***NON-POLITICAL COVID-19 Discussion Thread***

[JakeF]

A couple of reminders...

Originally Posted by Bwana

Once again, don't come in this thread with some kind of political agenda, or you will be shown the door. If you want to go that route, there is a thread about this in DC.

Originally Posted by Dartgod

People, there is a lot of good information in this thread, let's try to keep the petty bickering to a minimum.

We all have varying opinions about the impact of this, the numbers, etc. We will all never agree with each other. But we can all keep it civil.

Thanks!

Click here for the original OP:

Spoiler!

Apparently the CoronaVirus can survive on a inanimate objects, such as door knobs, for 9 days.

California coronavirus case could be first spread within U.S. community, CDC says
By SOUMYA KARLAMANGLA, JACLYN COSGROVE
FEB. 26, 2020 8:04 PM

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is investigating what could be the first case of novel coronavirus in the United States involving a patient in California who neither recently traveled out of the country nor was in contact with someone who did.

“At this time, the patient’s exposure is unknown. It’s possible this could be an instance of community spread of COVID-19, which would be the first time this has happened in the United States,” the CDC said in a statement. “Community spread means spread of an illness for which the source of infection is unknown. It’s also possible, however, that the patient may have been exposed to a returned traveler who was infected.”

The individual is a resident of Solano County and is receiving medical care in Sacramento County, according to the state Department of Public Health.

The CDC said the “case was detected through the U.S. public health system — picked up by astute clinicians.”

Officials at UC Davis Medical Center expanded on what the federal agency might have meant by that in an email sent Wednesday, as reported by the Davis Enterprise newspaper.

The patient arrived at UC Davis Medical Center from another hospital Feb. 19 and “had already been intubated, was on a ventilator, and given droplet protection orders because of an undiagnosed and suspected viral condition,” according to an email sent by UC Davis officials that was obtained by the Davis Enterprise.

The staff at UC Davis requested COVID-19 testing by the CDC, but because the patient didn’t fit the CDC’s existing criteria for the virus, a test wasn’t immediately administered, according to the email. The CDC then ordered the test Sunday, and results were announced Wednesday. Hospital administrators reportedly said in the email that despite these issues, there has been minimal exposure at the hospital because of safety protocols they have in place.

A UC Davis Health spokesperson declined Wednesday evening to share the email with The Times.

Since Feb. 2, more than 8,400 returning travelers from China have entered California, according to the state health department. They have been advised to self-quarantine for 14 days and limit interactions with others as much as possible, officials said.

“This is a new virus, and while we are still learning about it, there is a lot we already know,” Dr. Sonia Angell, director of the California Department of Public Health, said in a statement. “We have been anticipating the potential for such a case in the U.S., and given our close familial, social and business relationships with China, it is not unexpected that the first case in the U.S. would be in California.”

It is not clear how the person became infected, but public health workers could not identify any contacts with people who had traveled to China or other areas where the virus is widespread. That raises concern that the virus is spreading in the United States, creating a challenge for public health officials, experts say.

“It’s the first signal that we could be having silent transmission in the community,” said Lawrence Gostin, director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center on National and Global Health Law. “It probably means there are many more cases out there, and it probably means this individual has infected others, and now it’s a race to try to find out who that person has infected.”

On Tuesday, the CDC offered its most serious warning to date that the United States should expect and prepare for the coronavirus to become a more widespread health issue.

“Ultimately, we expect we will see coronavirus spread in this country,” said Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. “It’s not so much a question of if, but a question of when.”

According to the CDC’s latest count Wednesday morning, 59 U.S. residents have tested positive for the new strain of coronavirus — 42 of whom are repatriated citizens from a Diamond Princess cruise. That number has grown by two since Messonnier’s last count Tuesday, although the CDC was not immediately available to offer details on the additional cases.

More than 82,000 cases of coronavirus have been reported globally, and more than 2,700 people have died, with the majority in mainland China, the epicenter of the outbreak.

But public health leaders have repeatedly reminded residents that the health risk from the novel coronavirus to the general public remains low.

“While COVID-19 has a high transmission rate, it has a low mortality rate,” the state Department of Public Health said in a statement Wednesday. “From the international data we have, of those who have tested positive for COVID-19, approximately 80% do not exhibit symptoms that would require hospitalization. There have been no confirmed deaths related to COVID-19 in the United States to date.”

CDC officials have also warned that although the virus is likely to spread in U.S. communities, the flu still poses a greater risk.

Gostin said the news of potential silent transmission does not eliminate the possibility of containing the virus in the U.S. and preventing an outbreak.

“There are few enough cases that we should at least try,” he said. “Most of us are not optimistic that that will be successful, but we’re still in the position to try.”

[DaFace]

Originally Posted by suzzer99

One by one these small enclaves are being converted - in a tragic and completely preventable way.

Even that seems a bit optimistic. If 6 people dying from one church in 10 days or 11 people getting it from a family gathering (one died) still doesn't convince the people around the situations to get vaccinated, I'm not sure what will really make any difference.

[Marcellus]

Originally Posted by suzzer99

Pentagon to require members of US military to get COVID-19 vaccine by Sept. 15, according to memo obtained by AP.

— Jesse Rodriguez (@JesseRodriguez) August 9, 2021

While I am absolutely not an antivaxxer, I hope you don't think this is some type of evidence the vaccine is obviously safe.

[loochy]

Originally Posted by Marcellus

While I am absolutely not an antivaxxer, I hope you don't think this is some type of evidence the vaccine is obviously safe.

I thought he was just posting it as something to converse about

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by suzzer99

[url]...

One by one these small enclaves are being converted - in a tragic and completely preventable way.

I have some relatives who started out anti-vaxx, and they're now strongly pro-vaxx and vaccinated. I was really surprised because they strongly fit the classic profile of the anti-vaxxers. I think what changed them was that a few people they know got it and have been hospitalized.

In full disclosure, they weren't hardcore anti-vaxx because while they said they didn't want it, they didn't resist when some family members made appointments for them and drove them to the vaccination spot. But I'm sure they wouldn't have done it on their own at that point.

I'm kind of proud of them for changing their minds. They looked at what was happening around them and realized that they were on the wrong side, and so they switched. Good for them.

[TLO]

CDC: More than 99.99% of fully vaccinated people have not had a severe breakthrough case of Covid-19

More than 99.99% of people who are fully vaccinated against Covid-19 have not had a breakthrough case resulting in hospitalization or death, according to a CNN analysis of data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

As of Aug. 2, more than 164 million people in the United States were fully vaccinated against Covid-19, according to the CDC. Fewer than 0.001% of those individuals — 1,507 people — died and fewer than 0.005% — 7,101 people — were hospitalized with Covid-19.

CDC last published data on breakthrough cases through July 26. These latest figures include 938 additional severe breakthrough cases — 862 additional hospitalizations and 244 additional deaths — reported over that seven-day period. The CDC does not provide more detail about the timing of the breakthrough cases.

About three-quarters (74%) of all reported breakthrough cases were among seniors age 65 or older. Of the roughly 1,500 people who died, one in five passed away from something other than Covid-19 even though they had a breakthrough case of the virus, according to the CDC.

Since May, the CDC has focused on investigating only hospitalized or fatal cases among those who have been fully vaccinated.

According to the CDC, this data relies on “passive and voluntary reporting” and are a “snapshot” to “help identify patterns and look for signals among vaccine breakthrough cases.���

“To date, no unexpected patterns have been identified in the case demographics or vaccine characteristics among people with reported vaccine breakthrough infections,” according to the CDC.

https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/cor...d873635394a789

[TLO]

Is there an undercount with those numbers? Most definitely.

They're still amazing.

[DaFace]

Originally Posted by TLO

Is there an undercount with those numbers? Most definitely.

They're still amazing.

I generally agree, but I kind of hate those numbers presented in isolation. 99.9% sounds great, but what's the percentage for unvaccinated people? I bet it's still 99% or more. Now, the difference between 99.00% and 99.99% is meaningful, but I just feel like the latter insolation doesn't tell me much.

[DaFace]

I do find this presentation to be much more meaningful (via /u/DarrenLu/ on reddit). I'll note, however, that the poster uses red for both hospitalizations (on top) and breakthrough infections in general (on bottom), which is a little confusing.

[Pitt Gorilla]

COVID-19 mRNA vaccines: How could anything developed this quickly be safe?

https://www.uab.edu/news/youcanuse/i...dqs5_EJYMCc6qY

How could anything developed this quickly be safe?

For many Americans, the arrival of COVID-19 vaccines less than a year after the pandemic began is, quite literally, unbelievable. That skepticism, in turn, is contributing to hesitancy to get the shot — especially among those concerned that the most widely used COVID-19 vaccines rely on messenger RNA, or mRNA, to induce protection. This is the first time that any mRNA vaccine has been approved for human use.

But the development of mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 is no overnight success. In fact, they have a remarkable back story stretching back decades. Without one researcher’s determination, two companies with vision, a longtime network of university labs, and decades of taxpayer funding in treatments for influenza and HIV, particularly by the United States’ National Institutes of Health, COVID-19 vaccines might still be years away. Even then, it took a massive, unprecedented investment by the U.S. government to get these shots from labs into arms faster than ever before.

The remarkable success we have seen over the past few months in slowing the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States can be traced back to these four parallel stories and one big bet from the U.S. government.

1. mRNA vaccines: an idea more than 30 years in the making

When Katalin Karikó, Ph.D., came to the United States from Hungary in 1985, she brought with her a passionate determination to work on mRNA. Messenger RNA is fundamental to life: sets of blueprints, spelled out using four nucleotide “letters,” for building every protein in every life form on Earth. Karikó’s big idea was to produce proteins at will by injecting mRNA into cells, but her experiments did not work for a long time. Lack of success forced her to rely on one senior scientist after another to support her work, while she made only meager wages.

In 1998, Karikó partnered with Drew Weissman, M.D., Ph.D., at the University of Pennsylvania. Weissman was interested in developing an HIV vaccine based on mRNA. After many failures, Karikó and Weissman learned that natural mRNAs use small amounts of slightly modified nucleotides, in addition to the four standard nucleotides. When the scientists inserted the modified nucleotides into the mRNAs they were using in their research, they began to find that these modified mRNAs produced proteins efficiently without causing undesirable side effects. They began to publish their findings, starting in 2005. By the time the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 showed up in 2020, Karikó and Weissman were already working on an influenza vaccine based on their mRNA technology.

2. Visionary companies fueled the drive toward mRNA vaccines

It can take years for lab breakthroughs to become market-ready products, and this is exactly what happened with mRNA. Soon after Karikó and Weissman’s work was published in the mid-2000s, visionary companies recognized the implications of mRNA for vaccines and quickly licensed the technology. Moderna was founded in 2010 to produce vaccines based on the new mRNA technology, and the company had been growing as a vaccine manufacturer when the COVID-19 virus appeared.

Moderna was not the only one working on an mRNA approach to vaccines. BioNTech is a German company established to work on immunotherapies in 2008 by a Turkish couple, who immigrated to Germany. Like Moderna, BioNTech recognized the value of the mRNA technology for vaccine design years ago and licensed the technology. In 2013, BioNTech hired Karikó as a vice president and began to develop mRNA technologies for use against many diseases. BioNTech’s efforts in vaccine development greatly increased in 2018, when Pfizer joined BioNTech’s effort with a research and development agreement to develop mRNA-based vaccines against influenza. It was a natural collaboration because Pfizer, a U.S. company in New York, has been a major vaccine producer for a long time. When the pandemic began, Pfizer/BioNTech immediately turned their attention to developing vaccines against COVID-19.

3. Insights from the fight against flu and HIV were crucial to COVID-19 success

However, in order to produce vaccines against COVID-19, Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech first needed to identify the right mRNA sequences for proteins that would make suitable vaccine components. COVID-19 virus is similar to the SARS virus of 2003, and previous research of the SARS outbreak suggested potential vaccine components. Nevertheless, exact design of the actual vaccine structure was not a simple task for a small company like Moderna, or even a larger one such as Pfizer, even though the entire COVID-19 virus genome had been published by Chinese researchers in early 2020.

But here is where another decades-long scientific effort paid off: Concern about another influenza pandemic on the scale of the 1918 flu pandemic has long motivated U.S. investment in flu studies, particularly by the NIH. The NIH has also spent more than 40 years funding scientists working toward a vaccine for HIV.

The crucial sequence information needed to target COVID-19 came from a vaccine research laboratory at the NIH. The lab had been working on HIV vaccine designs for decades and had developed algorithms to identify molecular structures optimized for vaccines. This approach also predicted a successful vaccine structure against the respiratory syncytial virus. Harnessing that experience, the NIH group rapidly identified stable molecular structures optimized for the mRNA vaccines against COVID-19.

4. NIH investment in vaccine evaluation infrastructure pays off

For 60 years, the NIH also has maintained a group of about 10 university laboratories throughout the country to help test vaccines against pathogens such as influenza. These clinical and scientific teams, known as Vaccine and Treatment Evaluation Units, or VTEUs, include physicians, researchers and nurses dedicated to vaccine studies and testing. Over the years, the VTEUs also have trained numerous vaccine experts, and some of these have brought their skills to universities, vaccine companies and regulatory agencies. In addition to the VTEU network, the NIH has supported an HIV Vaccine Trials Network and the AIDS Clinical Trials Network. As Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech created their mRNA vaccines against COVID-19, these experts and vaccine study networks were recruited into rapid vaccine testing, and they enlisted tens of thousands of people willing to volunteer as test subjects. To everyone’s pleasant surprise, the mRNA vaccines proved to be extremely effective at preventing moderate and severe forms of the disease, as well as its spread.

5. American government guaranteed purchases to speed mass production

Ordinarily, manufacturers wait for proof of efficacy before building the expensive, custom infrastructure and systems needed to produce millions of doses of a new treatment. Why make that investment if the test candidate may fail? But for the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, the U.S. government pledged to purchase millions of doses and provided upfront money, even before the vaccine’s efficacy was determined. This allowed Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech to build mass-production capacity, even as testing was underway.

6. Brave human volunteers

To gain regulatory approval, a vaccine has to be tested for safety and efficacy in healthy volunteers after being shown safe in animals. Fortunately, hundreds of thousands of people the world over agreed to take the vaccine candidates. Some got a placebo, so that real-life comparisons could be made. After analyzing the massive and detailed data from these volunteers, regulatory agencies gave their nod to the two mRNA vaccines. Importantly, those trial volunteers continue to be monitored for any long-term issues, and to find out how long the COVID-19 immunity lasts.

Determination leads to success

Thus, America’s ability to rapidly produce COVID-19 vaccines did not result from luck or a short-term effort. The mRNA vaccines we have today were birthed from decades of investment and determination. Karikó’s tenacity still endures today — she rises every morning at 5 a.m. to work in her basement laboratory. Her work, and that of many other dedicated scientists, has benefited the world. Meanwhile, the long-term investment from the NIH and other funding agencies produced the manpower, organization, science and technology that were necessary to produce the vaccines that will help us win the struggle against COVID-19.

[Chief Roundup]

The latest information from the hospital I work at shows that 83.3% of cases have been unvaccinated with 16.7% being fully vaccinated. Numbers are since July 1st.

[Strongside]

Got a text from my cousin today that he and his wife had gotten the shot. Small town guy who was adamantly anti-vax. Not sure what the tipping point was, but I was surprised and glad he made that decision.

[Otter]

Originally Posted by Strongside

Got a text from my cousin today that he and his wife had gotten the shot. Small town guy who was adamantly anti-vax. Not sure what the tipping point was, but I was surprised and glad he made that decision.

A lot of people were taking the wait and see approach.

[suzzer99]

Originally Posted by DaFace

Even that seems a bit optimistic. If 6 people dying from one church in 10 days or 11 people getting it from a family gathering (one died) still doesn't convince the people around the situations to get vaccinated, I'm not sure what will really make any difference.

Yeah there's some you're never going to reach. But tribalism is a hell of a drug, If you can turn some of the leaders in a given social group, a whole lot of followers will follow.

[suzzer99]

This is a perfect example of how the disinformation bubble works - take some part of a study out of context, and use it to support a premise that's the exact opposite of the study author's conclusion.

[wazu]

Originally Posted by Strongside

Got a text from my cousin today that he and his wife had gotten the shot. Small town guy who was adamantly anti-vax. Not sure what the tipping point was, but I was surprised and glad he made that decision.

In the pre-Delta days it wasn't that unreasonable of a stance for somebody who was youngish and relatively healthy. But anybody paying attention should be running to get the vaccine now.