Corona-zona

I bowl with this guy who is 42, and has never received any SARS-CoV-2 vaccine. He's suspicious of mRNA tech and worries that people who have been jabbed will suffer some horrible fate in several years, by which time some unspecified genetic process will have had enough time to do its dirtywork. He has also never worn a mask. Despite all this he has never been infected (that he knows of).  Did I mention that he's also an Uber driver? How can this be?! Back in July I blogged about NOVIDS , of which I am one. That post summarized four explanations scientists have for people who never become infected despite exposure. Health workers in the pre-vaccine days are the prime example, but my bowling buddy would fit the category. One explanation for NOVIDs was that genetics may convey protection. Another was that prior exposure to coronaviruses may have primed their immune systems to fight off the virus.   This week I saw a story about research underway to figure out what is going o...

  I don't know about you, but I've been seeing a lot of coverage about the Delta variant that is confusing and concerning. Do the vaccines protect against it, or not? There is still assurance that the vaccines protect against it, and your chances of getting infected are small. Your chances of getting seriously ill are smaller, and your chances of dying are smaller still.   The data seem pretty unequivocal.  Axios just published a good summary : 164 million Americans have been fully vaccinated in the U.S. as of July 31, 2021 0.077% of those have seen "breakthrough" cases (that's 77 in every 10,000, or about 1 in 130) 0.004% of those have been hospitalized (4 in every 100,000, or 1 in 25,000) 0.001% of those have died (1 in every 100,000) According to my favorite risk-of-dying chart, you're more likely to perish from "electrocution, radiation, extreme temperatures, and pressure" than you are to be hospitalized with a breakthrough infection.  You'r...

  With over 60% of its inhabitants fully vaccinated against COVID-19 you would think the Seychelles Islands would be skating to the end of the pandemic.  Yet that is not what's happening. Here is a helpful graphic Google threw up when I was researching articles on this: Why is the most vaccinated country in the world experiencing a surge of cases and re-imposition of restrictions? Nobody is sure. Officials are speculating that gatherings around Easter may be to blame. A worrisome fact is that one-third of the cases are among people who have received two doses of China's Sinopharm vaccine. The manufacturer rates  its effectiveness at 79%.  That figure would put it about 15% less effective than the Moderna and Pfizer shots. Though scientists have cautioned that it's not appropriate to compare effectiveness across vaccines that were tested under different protocols, we do have the recent statement by a Chinese official saying that the country's vaccines aren't very ...

The results are in (literally). They show that having a previous case of COVID-19 gives someone a 7x lower chance of being reinfected.  A study published last week in The Lancet looked at staff of publicly funded hospitals in all regions of England.  Participants were enrolled between June and December of last year. After all the typical withdrawals and exclusions, the study included 25,661 participants.  These poeople were assigned to two groups depending on whether they had a positive anti-body test and/or a previous positive PCR test (positive cohort) or not (negative cohort). Participants were given PCR and antibody testing every two to four weeks.  Because the study period overlapped the vaccine rollout in the UK, the study tracked and controlled for whether participants were vaccinated. There were 8278 people in the positive cohort and they had 155 infections. There were 17,383 people in the negative cohort and they had 1704 infections.  Because par...

I recently heard an  interview with Dr. Emily Landon of the University of Chicago medical school. She was clearly astonished at the low rate of flu this year. "At the University of Chicago, we just registered our third flu case of the season. Usually at this time of year we have over a hundred each week." Great, I thought. At least one good outcome of the pandemic is that all the mitigation measures we've taken for the coronavirus are knocking down the flu as well.  But to prove that there is nothing whatsoever good about the pandemic, public health people are saying there is a problem. Because so few people got the normal illnesses like the flu this year, more people will be susceptible in coming years. This could lead to large outbreaks and also off-season outbreaks, according to a study by Princeton epidemiologists, just as soon as we back off of coronavirus mitigation measures.    It seems this is already happening in Australia with a common respiratory virus c...

A new controversy over "immunity passports" is coming soon to a screen near you.  With vaccinations ramping up, we are entering a partially-immune world, and will remain there for at least several more months.  What should happen to people who have achieved immunity either through infection or vaccination? The idea  behind immunity passports is that These documents would certify that the passport-holder had mounted a positive immune response to the virus and was presumed to be resistant to further infection. Passport-holders might safely be released from public health restrictions and allowed to return to work or study, and to live a more normal everyday existence. At first glance, it looks like a reasonable idea. Give people a "get out of quarantine free" card and they can help re-energize businesses that have been hit hard by the pandemic and begin the process of economic recovery. The measure is under discussion in several jurisdictions around the world, includin...