SARS-CoV-2 Coronavirus (COVID-19)

You mean like they did everywhere else Delta made an appearance?

 

did they? how is the u/k doing?

 

maybe we're hitting that ever elusive herd immunity.

or maybe people are masking up and social distancing again, preventing delta spread to some degree

 

Florida-Alabama To Draw Huge Fan Attendance - WUFT News
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2021/09/20/alabama-football-crowd-covid/
I'm sure that's it.

 

He's got his boat already.

Bob Wilson

 

This is timely and important if replicated:
RNA-targeting enzyme expands the CRISPR toolkit

...
"This new enzyme is like the Cas9 of RNA," says McGovern Fellow Omar Abudayyeh, referring to the DNA-cutting CRISPR enzyme that has revolutionized modern biology by making DNA editing fast, inexpensive, and exact. "It creates two precise cuts and doesn't destroy the cell in the process, like other enzymes," he adds.

Up until now, only one other family of RNA-targeting enzymes, Cas13, has extensively been developed for RNA targeting applications. However, when Cas13 recognizes its target, it shreds any RNAs in the cell, destroying the cell along the way. Like Cas9, Cas7-11 is part of a programmable system; it can be directed at specific RNA targets using a CRISPR guide. Abudayyeh, McGovern Fellow Jonathan Gootenberg, and their colleagues discovered Cas7-11 through a deep exploration of the CRISPR systems found in the microbial world. Their findings were recently reported in the journal Nature.
...​

Bob Wilson

 

incredible stuff

 

The lie that the vaccines do not work comes face-to-face with reality:
'Soul-crushing': US COVID-19 deaths are topping 1,900 a day

COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. have climbed to an average of more than 1,900 a day for the first time since early March, with experts saying the virus is preying largely on a distinct group: 71 million unvaccinated Americans.

The increasingly lethal turn has filled hospitals, complicated the start of the school year, delayed the return to offices and demoralized health care workers.

“It is devastating,” said Dr. Dena Hubbard, a pediatrician in the Kansas City, Missouri, area who has cared for babies delivered prematurely by cesarean section in a last-ditch effort to save their mothers, some of whom died. For health workers, the deaths, combined with misinformation and disbelief about the virus, have been “heart-wrenching, soul-crushing.”
. . .​

I get so tired of false claims that the vaccines are ineffective. There are no guarantees but the vaccines are effective ... even as the liars claim they are not and the fools who follow them. Just to make sure we're on the same page:

• few vaccines are 100% preventative but provide a powerful tool
• effective vaccines reduce the probability and severity of a disease

It is a bald faced lie to say the COVID-19 vaccines are ineffective. Combined with good public health practices, the population can become so sparse of potential hosts as the drive the infectious agent to extinction ... aka. smallpox, polio.

Bob Wilson

 

Covid-19 death rate more than 4 times higher in least vaccinated states than in most vaccinated

"The average rate of Covid-19 deaths in the 10 least vaccinated states was more than four times higher over the past week than the rate in the 10 most vaccinated states, according to a CNN analysis.

In the least vaccinated states, roughly eight people out of every 100,000 residents died of Covid-19 over the past week, compared with only about two out of every 100,000 people in the 10 most vaccinated states.

CNN used data from Johns Hopkins University and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for the analysis. ...

The states with the lowest vaccination rates have fully vaccinated less than 45% of their residents. They are Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Dakota, Tennessee, West Virginia and Wyoming. ...

The 10 states with the highest vaccination rates have fully vaccinated more than 62% of their residents. They are Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington."


Including other figures from the story, covid-19 case rates are 2.2X higher in the least vaccinated states, hospitalization rates are 2.9X higher, and death rates just over 4X higher.

While my state is among the top 10 in vaccination rates overall, it must be noted that we also have numerous counties still competing for 'least-vaccinated', some with rates matching or even lower than their neighboring or nearby Idaho counties.

 

yeah, best to stop reading the news. the media is not gonna let go of it until something that sells better comes along.
i just ignore those articles

 

Or cite a data source. For example: COVID-19 in Alabama: Hospital Statistics for Monday, Sept. 20 Show Hospitalizations Down, ICU Bed Availability Up - Alabama News

The state [Alabama rjw] has increased its surplus of hospital beds. There are now 1,543 staffed ICU beds and 1, 517 ICU patients, for a surplus of 26 beds. On Friday, the surplus was seven beds. A week ago, there was a shortage of 11 beds.
we have less than 10% of our ICU beds open as COVID-19 has filled the rest:​

Ignore unpleasant news at your peril.

Bob Wilson

 

Some newer info on that line of thought:

(magenta coloring mine).

 

it's been flat around here, albeit much higher than pre delta. they used to publish the running average of cases bu town, so you could get a feel for hot spots, but i think they squashed it after claims of discrimination.
now they publish vaccination rates by town, which isn't that helpful

 

Absolutely concur that (despite what you hear from the fear mongers) the vaccine is effective......but I'm not so sure about the prediction of extinction.
I'm not a trained bug hunter like the Fauch BUT....
Animal Reservoirs and Hosts for Emerging Alphacoronaviruses and Betacoronaviruses - Volume 27, Number 4—April 2021 - Emerging Infectious Diseases journal - CDC

 

I dislike the wording here. Specifically the words "higher risk." What the data really shows is the rates of actual infections.
People that are vaccinated or not starting today can take all sorts of behaviors that will change the risk level.
For example you could just stay home, take lots of flights, refuse to go anywhere with unvaccinated people or unmasked people. IOW you have lots of choices, including wearing a mask indoors and staying away from most everyone you don't know the vax status of.
Your vax status isn't the only variable...I guess it is just interesting to know that if this is the ONLY variable considered that your POTENTIAL risk is now higher.

Mike

 

i'm more concerned about risk of hospitalization, long covid and death. seems pretty clear cut, although i could be wrong, i would thing that vaxxed and unvaxxed are both doing smart and stupid things to some extent. but the percentages may have changed since we have become more aware of the need to mask and distance even if vaxxed

 

Dowdy could probably elaborate on his calculation, or already has, but short of getting more details from him, I would assume he's comparing the risks to an unvaxed individual in June and a vaxed individual in September who otherwise behave similarly (and have similar health, comorbidities, and so on).

So you can choose your vax status V and your behavior B (which more or less boils down to how much interlung access you're going to participate in), and then there's a surrounding-conditions factor S that changed between June and September, and V ✕ B ✕ S gives you an overall risk.

V[vaxed] is a lot lower than V[unvaxed]: just a tenth as big, if hospitalization is what concerns you, or an eleventh as big, if it's death.

On the other hand, if S[september] is 15 times S[june], that slightly outweighs the ÷10 or ÷11 achieved with the vax. So V[vaxed] ✕ S[september] is a little bigger than V[unvaxed] ✕ S[june]. And while you can make a big difference with your behavior factor B, for any given B, B ✕ V[vaxed] ✕ S[september] is still bigger than B ✕ V[unvaxed] ✕ S[june]. 1.5✕ bigger, with respect to hospitalization; 1.36✕ bigger with respect to death.

Naturally, anybody unvaxed in both June and September is now facing a risk that's grown 15✕.

All of the above is on a take-Dowdy-at-face-value basis; I haven't made an effort to decide if Dowdy's numbers are right or not.

 

Numbers are malleable. They're 'right to him.'

Kinda laughed at that one, until I realized that most of the people herebouts are retired. I read one study where they placed the real-world value of cloth "diaper" masks at 10% (for the pitcher, not the catcher)
Probably not worth all of the drama, but unlike vaccinations it's a highly visible "crucifix" to wave at the non-believers.
I'm human.
I do it myself.

I was in line yesterday at a store when a store employee thanked me for wearing a mask......side-eyeing the person behind me.
I pointed to the company emblem on my shirt and told her that I was on the clock and didn't have option of being a jerk.

 

They're subject to methodological limits and measurement uncertainties. They can also be plain made up, among the sorts of folks who consider that ok. Among folks who don't, they're not really quite as malleable as slogans like "numbers are malleable" often seem to suggest.

 

but data does have to be interpreted sometimes, especially data that is constantly changing.

for instance, the fda decision on boosters was based on the best and latest data available at the time, with the caveat that things could change quickly.

however, not all experts agree on the decision.