Covid19mathblog.com
Lots of things have transpired in a week.
We have an official approval and rollout of the vaccine for the youth 5-11 in the US. The risk is a small risk at this time – but so is the reward and potentially even smaller than the risk. If someone told you to buy a stock because it can go up 20% but also can go down 50% – this is not a good trade. I don’t even do trades that are 50/50. Looking at just the numbers, this wouldn’t compel me to have my kids do it. However it looks like certain places if you want to be part of their society it’s a must. The argument would have to be which has been stated “vaccination will reduce transmission and variants and we can “end” this. Society Good!” Unfortunately it’s not showing up in the current data – see below confirmation/capita charts. You are adding a risk element to the youth who has little reward from the vaccine. The magic of vaccination reducing transmission is far off from the reality of the dataset. And the risk, we are only starting to know and hear about more stories of issues. Mind you this is coming from the huge monetary incentivized drug manufactures who are not necessarily the best actors overtime – montage of pharma past not that long ago at least some reason to be a little skeptical- https://twitter.com/eGomes2107/status/1456258603262746633?t=g6U5mFDLhgtPnsuVEUlEmA&s=19
Could they have acted poorly with the vaccine? https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj.n2635
“Covid-19: Researcher blows the whistle on data integrity issues in Pfizer’s vaccine trial”
Covid vaccines are not and should not be for ALL. There is no way the risk/reward profile is the same for everyone – it should be a discussion with patient and doctor. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41421-021-00329-3
“Here, we report, besides generation of neutralizing antibodies, consistent alterations in hemoglobin A1c, serum sodium and potassium levels, coagulation profiles, and renal functions in healthy volunteers after vaccination with an inactivated SARS-CoV-2 vaccine. Similar changes had also been reported in COVID-19 patients, suggesting that vaccination mimicked an infection. Single-cell mRNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) before and 28 days after the first inoculation also revealed consistent alterations in gene expression of many different immune cell types. Reduction of CD8+ T cells and increase in classic monocyte contents were exemplary. Moreover, scRNA-seq revealed increased NF-κB signaling and reduced type I interferon responses, which were confirmed by biological assays and also had been reported to occur after SARS-CoV-2 infection with aggravating symptoms. Altogether, our study recommends additional caution when vaccinating people with pre-existing clinical conditions, including diabetes, electrolyte imbalances, renal dysfunction, and coagulation disorders.”
We also now have 2 “approved” pill options to treat covid coming! First Merck and now Pfizer! – https://www.bbc.com/news/health-59163899?xtor=AL-72-%5Bpartner%5D-%5Bbbc.news.twitter%5D-%5Bheadline%5D-%5Bnews%5D-%5Bbizdev%5D-%5Bisapi%5D&at_campaign=64&at_custom4=10F2E81E-3D61-11EC-A66C-37B4BDCD475E&at_custom2=twitter&at_custom1=%5Bpost+type%5D&at_custom3=%40BBCBreaking&at_medium=custom7
Now these pills are $700+ (IVM ~$3)- it would have been great if they ran beyond a placebo but a group with IVM to end the debate but they did not do that.
With now a pill coming to treat covid – SHOULD you vaccinate a low risk candidate?
Remember the stages of getting covid and the probabilities of each is not 0% nor 100%:
- You had to get into an opportunity to get it (Effective Quarantine could be 0% chance to get covid, N95, limited time with society etc…keeps it close to 0%)
- You had to have their immune system impaired enough to get infected and/or spend a lot of time with someone infected
- You had to have an immune system that cannot compete against it – potential long covid
- You would go to hospital/doctor visit and see if modern medicine can help (above pills 90% recovery)– potential long covid
- You would be put on ventilation and has a decent probability of dying but its not 100% nor 0%
Stages of vaccination unlike covid there is a 100% stage – the rest are still probabilities
- You go and take vaccine 100%
- Your immune system responds to vaccine and if strong enough reaction will be minor to none – potential long term issues
- Your body reacts badly needing hospital – potential long term issues
- Modern medicine will try to fix your issue – potential long term issues
- ICU – death?
Fate is not part of the vaccination path in some form. Assigning probabilities in each stage is a function of personal health/lifestyle which no one has any idea other than potentially a frank discussion with you and your doctor.
Doctor and Patient discussion passionately described by Dr. Drew Pinsky has been adulterated – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKVr-oUnaU8
I try to create different views in order to communicate what the data is saying. As noted in past – vaccines so far show little impact on transmission and you would be better off educating people of HVAC solutions and/or get healthy to mitigate transmission. Below is a graph with state data over the last 30 days vs. confirmation per capita (transmission of covid metric). You can see vaccination levels have 0 impact on transmission. In meteorologist world they like R^2 used to predict weather is around 0.15-0.2 – and we know how poor those forecast can be. Coincidently the bottom graph is vs. avg temps for the state over last 30 days shows R^2=0.18
We don’t have temperature by country in the DB but you can see some of the colder countries showing up in the far right. Also important to note no visible dispersion between vaccination and transmission.
On county level which better takes account behavior, temperature, population density etc… same result not much dispersion from high vaccinated counties to low counties in terms of transmission.
In VA over the last 30 days we are seeing some bifurcation so perhaps the vaccine is reducing transmission somewhat now – the data could be changing and one needs to be open to change. It could also mean the vaccinated counties have been saturated with confirmations. Still some much lower vaccinated counties are just as good as Fairfax in terms of transmission.
The more we stop pushing vaccines as a society good we can focus on things that will actually be a society good. A re-engineer of our ventilation systems to ACTUALLY reduce transmission. A focus on getting healthy and promoting better lifestyle will be a lot more impactful than coercion of vaccines to the healthy or already infected. The covid vaccine does seem to be more therapeutic than the traditional vaccines of the past – meaning it does a good job with reducing death and hospitalization but not transmission.
Russia is on top!
Russia low vaccination could catch up to them. Fatality rates are higher than last year.
PA is creeping up the leaderboard in the US
Its getting cold in PA
Limited bifurcation in vaccination rate to transmission – looking to be more of weather/human behavior issue…..
