Covid19mathblog.com

“A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.” Common Sense by Thomas Paine

Unfortunately for society it takes some time to learn from the data beyond just using plain reason and common sense – but time should allow us to look back and realize the reality of the situation.

School closures do not work in mitigating spread of covid. We did this early on in the US county and concluded the same thing – behavior and ventilation would do more impact. The marginal improvement of school closure is not worth the damage. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-10178633/School-closures-DONT-work-New-study-finds-Japans-classroom-shutdowns-didnt-stop-spread-Covid.html

“A new study looked at municipalities in Japan that did and did not close schools in spring 2020 during the first Covid wave

Researchers found no statistical difference in the number of cases per 100,000 between areas that did and did not close classrooms

Previous studies have found that Zoom school was bad news for both students’ academic abilities and mental health”

“’School closures reduce children’s learning opportunities, negatively affect their physical and mental development and make it difficult for their parents to leave for work in the daytime,’ co-researcher Dr Kentaro Fukumoto, a professor of polimetrics at Gakushuin University, told The Ashahi Shimbun.

‘The central government should carefully consider whether to ask schools to close in the future.”

“Researchers from City University of Hong Kong and the Institute of Automation at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing found that preventing in-person learning only lowered the number of infections among young people by four percent in New York City.

By comparison, social distancing of the entire population in public places lowered the number of cases and deaths by as much as 50 percent.”

The implications of missing school has a cost as noted last year! We still haven’t learned?- https://covid19mathblog.com/2020/11/covid-11-15-20/ in the article https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2772834 – they noted

“This analysis suggests that 10 days of missed school is associated with a reduction in final educational attainment of 0.0262 (SE, 0.0064) years for boys and 0.0217 years (SE, 0.0062) years for girls.”

” We believe that during the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States has extracted an enormous sacrifice from its youngest citizens to protect the health of its oldest.”

We seem to think vaccination is the key to reduce spread? How many times do we have to display this is not the case. Testing ONLY the unvaccinated gets you a misleading result and ends up in greater spread. False confidence is the most dangerous thing for this type of virus as time spent increases significantly with false confidence – https://summit.news/2021/11/10/fully-vaccinated-choir-concert-ends-in-substantial-covid-19-outbreak/

“A choir concert in Germany that allowed only fully vaccinated or recovered people to attend, banning those who are unvaccinated but could provide a negative test, resulted in a COVID-19 outbreak that infected at least 24 people.

The concert, which took place in Freigericht (Main-Kinzig), operated under 2G rules, meaning only the fully vaccinated and those who can prove they recovered from COVID were allowed to attend.

This meant that people who could literally prove they didn’t have COVID-19 on the door by showing a negative test were barred from entering.”

IF we can’t conclude vaccination in lab setting reduces transmission but in reality it marginally reduces we will misalign the risk/reward. We will be changing the trajectory of a very small subset of youth life and potentially putting to death a very small percentage that had not much reward to begin with in taking the vaccine. Many countries are halting/reducing the vaccine for their youth and here we are pushing it down to the 5 yr olds per its saving society from transmission and the great fear of long covid. IF a school closure setting before vaccines only helped 4% how much will vaccinating youth help? https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4340862

“Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) head Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) said on Wednesday (Nov. 10) that a panel of experts has decided to suspend administering second doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech (BNT) COVID vaccine to children 12-17 years old amid concerns it may increase the risk of myocarditis.”

“As for whether COVID-19 vaccines will be approved for children aged 5-11, Chen said the matter will not be considered until the second dose issue with 12 to 17-year-olds is settled.”

So how much is long covid real? Many long-term issues was news for many other health issues before covid. This study tracked down adults which has persistent issues documenting many of these are not a direct result of Covid – https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2785832

“Findings In this cross-sectional analysis of 26 823 adults from the population-based French CONSTANCES cohort during the COVID-19 pandemic, self-reported COVID-19 infection was associated with most persistent physical symptoms, whereas laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 infection was associated only with anosmia. Those associations were independent from self-rated health or depressive symptoms.

Meaning Findings suggest that persistent physical symptoms after COVID-19 infection should not be automatically ascribed to SARS-CoV-2; a complete medical evaluation may be needed to prevent erroneously attributing symptoms to the virus.”

Your health matters even when it comes to vaccination. THE MESSAGE NEEDS TO BE PUSHED HEALTHY LIFESTYLE IS THE BEST SOLUTION/WEAPON AGAINST COVID NOT PHARMACEUTICAL SOLUTIONS! Use the pharma to bridge you while you get healthy but the best defense is a healthy lifestyle – perhaps promote a healthy lifestyle card over vaccination card? This study shows that the less healthy you are the less longevity the vaccine is! Also the sad fact IF you are unhealthy and don’t change you will need boosters at least every year https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=897001005069002124088004121126069077034027008029087048022104121028024073064107120120039058099039050028002126087119080113025074056010074000048106004097001116000123120061086013026023087105097073012069096093118010007019126006088107083119079104110116121111&EXT=pdf&INDEX=TRUE

“Vaccine effectiveness against symptomatic Covid-19 infection wanes

progressively over time across all subgroups, but at different rate according to type of

vaccine, and faster for men and older frail individuals. The effectiveness against severe illness

seems to remain high through 9 months, although not for men, older frail individuals, and individuals with comorbidities. This strengthens the evidence-based rationale for

administration of a third booster dose.”

The data is concerning me. In theory the studies and results early on showed that vaccines have reduced deaths. However perhaps it was more seasonal vs. reality. Looking at last year vs. this year on a temp 7day basis the fatality rates are not really improved – outside the initial surge of covid which really should be excluded from the data as there are many factors that happened from poor controls at old home facilities. Viewing the data on a temp basis vs time basis normalizes some of the behavior – you can see our behavior outweighs vaccination level in the first chart below