I'm not trying to get everyone even more depressed about COVID-19, but I assume we all understand that the Delta variant isn't the worst possible thing that could happen, right? In fact, until we get the whole world vaccinated, it's almost a certainty that new, even more deadly variants will pop up now and again.
Anyone who's resisting vaccination should think about this long and hard. Sure, maybe your odds of getting/dying from COVID-19 are pretty low even with the Delta variant spreading around the country, but that might not be the case with future variants. They might be twice as contagious. Or three times. Or ten times.
What is a good bet, though, is that current vaccines will continue to work pretty well even on future variants. That's not guaranteed, but it's for sure where you ought to put your money.
I think you're right. Get vaccinated now, and protect yourself from the coming variants. This is not rocket science. But, it is science and that's a deal breaker for Republicans. Besides they're too busy owning the libs.
Vaccinations had reached the point where I had decided to side with those who refused the vaccines. If they wanted to risk their own lives, that’s ok with me, as long as those who wanted to be saved got their shots. And then I suddenly remembered: as long as those dingbats help keep the virus vibrant, they give it more time to develop a variant that might overcome my vaccines. Great. So I’m back to rounding them up and putting them into camps (joking) (maybe).
Bepo,,,correct. This is exactly the point and I must say it isn't hammered enough in the media.
While I agree that getting vaccinated is a good idea and the best bet, I think this is being excessively pessimistic.
While it is possible that we may get a variant even more contagious than delta on the base unvaccinated R0, there is only so far a virus can really evolve in a reasonable time frame. The more transmissible delta is, the more likely that it is reaching the limits of how much the virus can evolve. Maybe just maybe another variant can go even further and be 50% again more transmissible or even twice at the extreme, but 10 times is just really way out. Very very unlikely.
And the depressing thing is that, and maybe why kevin is not in the end being overly pessimistic, is that delta is transmissible enough, thank you very much. It seems to be enough to overwhelm any sort of restrictions we try until it manages to infect the large majority of remaining unvaccinated and with no natural immunity. So maybe delta will leave only 8% of the population untouched by vaccination or having had covid and a more transmissible variant might only leave 6%. So the only difference in the end is 2%. Thr threat of that future uncertain thing does not change anything enough to convince someone to get vaccinated.
What delta is today already is enough, if a vaccine skeptic is considering new info, to maybe get them to change their mind. You do not need some scare talk about a future new strain and that will actually hurt. I guess if you need to try to scare me with some thing that does not yet exist, well delta then is not so bad. But it is. So just stick with that.
And, in reality, considering future variants is more a reason to not get vaccinated. The most likely type of variant to arrive now that we have a good amount of vaccine immunity and natural immunity, is a variant that evolves to get around the vaccine or natural immunity ( or both as the same things may be used for both). Not a variant to get around the inherent immunity in a virgin population - delta really needs little help there and might have evolved as far as it can go. In fact, a variant may find some trick around vaccine immunity that sacrifices something and makes it less transmissible than delta for a virgin population.
If the idea is to find a good argument to convince vaccine skeptics, this is not it.
There may come a time where you need to convince some to get a booster vaccine designed to deal with a new variant evolved around the existing vaccine.
The reason to get vaccinated now has almost zero to do with future possible variants and maybe that is even a contrary argument.
The reason to get vaccinated now is because of the existing variants ( and variants are all that is left as original covid is done). If existing delta and others does not convince someone to get vaccinated, then no reason at all any possible future variant would. And that argument is more likely going to be counterproductive and maybe unconvince someone who was possibly to sway.
You are familiar with the black death plague, smallpox, 'Spanish' flu, HIV and Ebola, are you ?
I agree with you that's the way vaccines and variants normally work. This vaccine works more against the spike than the virus itself. The spike is how the virus enters the body. There's no guarantees, but most likely the vaccine will hold pretty well.
I'm more concerned about Brazil, China, Singapore were it's spreading like wildfire and then coming to the US.
The real danger is that SARS-Cov2, having honed its transmissibility, will go back to the shelved projects cabinet and pull out the part of the original SARS -- or god forbid, MERS -- genome which damages organs directly. Remember, these viruses are all variations on a theme.
If that happens, the unvaccinated will be Melba toast.
Aside from the possibility that new variants are being manufactured in laboratories, we have some idea of the probability of pandemics from history. Since the last similar event was in 1919, and other major plagues seem to have occurred at even greater intervals, we can say that a covid-like pandemic is something like a 100-year event. As usual people (I mean Kevin) tend to get distorted ideas of the probability of rare but terrifying events (for example shark attacks).
But even so we have to hope that response to future events will be far better than it was this time. It should be possible to get mRNA vaccines distributed far faster, for example. As for resistance to masks and vaccines, this has nothing to do with any rational reasoning or desire for "independence", it is mostly a result of desire to conform to one's chosen group. That is literally more important at times than life itself. I don't know how to combat this - appealing to reason won't do it.
Convince the stupid group to jump off a fucking bridge en masse.
Problem solved
Especially the unvaxxed blacks and Latinos, eh, "progressive" racist? LOL
Cordially,
The Latinx
In the much more interconnected world that we have now, compared to 1918, we may have more pandemics based on viruses that can be transmitted while you're asymptomatic. The "once a century" thing is just a guess.
Small and slightly tangential point here: "there is only so far a virus can really evolve in a reasonable time frame."
That's not quite right. It is strictly true in terms of there being a limited number of mutations that can occur per unit time. But the relationship betwen genotype and phenotype is not a linear function of the number of mutations. Even a single nucleotide change can turn out to have enormous differences in the virus' behavior. There is no reason, in principle, a single nucleotide mutation can't change a virus's R0 from 2 to 20 or more.
In fact, I think the major limitation on R0 is not so much genetic as environmental. As long as it is confined to respiratory transmission, R0 is limited by the number and frequency of human contacts and the ventilation of the areas in which those occur. While those things change within limits due to human behavioral changes during the pandemic, we will never go all the way to everybody putting him/herself into solitary confinement with HEPA filters. So there is some upper limit to transmissibility, but that limit is probably set by the limits of human interaction, not viral genetics.
Correct.
Umm, do you really think that anybody "resisting vaccination" can really "think about this long and hard" or is this just the way that evolution works ? a
From Brad DeLong: "We are a half-vaxxed country. And a country that looks like it will stay half-vaxxed: there is just too much money to be made by media grifters and too much political hay to be made by right-wing politicians seeking to win the Trump base for vaccination rates in the country as a whole to get above 50% before the Delta Variant sweeps through.
This is a catastrophe."
Also a stark correlation between Trump votes and vaccine rejection: https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F655d3068-f0fd-45ff-a4ea-432b5761ca84_998x1712.png
Good you show something other than a poll to demonstrate this. And there is definitely some correlation between voting for trump and resisting the vaccine, just not as much as many think by looking at skewed polls.
Look at what you posted. It really does not show something supporting the best disparity between democrats and Republicans that most seem to assume.
One point is that, if a graph uses us counties, a large majority are going to be those numerous rural counties with low populations. Which means it is iffy whether it reflects the real national trend. But I do not really think here that this is a huge issue.
But what I do think biases to some extent is that being a rural couny likely has some depressing effect on vaccine %age outside of politics and, as trump vote so highly correlated with that, that may incorrectly make it look like a bigger political effect than it really is. But since rural and trump is such a high correlation, not easy to break apart.
What goes the other way is race. African americans are the other big part of vaccine resistance that is not just random, but thay will strongly correlate with being democratic. So the correlation between trump vote and unvaccinated is likely higher just looking at whites. Not sure re african americans but I would bet there more Republicans have been vaccinated than Democrats.
Yes, the post is nonsense and doesn't get it.
Again with the insults? And you still owe us an apology for your last bit of rudeness. Oh, you thought we'd forgotten already 😉
It's a troll. Insults are the droppings it leaves to get attention. Please don't feed the troll.
Delta is already as infectious as Smallpox. Does it need to have a CFR to match Smallpox in order to get the attention of people who remain unvaccinated? BTW, MERS had a higher case fatality rate than Smallpox.
For now, they remain effective. But, antigenic drift will result in all of the current vaccines being rendered ineffective and T-cell memory will fade.
We're going to end up with boosters of some sort, either annually or once ever two years or so. Will we continue to have a national policy of free SARS-CoV-2 vaccinations in the future? If we do, why don't we also have free vaccines across the board -- why stop at SARS-CoV-2?
That isn't how it works. This is not a strong virus in terms of pure strength. As past vaccines have shown, effects last years.
Oh my, we're going to have fun, aren't we?
I don't even know what this means. Strength of what? Of its lipid's ability to resist damage? Of its antigenic shift or shift capabilities? Of its transmissibility? Of its lethality?
Some viruses drift and/or drift faster than others while some are very stable. With stable viruses, effects can last for years based primarily on T-cell memory. With fast drifting/shifting viruses, you can get reinfected multiple times in a year. Influenza requires reformulation every year.
A bunch of words, little actual meaning.
You have described yourself perfectly
"spadesofgrey" is one of the resident trolls. It leaves its droppings to get attention. Please don't feed the troll.
BS. I tell the truth while spinners like yourself lie like lil Russian Asset Donald.
Sure, but every once in a while he gives me the opportunity to talk past him, to others.
"Will we continue to have a national policy of free SARS-CoV-2 vaccinations in the future?"
Ah........yes. This in a nutshell is the problem
It is free therefore it is easy to dismiss.
I wonder if taking the "freedumb" out of it - of taking the red state versus blue state out of it - of taking Trump's performance versus Biden's performance out of it would help?
Lets make this about money - and money only.
At this stage - given what we know of the virus and it's variants - let us tell the American public regardless of who you are and where you are - come Jan 1 2022 the vaccine will no longer be paid for by the government and any all hospitalizations resulting from vaccine refusal (and subsequent infection) will also no longer be covered under federal programs to include Medicare etc.....
By that time several vaccines will be fully approved for use, I'm sure.
In other words take the pundits out of it - take the liberals versus conservatives out of it and make it all about money. Only those with doctors documentation will be allowed to NOT GET VACCINATED.
Americans are getting too used to "easy".
Health insurers will follow Medicares cue and probably do the same
Sorry, Delta is a big nothing. I simply don't see it.
That's because it is hard to see anything when you intentionally keep your head firmly lodged in a place that would make a professional contortionist blush.
Isn't it more likely that new variants will be less deadly but more likely to overcome the vaccines?
They can't overcome vaccines. Being less deadly also makes vaccines less important.
You’re an idiot who has no idea what they are talking about
Do you really think everyone else here is no better than you? Disabuse yourself of that notion. Some of us are actually willing to work hard to become informed. Because we want to be more informed, not because we want to score points off of others.
Here are the latest facts on the delta variant, together with the links to evidence.
https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/exclusives/93351
Anyone who's resisting vaccination should think ...
Ah, see there's your problem right there!
“ It's maddening — but it is essential not to take the bait. The fact that vaccines have become a focal point at all should be the final proof that the culture war is a self-sustaining process largely untethered from substantive grievances. Republicans believe that on balance fighting helps them politically, and I suspect they are right. But it's not a war that either side can actually win by fighting, even though individual politicians and media stars can advance their own particular fortunes. For the country as a whole, the only way to win is not to play.
With respect to the vaccination campaign, then, that means ignoring the anti-vaccination campaigns, and focusing on actions that don't depend on convincing the skeptical.”
https://theweek.com/politics/1002601/ignore-the-anti-vax-propaganda
I wish it were that easy. It isn't. The unvaccinated form a massive ecosystem from which new coronavirus variants can and will emerge. Will these variants be more contagious and/or virulent and/or vaccine-resistant? Don't believe anyone who says they know for certain, but so far, several of the variants have proven more contagious and somewhat more resistant in serum inactivation assays. There is no law that says that a new variant can only be incrementally worse than its immediate ancestor.
I think most of these variants are developing in other countries where vaccination rates are very low. Delta allegedly originated in India. So I just can’t get too worried about a few pockets of cases in the US.
This is a problem without a short term solution. It’s just going to take time. I’ve stopped talking to my family members in the unvaccinated camp. And I have stopped asking my one friend who hasn’t been vaccinated. I just can’t be bothered.
The virus doesn't care about nationality. Viruses in India don't mutate faster than viruses in the US. Named variants have appeared in several countries, far apart. The next could appear here.
Time is not on our side. Time and unvaccinated populations is what drives new variants. This isn't about people choosing their lifestyle, it is about people imposing risk on others. Unvaccinated people are a public health menace.
More contagious, more virulent and more vaccine resistant are 3 separate things. A more contagious less virulent strain may out compete a deadlier one for example. Though it may not.
Hence my use of "and/or."
"and focusing on actions that don't depend on convincing the skeptical.”"
But there ARE NO actions that protect the rest of that don't depend on convincing the skeptics, are there?
Well, maybe physically isolating them in camps but that seems like a slightly bigger lift than convincing them....... 😉
The idea that more deadly variants pop up is far from a near certainty. It's random chance but even a long period doesn't make it that certain. As far as I know it's hard to determine if Delta/Indian variant is actually more deadly or simply far more contagious.
I don't say this to argue against vaccination, it should be mandatory, but we need to offer correct information.
Agreed. That's why I posted this above:
https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/exclusives/93351
Yes, I have a 4 year old so I scour these kinds of things. He's scheduled for pre-school in the fall.
And you are fucking stupid enough to worry about covid? Wait! You're a "progressive." Of COURSE you are that stupid. LOL
This is definitely a pessimistic view. It is pretty certain that new variants will be more transmissible -- that's pretty much how viral evolution works, right? But there's no guarantee that it will be more deadly.
More transmissible and just as deadly still means more deaths. And more hospitalizations. And more long-haul COVID. Not pessimistic. Realistic and evidence-based.
New variants may or may not be more transmissible, because it already spreads so well there's limited evolutionary pressure. New variants that transmit more poorly will likely be out competed but you can still catch them, like Cali and NY variants.
Any given virus has a limit on transmissibility: it can't outrun its antigenic drift, otherwise it'll burn out by giving enough ppl immunity to stop it from becoming endemic.
OK I am getting kinda lost here
Lets talk adults here, not kids
I will round numbers off here
As of 2020 population of the U.S. was 330 MILLION
As of 2010 census under 18 accounted for 24% or one quarter leaving about 248M above the age of 18
How many of THOSE have been vaccinated?
How many NON vaccinated have had COVID?
Is the correct question to ask how many have COVID anti-bodies instead of how many have gotten the shot?
Are there any figures that address this?
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7025e1.htm
57% of adults have been partially or fully vaccinated.
Estimates of those who have actually been infected are harder to come by. My guess is that about 30% of Americans have been infected.
> In fact, until we get the whole world vaccinated, it's almost a certainty that new, even more deadly variants will pop up now and again.
The current "third wave" is going to take a stab at vaccinating the whole world the natural way.
I'm sure everyone cares deeply about the opinions of a pack of racist "progressives" who have lied about everything else. By the way, Kev, the least vaxxed group is blacks. Maybe it was a bad idea for Xiden's tail-waggin' veep-ette to have shit on the vaxxes last year, or (much more likely in your crowd), you're happy about the results. LOL
On vog's second question, you are not really answering that. Part of it initially is estimating the %age who have had covid. I would guess somewhere more than 30% but 30% clearly in the range. Go with that for now.
But what vog is really asking is what I want to know too and is crucial and I do not see any experts thinking of this ( they have to be I would think) . It is what I refer to as the correlation of vaccinated and having had covid. It almost surely is negative for two main reasons. But by his much? The more the better.
Say 60% of adults are vaccinated and 30% have had covid. If uncorrelated, then 30% of the 40% unvaccinated or 12% had covid and presumably some natural immunity. So total with some sort if immunity is 72% and still looks like quite a way to go for herd immunity.
If the correlation is perfectly negative, then all of the 30% who got covid were not vaccinated so total immunity is 90% and not bad at all.
Now I neither extreme is true but where in between are we? Makes a big difference and I do not see policy makers asking.
Also. On first question, I think the reporter adult figures are for 16+, not 18+, right?
rational -
Yep.
The question to ask is how many of us have the COVID anti bodies through actually having had the disease, having been vaccinated or both
The remaining number is the number we have to worry about
The scary part is that as new variants come about the possess different characteristics. To date we have been lucky that the vaccines already developed have been effective against the variants
But lets assume that we get a variant that is highly contagious like Delta or even more so. A booster, or annual shot may not do any good because of the speed of spread. We could reach 100 million cases before a booster was widely available
I hope that those knowledgeable can respond and talk "down" to us folks who are not familiar with the "virus vernacular" to make it more understandable. I am not afraid to admit I know very little about this stuff
rational-
The census figures came from Wikki (referencing both 2020, and 2010 census figures) and they break the age groups as 0 -18, then 18-34, then 35 - 64 etc........
To keep the math simple I equate 18 as adulthood.
The problem with ilils response is this:
"Estimates of those who have actually been infected are harder to come by. My guess is that about 30% of Americans have been infected."
The Mrs and I, and Donald Trump all had COVID and all have been vaccinated.
So we are double counted as "both".
Which is why I went back to COVID anti-bodies as the basis for the questions
Kevin Drum - you're the mathematician here - get Hilbert and Hopper out of the box and put 'em to work to figure this out
I'm an epidemiologist, though I do chronic disease epidemiology, not infectious. But I have a fair understanding of these issues.
Yes, in principle, it would be important to know how much overlap there is between vaccinated and previously infected. I think the reason you don't see much focus on this, however, is that it is pretty much impossible to get good information about it. The US has never set up a good system of testing (neither for antigen nor or antibodies) that would provide reasonably reliable information about infections. Many of the infected are asymptomatic and never get tested because they have no reason to do so. Among the vaccinated, I suspect it is worse than that: even if you have symptoms like a cold, you might just assume (falsely) that since you're vaccinated it can't be Covid-19.
So while this information might prove really helpful for policy decisions, there is little chance we will be able to get that information in a timely way. We will be well into or even beyond our fourth wave by the time the needed infrastructure for routine or random testing would be up and running even if we started working on it today. So we drive the car as best we can while wearing blinders.
Clyde-
THANK YOU !!!
I had forgotten about those who are, have been or will be asymptomatic. And THAT is a problem
Clyde,
Thanks for responding as someone who has some real expertise. Please continue to chime in especially if any of my speculations are scientifically incorrect.
I would disagree with your statements as to how difficult it is to get better info. Of course it is impossible if you do not even try. I fail to see why it is that hard or will take that long to just set up testing of a true random national sample of maybe 2000 or even 10000 and test them all. After paying them maybe $100 each so that the dropout rate will be minimal. That way you have a much better idea re true cases rather than just an extrapolated guess from confirmed cases. And you can also try asking re things like masking etc. while accuracy is limited due to self reporting bias, it still gives us something better than the nothing we have now.
This would not take that long to set up and the info could be invaluable.
And how about if they just include a simple question asking re whether you think or know you already had covid when you applied for or got vaccinated? Easy to do and gives you some info. But have not heard of anyplace doing that.
I sometimes wonder of governments are not trying to find these answers because they do not want to know the answer. Say all the govts that had mask mandates sponsored good info gathering and discovered that masks really were useless or counterproductive. Political disaster..the other side was right all along and we cannot find that out. Personally any politician who implemented a policy that they thought best and then tried to find out sincerely whether it did, and then reversed course with new info - I am inclined to vote for them. Tell me where they exist.
On the issue of low discovery of cases in vaccinated because they do not test, there has been a lot of news on that and sure does appear to be an issue. As you would expect . One indicator of this was that, when initially were thinking breakthrough cases were real rare among vaccinated, strange anomalies kept happening re too many cases found in groups with routine testing like baseball players and politicians. One example being the recent cases with the democratic Texas legislators who left the state. It seems more accepted now that these are not all flukes and just mean that there are a lot more breakthrough cases we never see.
And this also helps explain why the spread between Rs anong places are not that high given differing immunity- because vaccine and natural immunity, while good for stopping sickness is not as great at stopping infections.
I think if adult as 18+ too but since we are only getting it reported as 16+, that is what we have to use.
And, for this purpose, 16+ or maybe 14+ or 12+, makes more sense than 18+.
There is a significant difference in children and adults in how easily they can catch and spread covid. Seems like adults can spread it to children but not vice versa much. So, for getting to herd immunity, getting "adults" immune is more important than kids. For this , I understand the real big difference is between pre teens and teenagers and older. By 14 or 15, you can catch and spread covid near as well as 18+.
I think the 16+ convention started when the vaccines were only available to 16+ and sort of stuck. Even though I think 12+ is likely more of a valid breakpoints.
Do not focus excessively on antibodies as a perfect proxy for immunity. It is completely normal for antibodies to wane after time with most infections and the immune system rely on things like t cells. Maybe the antibodies will no longer be available to asap knock down , but the body remembers what antibodies it needs, so it can ramp up to produce them real quick once it detects that ancient enemy. Maybe instead of knocking out a new infection before becoming contagious, it takes a day where you are just barely contagious and a very small threat.
And, at this point, looking for antibodies is not a great measure as to who has had covid overall. Too many who caught it earlier last year have lost detectable antibodies but still have other sorts of immunity.
I remember getting real frustrated with Cuomo in his news conferences last year after main wave had passed. He kept saying "good news" when reporting that the antibody % age in the current tested were down from prior week. And I was screaming that is bad news as indicates antibodies were already waning. But did not understand then it is not all that crucial ( but still was never good news).
Also would add in my earlier analysis I sort of discounted getting a vaccine after having covid ( or covid after vaccine) as of zero value. But not really true as still some value it will still increase immunity further. How much depends on what you are looking at.
For preventing death of the individual, if initial immunity ( natural or vaccine) is 95% , then getting the second up to 98% effective is not that big a deal. Almost nothing compared to going from 0 to 95.
But, for stopping you from catching and spreading, I suspect that maybe first immunity is only 60% or so. Abd maybe second can increase that to 90% . Which would mean that a person who had covid getting vaccinated adds 30%. An increase over initial 60% and half as good but still quite helpful.
Cuomo is a murderer, but "progressives" are fine with that. LOL
Many common infectious diseases have human reservoirs. We have that with COVID. India is one right now (bringing Delta to the world) and there will be others throughout the world this decade.
Domestic efforts to combat the virus are meritorious and I support them, but let's not be fooled into thinking that if we had heard immunity for "ordinary" COVID along with Delta, that the problem is over.
It's a global problem that requires a global effort. Unfortunately, there are places like South America and Africa that may be the origin of further variants.
Actually, many viral diseases have animal reservoirs. SARS-CoV-2 is one.
Herd immunity via infection has been achieved for many infectious diseases over the centuries (e.g, plague, smallpox), at the price of a large fraction of the population dying. And herd immunity wanes with the appearance of the next generation. Herd immunity via vaccination is an historically recent phenomenon that can spare the population the suffering and mortality of disease.
In the case of smallpox and polio, the problem is "over." Variant coronaviruses (and flu viruses) can enter an immunized population via zoonoses, if the variants escape immune surveillance. One answer may be multivalent vaccines.
I don't think Kevin Drum (and many commenters here) understand what covid vaccines do and dont. Kevin says
> until we get the whole world vaccinated, it's almost a certainty that new, even more deadly variants will pop up now and again.
so supposedly, when the whole world is vaccinated no new variants of covid will appear and we can all forget about it and it is history!!!
Kind of like "when we get the whole world vaccinated against flu, it is done for good, and we don't need to worry about it again".
Gee, I don't know, we have had the flu vaccine around for long time, so, why is the flu still around, eh?
I am not sure people understand that covid vaccines are non-sterilizing vaccines. They do not prevent you from getting covid, nor do they prevent you from spreading covid. All they do is they reduce the severity of symptoms, if you get covid. That is all.
In Israel (and UK, and other places) 40% of the people hospitalized with covid are vaccinated (only 1% of the people hospitalized with covid are people who are unvaccinated, but who had covid before).
New variants of covid are not driven by unvaccinated people, development of new variants of covid are accelerated by vaccinated people. Mutations that are beneficial in unvaccinated people are not the same as mutations that are beneficial in vaccinated people. Since covid vaccines do not protect vaccinated people from getting covid, evolutionarily pressures drive mutations that bypass the spike protein-based protection that current vaccines provide.