SARS-CoV-2 Coronavirus (COVID-19)

Is the disagreement over the actual usefulness of a booster, or is it about getting more doses to countries with much lower vaccination rates?

 

Depends on one's definition of things like..."pandemic"....or "equity."

Personally?
I like things simple.

One "could" make the argument that the 'Rona and most, if not all of the variants didn't "start here."
Most of the people who "aren't here" are also not vaccinated.

This informs me that, for very selfish reasons OR for very unselfish reasons, you should maybe take the vaccines to the places where the next variant is MOST likely to get started, MOST particularly since we've reached something of a saturation point here in the USofA.

We're ALREADY seeing some "demographically interesting" trends in the not-a-mandates that the current admin is merely talking about, and the current administration is taking it in the shorts every day for not mandating that new....er......"migrants" get the jab........or ANY kind of health screening.
Something that was OPS Normal at the turn of the last century.

Yer call.

 

officially, it is about science. that includes the debate over whether it is more beneficial to jab people who haven't been, or who have.
unofficially, there are politics involved, as always.

the problem is, we're already giving away a tremendous amount of vaccine, and not doing boosters likely won't increase that, in case the fda changes their mind. joe is not going to be caught flat footed because of outside pressures

 

A lay report, it matches my expectations:
Vandy: Discovery of ‘ultra-potent’ antibody could help with COVID

The research was published on September 15 in the journal "Cell Reports." The new discovery fights against an obstacle we're seeing already with vaccines and the delta variant. Just as vaccines are proving to be less effective against that particular variant, so too are monoclonal antibody treatments.

"Basically, some of these antibody candidates are no longer effective," said Ivelin Georgiev, the director of the Vanderbilt Program in Computational Microbiology and Immunology and associate director of the Vanderbilt Institute for Infection, Immunology and Inflammation.

That's because as COVID-19 has mutated into the delta variant, the antibodies for older variants don't work as well.​

Source_2: 'Ultra-potent' antibody against COVID-19 variants



Bob Wilson

 

cdc director adds healthcare workers to booster shot program after tremendous pressure from doctors:

37711782

 

Yep....back to political again.....
CDC director overrules experts, allows Pfizer boosters for health workers | Ars Technica
CDC director breaks with agency advisers to endorse Pfizer booster for at-risk workers

Although I've been advised by local health that I qualify for a third jab, I might tap the brakes a little bit.
The vaccine only warped onto the scene about 10 months ago and even though I'm much more likely to get something like myocarditis from COVID than from the vaccine, I'll go with the two for now - unless something or someone compels me to get the jab.

 

the fda left it pretty open ended for doctors to determine for themselves who might be at risk and can jab them.
they just don't want to go carte blanche yet

 

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02596-2

. . .
“When SARS-CoV-2 was first sequenced, the receptor binding domain didn’t really look like anything we’d seen before,” says Edward Holmes, a virologist at the University of Sydney in Australia. This caused some people to speculate that the virus had been created in a laboratory. But the Laos coronaviruses confirm these parts of SARS-CoV-2 exist in nature, he says.

“I am more convinced than ever that SARS-CoV-2 has a natural origin,” agrees Linfa Wang, a virologist at Duke–NUS Medical School in Singapore.

Together with relatives of SARS-CoV-2 discovered in Thailand2, Cambodia3 and Yunnan in southern China4, the study demonstrates that southeast Asia is a “hotspot of diversity for SARS-CoV-2 related viruses”, says Alice Latinne, an evolutionary biologist at the Wildlife Conservation Society Vietnam in Hanoi.
. . . ​

Bob Wilson

 

^ Thailand? Cambodia?
Wonder what THEIR vax rates are.....

Just Half of Workers at Two Critical Shipyards Are Vaccinated - Defense One
General Dynamics featured in the news two times in one week......
They're cranking out Virginias like sausages.....19 in commission and 11 building......and there's talk of a 12-pack for Oz.....

They'd better sort out their vax policy up there in CT.......

(LOVE the name for the 806 boat!!)

 

man made, natural, escaped, released, we'll never know. best to prepare for the next one

 

....after we get THIS one settled down.

 

even though it is dr. fauci's mug, it is dr. walenski's quote:
index.html

 

i hope they are right:
covid-pandemic-cases-deaths-us-fall-winter-f4d928aa-74d9-4da3-a755-2861ba0b260d.html

so far here in ma, average weekly cases are running a little higher, but hospitalizations have stayed pretty flat.

 

That's how "being vaccinated" works.
It doesn't keep you from getting infected.....if keeps you out of the hospital or the morgue.

 

i don't really understand it all, but find it fascinating nonetheless:
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...."A new leaked document is stirring up another frenzy over the pandemic’s origins. What does it really tell us?"

That the Ministry of State Security is alive and well???

".......The Atlantic’s COVID-19 coverage is supported by grants from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation."

Democracy dies in darkness, indeed.

 

I can't think of even one way to defend that statement ... unless you're saying the only thing that would count for you is reducing infection risk to 0%, and you don't think reducing it by 72% to 79% is anything worth writing home about.

It's not a bad thing to be able, if you have to, to attend an event that would be virtually certain to infect an unvaxed person, and have only a 1 in 4 chance of being infected there.

Because of the way probabilities multiply rather than adding, you could even do said event four times, and that wouldn't mean you're certain to catch it. Your risk rises to about 2 in 3 then, but that's still 1 in 3 that you walk away from all four events infection free.

The fact that even if you do get infected, you're also less likely to have symptoms, much less likely to be hospitalized, and far less likely to die, is all gravy on top of that.

 

what is the definition of infection? certainly, both vaxxed and unvaxxed would inhale the same virus load in the same situation.
after that, different things happen. a myriad of different things, even regardless of vax status.

but the vax, already having created defenses, starts working on the virus. results vary, overall results in large population improve greatly.

that's about as much as i understand. infection? idk.

 

No.
I said the exact opposite of that...or at least that was my intent.
Either I said it wrong or you read it wrong - either way, THE purpose of vaccinations as I understand them...going all the way back to the 1700s, is to keep the bug from killing you, or MORE IMPORTANTLY making you sick..
In the military, they call that a 'mission kill' and it's better than killing one of your opponents outright, because somebody has to care for sick and wounded.

Since we live in a world where fear is being weaponized by all manner of people, somebody with a detectable number of virus particles in their snot-locker is NOW labeled as......a Coronavirus Victim, and counted as a "positive case."

Me?
I call the people that get zipped up in body bags "Coronavirus Victims."
Since I try to be empathetic to people who are exposed of the mountains of false information out there, I will not join those here in insulting the dead or making speculations on their voting habits.
It's enough for me that following the "science and data" it appears that, since I'm fully vaccinated, there's an extremely low probability that I will end my days as a Rona victim.

Either kind of victim.....
I'm not going to die from the bug, and I'm not going to cower in my home, ready to disinfect all of the packages that land on my doorstep from Amazon, Door Dash, etc....

ACTUAL mileage MAY vary.

 

our friends - a couple both in their 70's, did this right when they 1st suspected they were exposed. they both had it & had almost no noticeable symptoms with this treatment. anticdotal - & ymmv.
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