dynamic, you name it. The last sort of person--and that's what he thought--who one might suspect might not bounce back quickly. And he happens to be a gifted teacher who actively serves as a mentor to his students and a heck of a nice guy.

I doubt he had a variant due to when he first fell ill, but (as you know) death and hospitalization are not the only risks to getting Covid.

At this point we have no idea if Long Covid will get better with time or if (like ME/CFS) it will result in lifelong illness.

The ongoing health of young people who have a half-a-century of life in front of them (or more) is of particular concern.

News that variants seem to be hitting younger people more than the original strain is worrisome. My perhaps faulty understanding is that many people who are showing signs of Long Covid were seemingly not all that ill in the first place. That was the case with my N=1 example.

I very much hope this isn't a case where "by the time we do know for sure, it will be too late!," but these not a risks to take lightly in my estimation.

Bill 

 

 

I agree it is frightening to see young people hit like this. 
 

While cases are still high, everyone does need to be careful. This is all my total guess and opinion, but, once they are lower, some people (maybe still quite a few over the years, who knows) will still get mild or asymptomatic cases, but not nearly as many, so any long Covid will go way down, too. Perhaps with a primed immune system from vaccine, even if there is an escape infection, long Covid won’t occur as much. One would hope. It will take time for those studies to be done, I’d guess, since we still have this raging fire of people in the hospital and dying. 
 

I have heard different doctors talk about this, and one infectious disease doctor who has seen a lot of it said that anecdotally, most people with long Covid symptoms seem to be better by six months after infection. I’m sure it will be studied.

I wonder if medicine will end up further categorizing long Covid into those who have different sorts of symptoms, or maybe post-hospitalization cases vs. others. Right now PASC to my understanding includes both people who have more mild effects like anosmia, insomnia, just not feeling quite right yet, and also people who can’t walk a quarter mile without gasping for air, have measurable cognitive problems, fatigue that is absolutely debilitating, or other measurable organ damage.

[Penelope]

9 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:

Nope, people have posted links to actual data. With numbers. It's not hard to measure things like "cases in young people." Here's the breakdown of hospitalizations right now: 

https://infogram.com/younger-patients-flood-hospitals-1hzj4o383q1jo4p

As you can see, the young people make up a greater percent of hospitalized patients. You can calculate absolute numbers if you like using the raw numbers: 

https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/local/2020/05/16/tracking-michigan-covid-19-hospitalization-data-trends/

I will take a look. But of course they make up a larger percentage, because more of the elderly have been vaccinated. I am not sure how that proves that it is something about the variant that causes more severe disease in young people. 
 

Quote

It's not hard to measure things like "cases in young people." 

It is harder to measure whether young people are getting hospitalized more, per symptomatic case, or per any case, with or because of a particular variant. I’m not saying this isn’t true, just that I personally haven’t seen that kind of data. 
 

There is a physician at UCSF who has tried to do that with hospitalizations per case by age, in Michigan and a few other states, and she doesn’t see an increase from that perspective, but I don’t know how useful that metric is, because there might be things about case numbers that would skew it one way or the other.

Edited April 11, 2021 by Penelope

[Penelope]

1 hour ago, melmichigan said:

I believe I read that people with B.1.1.7 have a lot higher levels of the virus in the respiratory tract, but I can't seem to find the source.

I know that there is at least one study showing lower PCR Ct values (which correlates with more infectious virus) with variants, which does point to that. This isn’t the same thing as saying there are higher levels of virus, because PCR is testing for the presence of RNA, not infectious virus, and at least with the one I saw, there were some criticisms with methodology, but it is suggestive.

There may be more that has come out since then, I don’t know. 

[Not_a_Number]

15 minutes ago, Penelope said:

I will take a look. But of course they make up a larger percentage, because more of the elderly have been vaccinated. I am not sure how that proves that it is something about the variant that causes more severe disease in young people. 

Why don't you run the absolute numbers yourself and then we can talk. I linked you two pieces of data that ought to allow you to figure out the total number of hospitalized younger people and compare. 

[Not_a_Number]

16 minutes ago, Penelope said:

There is a physician at UCSF who has tried to do that with hospitalizations per case by age. 

Link it up? That would be data. I see your point that if the cases in young people have gone up, then you'd accordingly expect the numbers of hospitalizations to go up. 

[Penelope]

20 hours ago, Not_a_Number said:

 

I'm not sure I know what you mean about not taking ourselves too seriously, though. I'm always very upfront about what I know and what I don't know. But in terms of taking myself seriously -- I do think people ought to take me seriously when we talk about probability, because I'm in fact highly trained in it. And I know there are many other highly trained posters with scientific backgrounds as well, and I see absolutely no reason not to take them seriously. And that includes their opinion, yes. Frankly, I see no reason to take the opinion of one virologist super seriously and ignore everyone else... even if some of those other people are on (gasp) a message board. (But of course, the virologist was on Reddit, which isn't the most serious place, either!) 

Fair enough. 🙂

Yeah, Reddit superior to Twitter, that part made me grin.  Somehow I don’t think he hangs out on Reddit. 

Reddit did have a Covid science sub that seemed pretty good last year for bringing up new articles, but the last time I looked it had imploded. 

[Bootsie]

27 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:

Nope, people have posted links to actual data. With numbers. It's not hard to measure things like "cases in young people." Here's the breakdown of hospitalizations right now: 

https://infogram.com/younger-patients-flood-hospitals-1hzj4o383q1jo4p

As you can see, the young people make up a greater percent of hospitalized patients. You can calculate absolute numbers if you like using the raw numbers: 

https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/local/2020/05/16/tracking-michigan-covid-19-hospitalization-data-trends/

If I am reading the table of data correctly, so that one hospitalized peds/confirmed suspected is the number of children hopsitalized, then the one week rate of change for adults being hospitalized and kids being hospitalized since last August looks like

 

The orange is the rate of change of pediatric hospitlalizations.  It has been far more volatile than the rate of hopsitalizations of adults.  

[Bootsie]

48 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:

Nope, people have posted links to actual data. With numbers. It's not hard to measure things like "cases in young people." Here's the breakdown of hospitalizations right now: 

 https://infogram.com/younger-patients-flood-hospitals-1hzj4o383q1jo4p 

As you can see, the young people make up a greater percent of hospitalized patients. You can calculate absolute numbers if you like using the raw numbers: 

https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/local/2020/05/16/tracking-michigan-covid-19-hospitalization-data-trends/

I think these two links are providing different information.  The first link is showing the percentage admitted by age group (but doesn't clearly show the data range).  The second link shows the number of adults hospitalized and the number of peds hospitalized.  But, the percentages from the first link can't be applied to the number hospitalized in the second link.  If different age groups tend to have different lengths of hospital stays. then the percent of people hosptialized by age group may vary drastically fromt he percentage of people admitted by age group.  

[Penelope]

On 4/9/2021 at 11:28 PM, Ausmumof3 said:

Speaking of variants - pre print only so possibly flawed but possible evidence from Israel that Pfizer is a little less effective against the South African variant. 
 

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.06.21254882v1

Here, we performed a case-control study that examined whether BNT162b2 vaccinees with documented SARS-CoV-2 infection were more likely to become infected with B.1.1.7 or B.1.351 compared with unvaccinated individuals. Vaccinees infected at least a week after the second dose were disproportionally infected with B.1.351 (odds ratio of 8:1). Those infected between two weeks after the first dose and one week after the second dose, were disproportionally infected by B.1.1.7 (odds ratio of 26:10), suggesting reduced vaccine effectiveness against both VOCs under different dosage/timing conditions. Nevertheless, the B.1.351 incidence in Israel to-date remains low and vaccine effectiveness remains high against B.1.1.7, among those fully vaccinated. These results overall suggest that vaccine breakthrough infection is more frequent with both VOCs, yet a combination of mass-vaccination with two doses coupled with non-pharmaceutical interventions control and contain their spread.

 

Bumping because I saw a thread by one of the authors of the study. Key encouraging takeaway for me is “To summarize: we see evidence for reduced vaccine effectiveness against the British variant, but after two doses – extremely high effectiveness kicks in. We see evidence for reduced vaccine effectiveness against the S.A. variant, but it does not spread in Israel.

We think that this reduced effectiveness occurs only in a short window of time (no B.1.351 cases 14+ days post 2nd dose), and that the S.A. variant does not spread efficiently. “

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1380922920734711811.html

[Ausmumof3]

1 hour ago, Penelope said:

Bumping because I saw a thread by one of the authors of the study. Key encouraging takeaway for me is “To summarize: we see evidence for reduced vaccine effectiveness against the British variant, but after two doses – extremely high effectiveness kicks in. We see evidence for reduced vaccine effectiveness against the S.A. variant, but it does not spread in Israel.

We think that this reduced effectiveness occurs only in a short window of time (no B.1.351 cases 14+ days post 2nd dose), and that the S.A. variant does not spread efficiently. “

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1380922920734711811.html

Yes I saw this late last night and was coming to post but ended up going to bed instead.   If this variant has a slower spread rate that’s a great thing!  It certainly hasn’t taken off like B1.  I am curious as to why it seems to spread quite well in Africa but not elsewhere.

[Longtime Lurker]

On 4/10/2021 at 12:23 PM, melmichigan said:

You hit a sore spot, I really don't need reports.  Our local school moved most students virtual three weeks ago, with an attempt to keep the elementary open, they are now all closed until May, and will open only if our positivity comes way down.  Our hospitals are full locally, and filling again statewide, with much younger people (I've posted the statistics in the last two weeks so I won't repeat that), to the point that U of M and other hospitals have been forced to stop elective surgical procedures. 

This is my county, which remains the highest cases per capita, with a positivity of over 30%. We have predominantly B.1.1.7. community spread.

 

This was my state as B.1.1.7 has took hold last month.

This is now.

  
hospitalizations:

 

This was released yesterday: 

The following statement is made on behalf of chief medical officers of Michigan’s community hospitals.

The safe and highly effective COVID-19 vaccines continue to bring us hope. However, the current surge of cases in Michigan is troubling. While our healthcare workers are now safer because of vaccines and more personal protective equipment – and our facilities are safe for all who need care – we are concerned for our communities, including children, who are being infected with COVID-19 at all-time high rates. The variants are more contagious and deadly, infecting more adults and children, and bringing more young people into hospitals than ever. Daily pediatric COVID-19 admissions have increased by 237% since Feb. 19...

Your county's numbers are terrifying. I am in Michigan also but, I assume, on the other side of the state from you. My county's positivity is half that of yours, but still bad and almost as high as mid-November's. And we are back to school as usual tomorrow morning . . .

[Not_a_Number]

3 hours ago, Ausmumof3 said:

Yes I saw this late last night and was coming to post but ended up going to bed instead.   If this variant has a slower spread rate that’s a great thing!  It certainly hasn’t taken off like B1.  I am curious as to why it seems to spread quite well in Africa but not elsewhere.

Because they've already all had the other variant 😞 . So then that selects for variants that can escape built-up immunity. 

[Penelope]

15 hours ago, Not_a_Number said:

Because they've already all had the other variant 😞 . So then that selects for variants that can escape built-up immunity. 

Are you saying that all or most of the B1351 spread is due to reinfections? 

[Not_a_Number]

4 minutes ago, Penelope said:

Are you saying that all or most of the B1351 spread is due to reinfections? 

Honestly, I haven't read enough to be sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was largely reinfections. It stands to reason. 

[vonfirmath]

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-israel-study-idCAKBN2BX0JZ

 

"The study, released on Saturday, compared almost 400 people who had tested positive for COVID-19, 14 days or more after they received one or two doses of the vaccine, against the same number of unvaccinated patients with the disease."

 

"But among patients who had received two doses of the vaccine, the variant’s prevalence rate was eight times higher than those unvaccinated - 5.4% versus 0.7%."

 

Taking these two together -- maybe its MORE prevalent in those vaccinated because the vaccine is doing so well preventing infection that when you choose the same # of vaccinated vs vaccinated, the variants it is not as protective against are going to be a bigger proportion. It would need a different study to actually tell if the variant was actually more prone to infect the unvaccinated vs the vaccinated.

 

[Not_a_Number]

2 minutes ago, vonfirmath said:

Taking these two together -- maybe its MORE prevalent in those vaccinated because the vaccine is doing so well preventing infection that when you choose the same # of vaccinated vs vaccinated, the variants it is not as protective against are going to be a bigger proportion. It would need a different study to actually tell if the variant was actually more prone to infect the unvaccinated vs the vaccinated.

I think all you can conclude from that data is that the vaccine is less protective against the variant. How much less? Not enough data. 

[Bootsie]

17 minutes ago, vonfirmath said:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-israel-study-idCAKBN2BX0JZ

 

"The study, released on Saturday, compared almost 400 people who had tested positive for COVID-19, 14 days or more after they received one or two doses of the vaccine, against the same number of unvaccinated patients with the disease."

 

"But among patients who had received two doses of the vaccine, the variant’s prevalence rate was eight times higher than those unvaccinated - 5.4% versus 0.7%."

 

Taking these two together -- maybe its MORE prevalent in those vaccinated because the vaccine is doing so well preventing infection that when you choose the same # of vaccinated vs vaccinated, the variants it is not as protective against are going to be a bigger proportion. It would need a different study to actually tell if the variant was actually more prone to infect the unvaccinated vs the vaccinated.

 

"The study, released on Saturday, compared almost 400 people who had tested positive for COVID-19, 14 days or more after they received one or two doses of the vaccine, against the same number of unvaccinated patients with the disease.

It matched age and gender, among other characteristics.

The South African variant, B.1.351, was found to make up about 1% of all the COVID-19 cases across all the people studied, according to the study by Tel Aviv University and Israel’s largest healthcare provider, Clalit."

Am I reading the boldly correctly?  There were 400 people who tested positive who had been vaccinated and 400 people who had not been vaccinated, 1% of the cases were B1.351.  That would be 8 cases.  (Or, is the 1% from another study?) That is a small sample size to draw conclusions.

But then it says that 5.4% of those vaccinated had the B1..351 variant--that would be 21 people (which would be larger than the total 8 cases).  

What am I missing?

 

 

[ktgrok]

My mom sent me (in the wee hours of the morning, when she's had her pain pill and likes to doomscroll) an article about hundreds of people who got Covid in Michigan who are vaccinated, and 3 died. https://www.fox35orlando.com/news/michigan-data-shows-fully-vaccinated-people-have-been-hospitalized-and-died-with-covid-19

I had to point out that was out of 1.7 MILLION vaccinated people, the vaccines are still even more effective than we expected, and that there is a LOT of exposure in MI right now. In good news, University of Florida Shands Hospital said they have not hospitalized ANY vaccinated patients with Covid. 

Edited April 12, 2021 by ktgrok

[Penelope]

I haven’t read through it again, but did you see the Twitter thread from the author upthread (@sternlab)? 
 

I don’t think it was clear in the preprint, but all of the B1351 breakthroughs were before the second dose. There were none from 14 days after the second dose.

There is so much more info you’d ideally want to know, like what percentage were asymptomatic, how much asymptomatic testing are they doing in Israel, or at least in this sample, what were the symptomatic infections like- mild, moderate, hospitalized? 
 

And the big one, how long will the results hold true?
 

So it’s actually very positive data for the vaccines to add to the rest, but it’s a small piece of the evidence. 

[Penelope]

1 hour ago, Not_a_Number said:

Honestly, I haven't read enough to be sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was largely reinfections. It stands to reason. 

Hmm, I haven’t seen anything suggesting that. It was spreading and taking over before they had a significant level of population immunity, I thought. So to me, logic alone doesn’t really say they would or wouldn’t be reinfections. A few must be, sure. 

[Penelope]

46 minutes ago, Bootsie said:

"The study, released on Saturday, compared almost 400 people who had tested positive for COVID-19, 14 days or more after they received one or two doses of the vaccine, against the same number of unvaccinated patients with the disease.

It matched age and gender, among other characteristics.

The South African variant, B.1.351, was found to make up about 1% of all the COVID-19 cases across all the people studied, according to the study by Tel Aviv University and Israel’s largest healthcare provider, Clalit."

Am I reading the boldly correctly?  There were 400 people who tested positive who had been vaccinated and 400 people who had not been vaccinated, 1% of the cases were B1.351.  That would be 8 cases.  (Or, is the 1% from another study?) That is a small sample size to draw conclusions.

But then it says that 5.4% of those vaccinated had the B1..351 variant--that would be 21 people (which would be larger than the total 8 cases).  

What am I missing?

 

 

Here’s the paper. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.06.21254882v1.full.pdf
 

 I think what they did for the article is take either an average or nice round number to say how many cases of that variant in Israel across all those studied.

If you look at the table, The 5.4% was for those who were fully vaccinated, which they considered to be 7 days after second dose, and that group was only 149 people. 
But then the additional comment, not in the paper, was that all of the B1351 were in the group that is 7-13 days past the second dose. It isn’t clear in the paper, because they lumped the numbers for all the variants together when they showed the numbers by time after vaccination. 

Edited April 12, 2021 by Penelope

[Not_a_Number]

24 minutes ago, Penelope said:

Hmm, I haven’t seen anything suggesting that. It was spreading and taking over before they had a significant level of population immunity, I thought. So to me, logic alone doesn’t really say they would or wouldn’t be reinfections. A few must be, sure. 

How do you know they don’t have a significant level of population immunity?? The data out of there is very poor.

[Not_a_Number]

From this:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/williamhaseltine/2021/03/10/covid-19-reinfections-are-real-and-serious-all-the-more-reason-to-be-vaccinated/amp/

We also have examples of reinfection from other parts of the world, namely South Africa. During the Novavax vaccine trials in South Africa, the study found an overall primary efficacy of 49.4% in 4,400 participants, meaning about half of the patients vaccinated and later infected did not experience symptoms. Genomic analyses revealed that about a third of the 4,400 were previously positive for infection, meaning the South African variant was then and is now capable of reinfection, evading neutralizing antibodies in a similar capacity to the Brazilian variant.

[Bootsie]

20 minutes ago, Penelope said:

Here’s the paper. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.06.21254882v1.full.pdf
 

 I think what they did for the article is take either an average or nice round number to say how many cases of that variant in Israel across all those studied.

If you look at the table, The 5.4% was for those who were fully vaccinated, which they considered to be 7 days after second dose, and that group was only 149 people. 
But then the additional comment, not in the paper, was that all of the B1351 were in the group that is 7-13 days past the second dose. It isn’t clear in the paper, because they lumped the numbers for all the variants together when they showed the numbers by time after vaccination. 

Looking at the table it looks as if there are 8 people in the fully vaccinated group with B1351.  Interestingly, over 50% of the people in the fully vaccinated group were over 60 years old.  About 25% of the control group were over 60.  The majority in the control group were under 40 years old.  

[Penelope]

30 minutes ago, Bootsie said:

Looking at the table it looks as if there are 8 people in the fully vaccinated group with B1351.  Interestingly, over 50% of the people in the fully vaccinated group were over 60 years old.  About 25% of the control group were over 60.  The majority in the control group were under 40 years old.  

That is interesting.
I’ve heard talk that we would expect to have more vaccine failure in older age groups, as there is for flu vaccine. So far older people have had good response to mRNA, I think less with J and J, but the trials didn’t include the frailest elderly and not many of the very old that are dying at highest rates from Covid. I guess we’ll see, but it might be that we will continue to have a few nursing home outbreaks in the winter, just like with influenza. 

Edited April 12, 2021 by Penelope

[Bootsie]

3 minutes ago, Penelope said:

That is interesting.
I’ve heard talk that we would expect to have more vaccine failure in older age groups, as there is for flu vaccine. So far older people have had good response to mRNA, I think less with J and J, but the trials didn’t include the frailest elderly and not many of the very old that are dying at highest rates from Covid. I guess we’ll see, but it might be that we will continue to have a few nursing home outbreaks in the winter, just like with influenza. 

I am not sure what conclusions can be drawn regarding vaccine failure from this study.  It appears that the sample is of people who were diagnosed with COVID--and then seeing what variant those people had.  It is really just looking at if someone is vaccinated and then does get COVID what variant is it likely that they had.  But, the vaccine may still be greatly reducing the likelihood that they have COVID at all.  So, it may provide GREAT protection from certain variants and GOOD protection from others.  

[Penelope]

I agree that this study doesn’t say anything about that or anything to do with age.

That was all just me speculating about the future.

[Bootsie]

27 minutes ago, Penelope said:

I agree that this study doesn’t say anything about that or anything to do with age.

That was all just me speculating about the future.

I do not know much about how people are going about daily life in Israel at this point, but if people who are 60+ are interacting in ways that perhaps has them exposed to the various variants in ways that are different than those under 40, then there is not really a match between the two samples.  

[Ausmumof3]

Australia won’t be purchasing Johnson and Johnson vaccine at this stage due to the similarities with AZ

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-04-13/johnson-johnson-covid-19-vaccine-australia/100064454

[Penelope]

6 hours ago, kand said:

I haven’t looked at the actual study, only some analysis, and as far as age, it was noted that all three deaths in the vaccinated group were in people over 65. I’m curious what the actual ages were. Being in people in their late 60s is very different than people in their late 80s. 

Where were deaths mentioned in the paper? Was that reported in the media? We are talking about the Israeli study with the vaccine escape cases, right? Confused.

[Penelope]

Two new studies about B117 seem relevant to this thread. Both from the UK.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpub/article/PIIS2468-2667(21)00055-4/fulltext

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(21)00170-5/fulltext

 

The first finds no substantial increased risk of reinfection with this variant. Also reinforces previous epi evidence of increased transmissibility.

The second finds no increased risk of disease severity or death for hospitalized Covid patients. It was done before the height of the UK winter surge, and they actually sequenced viral samples and are measuring Covid—specific mortality.

The two studies in BMJ and Nature that showing higher mortality with the variant both used the same data set with much larger community samples, but they used S-dropout-PCRs to find their cases, and measured all-cause mortality rather than Covid-related mortality. 
 

Like others, they did find indirect evidence, via PCR, of higher viral loads with the variant.
 

The editorial has a good discussion, excerpt is from it. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(21)00201-2/fulltext
 

Quote

Thus, although limited by a much smaller dataset, the study by Frampton and colleagues has important advantages over the three community studies. These advantages include the use of whole-genome sequencing, recruitment of hospitalised patients, and a population reflective of the spectrum of severity in whom increased virulence will have the greatest effect on outcomes. The finding that lineage B.1.1.7 infection did not confer increased risk of severe disease and mortality in this high-risk cohort is reassuring but requires further confirmation in larger studies.

These differences between B.1.1.7 and non-B.1.1.7 lineages mirror those of other virological sub-groups of SARS-CoV-2. Similarly conflicting data was initially reported when variants carrying the Asp614Gly substitution emerged and became the dominant variants worldwide over the first few months of the pandemic in 2020. Early population-level data suggested that this substitution was associated with increased COVID-19 mortality but later cohort studies found no effect on disease severity.

^9,  

¹⁰ In a study we did in Singapore comparing different SARS-CoV-2 clades, Asp614Gly was associated with increased viral loads without changes in severity or transmission.

¹¹

 

Edited April 13, 2021 by Penelope

[Eos]

This is not good.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/04/13/johnson-and-johnson-vaccine-blood-clots/?

[ktgrok]

54 minutes ago, Harpymom said:

This is not good.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/04/13/johnson-and-johnson-vaccine-blood-clots/?

I'm wondering if anywhere has compared the rate with the adenovirus vaccines to standard us vaccines? 

[Not_a_Number]

4 minutes ago, ktgrok said:

I'm wondering if anywhere has compared the rate with the adenovirus vaccines to standard us vaccines? 

I’m also wondering.

[ktgrok]

Just now, Not_a_Number said:

I’m also wondering.

Yeah, like, how does this compare to other things, like a tetanus vaccine, birth control pills, etc, you know?

[Not_a_Number]

5 minutes ago, ktgrok said:

Yeah, like, how does this compare to other things, like a tetanus vaccine, birth control pills, etc, you know?

We never vaccinate this many all at once, it’s true. Makes the rare effects much more obvious. Same as with COVID, really — having everyone infected at once makes patterns clearer.

[kokotg]

7 minutes ago, ktgrok said:

Yeah, like, how does this compare to other things, like a tetanus vaccine, birth control pills, etc, you know?

I've seen lots of people pointing out that birth control pills have a much higher rate of blood clots. Smoking, too. And, you know, covid.

[Laura Corin]

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/apr/14/single-pfizer-or-astrazeneca-dose-produces-strong-antibody-response-study-shows?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

[wathe]

An interesting article on CBC about risks of the AZ vaccine vs risks of covid, and how we communicate relative risks.

It links to this Cambridge paper about communicating AZ vaccine risk.

 

[Bootsie]

Denmark Discontinues Use Of AstraZeneca Vaccine : Coronavirus Updates : NPR

Denmark says it will drop the use of Astra Zeneca vaccine

[wathe]

NYT article on influence of western vaccine "pauses" on vaccine hesitancy in the rest of the world.  Makes me want to cry.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/14/world/europe/western-vaccines-africa-hesitancy.html?action=click&module=Top Stories&pgtype=Homepage

[Corraleno]

It's concerning that extreme caution in the West is creating suspicion of AZ and J&J in poor countries, who may then turn to vaccines from Russia and China that also use adenovirus vectors and will most likely have the same problem — one of the Chinese vaccines uses the same chimp virus as AZ, and another uses human adenoviruses, like J&J and Sputnik. And I'm skeptical that either Russia or China would honestly report blood clot issues.

Slovakia is one of the few European countries that ordered Sputnik (which is not approved in the EU) and after they complained about serious quality control issues, Russia basically called them liars and demanded they return the vaccine they bought.

China does have at least one (and I think two) inactivated-virus vaccines, but I don't know what stage those are at. And again, who knows if any data on those would be trustworthy.

Novavax was initially planning to apply for EUA next month on the strength of the UK data, but I wonder if they will decide to wait until the US trial completes? Maybe the FDA will be super cautious about approving another vaccine and will want to wait for more data? OTOH, pausing J&J is a real setback for the vaccine rollout here, and we could definitely use another option, especially one with very high efficacy that can be stored at normal fridge temperatures. The US ordered 110 million doses, and Novavax says they should be able to deliver all of those by July. If we could start using Novavax on adults this summer, and make the Pfizer & Moderna available to 12-18s as soon as they get EUAs for that age group, that could really help get middle- and high school students vaxxed before school starts.

 

Edited April 15, 2021 by Corraleno

[mathnerd]

I hope that it is OK to post something less serious on this thread!

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/real-life-professor-snape-goes-viral-leading-covid-19-vaccine-n1264083

 

Edited April 14, 2021 by mathnerd

[Spy Car]

1 hour ago, Corraleno said:

It's concerning that extreme caution in the West is creating suspicion of AZ and J&J in poor countries, who may then turn to vaccines from Russia and China that also use adenovirus vectors and will most likely have the same problem — one of the Chinese vaccines uses the same chimp virus as AZ, and another uses the same Ad5 virus as J&J and Sputnik. And I'm skeptical that either Russia or China would honestly report blood clot issues.

Slovakia is one of the few European countries that ordered Sputnik (which is not approved in the EU) and after they complained about serious quality control issues, Russia basically called them liars and demanded they return the vaccine they bought.

China does have at least one (and I think two) inactivated-virus vaccines, but I don't know what stage those are at. And again, who knows if any data on those would be trustworthy.

Novavax was initially planning to apply for EUA next month on the strength of the UK data, but I wonder if they will decide to wait until the US trial completes? Maybe the FDA will be super cautious about approving another vaccine and will want to wait for more data? OTOH, pausing J&J is a real setback for the vaccine rollout here, and we could definitely use another option, especially one with very high efficacy that can be stored at normal fridge temperatures. The US ordered 110 million doses, and Novavax says they should be able to deliver all of those by July. If we could start using Novavax on adults this summer, and make the Pfizer & Moderna available to 12-18s as soon as they get EUAs for that age group, that could really help get middle- and high school students vaxxed before school starts.

 

Do you have an awareness of when (roughly speaking) Pfizer and/or Moderna might have the data necessary to seek emergency authorization for 12-15 year olds (Pfizer) and 12-17 year olds (Moderna)?

BTW, thank you for your incredible efforts staying on top of the vaccination news and sharing it here. You have become an invaluable resource for me on this topic and I'm certain that feeling is widely shared on this forum.

Greatly appreciated!

Bill

Edited April 15, 2021 by Spy Car

[The Governess]

24 minutes ago, Spy Car said:

Do you have an awareness of when (roughly speaking) Pfizer and/or Moderna might have the data necessary to seek emergency authorization for 12-15 year olds (Pfizer) and 12-17 year olds (Moderna)?

BTW, thank you for your incredible efforts staying on top of the vaccination news and sharing it here. You have become an invaluable resource for me on this topic and I'm certain that feeling is widely shared on this forum.

Greatly appreciated!

Bill

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/09/world/pfizer-covid-vaccine-young-teens.html
 

Pfizer has already applied! 
 

I agree that @Corraleno’s posts are always informative and much appreciated!

[Penelope]

JNJ/Janssen uses Ad26, different than Sputnik.

 

[mommyoffive]

Vaccine approval for kids age 12-plus expected before May (wlwt.com)

[bluemongoose]

 

Quote

Yeah, I dunno about that. It's possible we're underselling, but the people who are hesitant are also largely the people who've decided COVID is a hoax, anyway... 

I have family in Michigan that will not vax, it is not political or believed to be a hoax.  It is because they are part of a religious community that doesn't vaccinate or participate in politics or much of anything that has to do with modern times. They have been passing COVID among their people. They know they have COVID, but they just deal with it as if it is just a run of the mill virus. 

 

Now as for me, we are getting vaxxed. I am one Pfizer down! WAHOO!