Omicron has Peaked, Now What?
Coronavirus dashboard: Omicron has peaked; now what?, New Deal Democrat
– by New Deal democratLet’s start out with the good, or at least less catastrophic news: it’s almost certain that the Omicron wave has peaked in the US. In fact, the only Census region it is still up week over week is in the Midwest:
In almost all of the areas hit hard early – Puerto Rico, and the NYC and DC metro areas – cases are down sharply since peaking. Additionally cases are down substantially in California, Florida, and Illinois:
Only Hawaii, anomalously, has continued to increase.
This follows the pattern set in South Africa, where cases are now down over 80% from their peak, and deaths have plateaued after a 5 week lag:
Note that deaths have increased less than cases in each of the last two waves, and only increased about 30% as much as cases during Omicron.
The situation is similar in the UK:
It appears the US will follow a similar trajectory with deaths, which probably will peak at under 2500 per day in late February:
Returning to the US, although I won’t bother with a graph, cases are only up 10% or more in the past week in the States of AK, AL, AZ, HI, ID, KS, MT, KY, LA, NE, NV, NM, ND, OK, SC, TN, UT, WV, and WY. Hospitalizations have peaked simultaneously with cases, which suggests either a capacity or triage issue, and/or people are reluctant to seek treatment there. ICU admissions are still slowly increasing:
Because of the capacity/triage/reluctance issue, it is unclear the extent to which hospitalizations rose less steeply than cases, Hospitals will remain under severe strain for several more weeks.
If cases in the US decline roughly as a mirror image of how they rose during Omicron, what next?
Trevor Bedford, the biostatistician whose work has been invaluable throughout the pandemic, has a guess:
““We estimate that as of Jan 17 the US as whole has had a cumulative ~15M confirmed cases of Omicron, or approximately 4.5% of the population recorded as confirmed cases. The large majority (>90%) of these accumulated since Dec 14
“Assuming between a 1 in 4 to 1 in 5 case reporting rate, suggests between 18% to 23% of the country has Omicron by Jan 17, with the large majority becoming infected in a span of just ~4 weeks.
“There may be a longer tail of circulation after the peak (as seen in South Africa), but a rough expectation would have an equivalent number of cases in the next 4 weeks on the other side of the peak. This would suggest 36-46% of the US infected by Omicron by mid-Feb.
“My big question now is to what extent will Omicron-like emergence events characterize “endemic” circulation of SARS-CoV-2? Given it occurred once, having it occur again would not be at all surprising, but I don’t know whether to expect this every year or every ten.”
Note the big assumption being, 20% to 25% of all Omicron cases are “confirmed” and the rest flying under the radar.
My own rule of thumb has been a ratio of 2:1 or 2.2:1. The reason for this is the experience of North and South Dakota one year ago, where there were massive outbreaks – the biggest of any States before Omicron – one year ago, with 60% of all tests being positive. That hasn’t prevented both States from having Omicron outbreaks more than 50% higher than the worst of that wave:
If North and South Dakota’s previous wave, with 10% of their populations having *confirmed* cases and 60% test positivity strongly suggesting a huge number of unconfirmed cases, didn’t lead to sustained resistance to reinfection, is a 10% *confirmed* outbreak in the US as a whole, with 45%+ test positivity, going to have a different result?
In other words, the situation going forward depends on whether and when the next unusual variant hits. And how much resistance has been obtained by the vast unvaccinated idiot population in the US. As the graph below shows, only 15% more of the US population vaccinating in the past 7 months, despite both the Delta and Omicron waves:
If “real” cases are 2.2x confirmed cases, then about 45% of the US population has had COVID since the pandemic started, with the distribution presumably skewed with a greater percent among the unvaccinated during the past 7 months.
With COVID circulating freely among wild mammal populations (and domesticated cats as well), there are going to be more variants. Our best hope is that Trevor Bedford is right, and in general most succeeding waves of COVID from here on exact less and less of a toll, with occasional bigger spikes. For my part, I continue to be hopeful that there will be a big respite in spring.
January 21, 2022
Coronavirus
United States
Cases ( 71,394,579)
Deaths ( 887,643)
Deaths per million ( 2,657)
China
Cases ( 105,484)
Deaths ( 4,636)
Deaths per million ( 3)
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2022-01-22/Chinese-mainland-records-63-confirmed-COVID-19-cases-171tkoj8GZy/index.html
January 22, 2022
Chinese mainland reports 63 new COVID-19 cases
The Chinese mainland recorded 63 confirmed COVID-19 cases on Friday, with 23 linked to local transmissions and 40 from overseas, data from the National Health Commission showed on Saturday.
A total of 43 new asymptomatic cases were also recorded, and 778 asymptomatic patients remain under medical observation.
Confirmed cases on the Chinese mainland now total 105,547, with the death toll remaining unchanged at 4,636 since January last year.
Chinese mainland new locally transmitted cases
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2022-01-22/Chinese-mainland-records-63-confirmed-COVID-19-cases-171tkoj8GZy/img/bab3f624247447d4a1f3060dba773b71/bab3f624247447d4a1f3060dba773b71.jpeg
Chinese mainland new imported cases
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2022-01-22/Chinese-mainland-records-63-confirmed-COVID-19-cases-171tkoj8GZy/img/528f068a06c64ffda2ef5cd7973c5801/528f068a06c64ffda2ef5cd7973c5801.jpeg
Chinese mainland new asymptomatic cases
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2022-01-22/Chinese-mainland-records-63-confirmed-COVID-19-cases-171tkoj8GZy/img/9a0e509261cd4f0297e3b48ab2576332/9a0e509261cd4f0297e3b48ab2576332.jpeg
Colonialists.
marquis
So we get the worst which can be had from being infected by the the Omicron virus? Or is it a milder version?
Wow, that’s exactly the same as the percentage of statistics were are just made up out of thin air.
Interestingly, if you google “do vaccines protect against omicron” and just read the headline of the first hit, https://fortune.com/2022/01/19/covid-19-boosters-block-immunity-omicron-study-finds/, you do get no. Of course, if you actually read the article, you find that the answer is yes.
Perhaps the headline writer does not understand the difference between “provide protection” and “prevent infection”.
Arne
I read the same in the same article which was the first to come up. There is some benefit against Omicron. And you get a milder version.
I read the article so I know that. My reason for posting was simply to point out that a source of misinformation is headlines that do not agree with their stories.
Arne:
I sometimes answer to make sure you knew that I knew. The original answer was meant to see if the person making a statement on Omicron knew what we knew. Thank you.
That confusion is common and also a natural situation in these discussions. The primary collective benefit is attached to its ability to prevent infection and the personal benefit is associated with providing protection. This distinction is of a lot of public interest due to mandating vaccines for certain populations. There is a second-order of public benefit that if you don’t get seriously sick, you don’t burden healthcare systems. That’s also hard to communicate about with simple statements as being unvaccinated doesn’t strongly correlate with serious illness, but serious illness does seem to correlate well to being unvaccinated. Vaccinating my children of 12, 10 and 8, (4 year-old not currently eligible) with no immune, asthma, diabetes, obesity or other significant risk factors doesn’t produce public benefit if preventing transmission is no longer expected. Awareness of this among lots of parents is probably why COVID vaccination has not been added to other school vaccine requirements very widely. When there are many years of solid data in longitudinal studies, particularly in cardiac, vascular and reproductive health it’ll possibly be more widely adopted.
Well said. THX.
[Lot’s of hits but this one matches what I just heard Willie Geist say on NBC, probably because it is from NBC. Most importantly is that the information source is the CDC (debatable) and the age is two days old as I post (without debate relevant.) Information in the midst of a global pandemic transitioning to endemic ages quickly.]
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/booster-shots-effective-severe-illness-omicron-rcna13038
Covid booster shots effective against severe illness from omicron, CDC studies say
Three studies released Friday by the CDC underscore the importance of a third dose to help keep Covid-19 patients out of the hospital.
Jan. 21, 2022, 11:31 AM EST / Updated Jan. 21, 2022, 3:16 PM EST
By Erika Edwards
A booster dose of the Covid-19 vaccine significantly reduces a person’s odds of hospitalization from the omicron variant, new research released Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finds.
The three new studies from the agency are among the first to look at the vaccines’ impact against omicron in the United States, which now accounts for more than 99 percent of new cases in the country.
The research underscores the importance of booster shots to protect against severe illness from the rapidly spreading variant. Though cases are beginning to decline in some hard hit areas, such as in the Northeast, much of the nation’s hospitals remain overwhelmed with Covid patients.
“Protection against infection and hospitalization with the omicron variant is highest for those who are up to date with their vaccination, meaning those who are boosted when they are eligible,” said CDC director Dr Rochelle Walensky during a White House Covid Task Force briefing Friday.
“There are still millions of people who are eligible for booster dose and have not yet received one,” Walensky said.
An NBC News analysis of data from the Department of Health and Human Services finds that Covid-related hospitalizations are up 35 percent within the past two weeks, and admissions to intensive care units are up 28 percent in the same time frame.
The new studies find that a booster shot can provide robust protection against needing emergency medical care or hospitalization because of Covid-19….
*
[Also important is that NBC news online is not gated.]
Mencken’s Craggy Grandson
@Alclarke19A
“I’m fully vaxxed and I still got COVID” is the new “If evolution is true, why are there still monkeys around?”
10:11 AM · Jan 24, 2022·Twitter Web App
Now What? we wait to see if the incidence of long term damage is the same with Omicron as it has been with prior variants…
COVID-19 patients show more signs of brain damage than people with Alzheimer’s disease – A new study reveals older patients contracting COVID have more signs of brain damage than people who develop the neurodegenerative disease.Specifically, a team from NYU Grossman School of Medicine found significantly higher levels of certain blood proteins which typically arise when someone suffers neurological damage among COVID patients. Researchers say, over the short-term course of their infections, seven markers of brain damage were noticeably higher among COVID patients than non-COVID patients with Alzheimer’s. One of these markers was more than twice as high among coronavirus patients.
My wife had long Covid and killed herself. We must help others who are suffering – – My wife, Heidi Ferrer, was a screenwriter with a history of social advocacy and an empathetic heart. She was talented, beautiful and the most dedicated mother you ever met; we often referred to her as “sunshine in a dress”. She took her own life after a 13-month battle with long Covid that started as a mostly asymptomatic coronavirus infection. Long Covid took her from one of the healthiest, most vibrant people I’ve ever known to a person so debilitated that she could not bear another day on this planet.
Hallucinations and headaches: Seven ways COVID can affect your brain – Covid is largely thought of as an illness that mostly affects your lungs, with the effect it can have on the brain less known. But as well as causing obvious physical symptoms, the virus can also spark neurological ones too — and these are the ones that tend to last longer. In what is traditionally a respiratory illness, medics were surprised when people began complaining of headaches, delirium, brain fog and loss of smell or taste at the start of the pandemic. And in the more seriously ill, things like strokes and blocked blood vessels in the brain were soon being reported. One in five Covid patients could suffer with cerebral vascular events, according to Professor James Goodwin.
and this:
rjs,
Wear masks, get all the Covid shots one can, and maintain maximum possible social distance is so last year and so year before last year and so next year. I hope this changes by the time my wife retires in May 2025. My wife has multiple risk factors (63 YO obese chain smoker with chronic sinus infections), but she can work from home. I am retired almost 73 YO and naturally anti-social, polite and apparently friendly when in public, but really disinterested in general social activity. My only surviving friends live on the other side of the country. Neither my wife nor I have gotten symptomatic or tested since we rarely are in the presence of others. My wife is far more social than me, but she gets her fix over the Internet for now. Although situations have often cast me in a roll of being outgoing and gregarious, those experiences for me were operative rather than emotional. Close friends are different, but now all save two are dead. People that suffer from loneliness are more likely to take risks, much like my wife and her smoking and anyone with an addition. OTOH, I would be crazy if not for all the outdoor space which we live in the midst of.
…or the addition of an addiction :<)
Every overtly personal anecdote needs a moral or two.
1. In the end everyone dies alone, except for Egyptian pharaohs that had servants and pets entombed with them.
2. People that one knows to routinely make bad decisions for their own health and safety are unlikely to make good decisions for the health and safety of others.
3. In the search for truth always keep eyes focused on the ironies because most often the truth can be found nearby.
here’s news on a study supporting that…
Preliminary Israeli study shows fourth vaccine not enough to stop omicron– A preliminary study in Israel, believed to be the world’s first, found that a fourth COVID-19 vaccine is not enough to prevent omicron infections. Gili Regev-Yochay, director of Sheba Medical Center’s Infectious Diseases Unit, said the trial studied the effect of the Pfizer booster after two weeks and the Moderna booster after one week, according to Reuters. Regev-Yochay said the increase in antibodies from a fourth shot was “probably not enough for the Omicron.””We know by now that the level of antibodies needed to protect and not to got infected from Omicron is probably too high for the vaccine, even if it’s a good vaccine,” she added.Sheba Medical Center ran the trial on second booster shots among 150 of its staff members, and its findings were preliminary and unpublished,The Times of Israel reported. About 500,000 Israelis have been inoculated with a fourth dose as of Sunday.Israel has led the push for vaccinations throughout the pandemic and was the first country to begin to offer booster shots to its population.Prime Minister Naftali Bennett previously announced that the country would begin offering a fourth vaccine as a second booster shot for high-risk populations and vulnerable groups. Despite the push for vaccinations, Israel reported nearly 12,000 new COVID-19 cases earlier this month, a record-setting figure for daily case rates since the start of the pandemic.“There is no control of the omicron wave,” Sharon Alroy-Preis, the Israeli health ministry’s top public health official, said to a local news outlet at the time.
January 22, 2022
Coronavirus
Israel
Cases ( 2,212,596)
Deaths ( 8,393)
Deaths per million ( 900)
January 21, 2022
Coronavirus
New York
Cases ( 4,790,487)
Deaths ( 63,563)
Deaths per million ( 3,267)
There have been some 2.97 billions vaccine doses administered on the Chinese mainland, fully vaccinating more than 1.22 billion persons from children to the elderly. Since vaccination began on an experimental basis in June 2020, there have only been 2 coronavirus deaths on the Chinese mainland. There has been no coronavirus death since January 2021.
Rapists
Several leading Chinese infectious disease specialists argue the mainland is at a theoretical herd immunity level and that level is effective, with general Chinese protections, in severely limiting the spreading of Omicron infections. *
* Notice the initial comment on this page.
Again, this day, coronavirus infections were severely limited on the Chinese mainland and that would “seem” to speak to the efficacy of the vaccines spread through the country as well as the testing and isolation of any symptomatic and asymptomatic persons.
i’m still having a problem with US Covid deaths…i’ve been following them, as well as those around the rest of the world, here for over three weeks, since i first noticed that US Covid deaths were over a quarter of the world’s total, even though we only have 4% of the world’s population…that crazy ratio still persists, in fact over the most recent week, up till Friday, we were accounting for more than 26% of the world’s Covid deaths….with our supposedly superior health care system, why are our Covid deaths per capita running 10 or 20 times greater than that of most 3rd world countries?
At least a couple areas can be examined. There are probably differences in reporting criteria and also data quality. We also know that risk factors skew the chances of death a lot. You might expect societies capable of maintaining alive high populations of the elderly and individuals with serious non-COVID health issues will get hit harder. Large populations of people at highest risk of COVID mortality can be thought of as a basic endorsement of the overall healthcare system, not to be confused with saying that lifestyles are very healthy in such places.
rjs,
What Eric377 said (surprisingly enough) when it comes to deaths/cases and how the formation of social groups affects spreading into new territories on the number of cases plus the endogenous statistics probable error. Tiny US with only 4% of global population is still counted as having 20% of global Covid-19 cases. The data that we have for 2022 tells us that India has only 11.5% of global cases. India keeps contagious disease at home where it belongs. My understanding is that socializing with strangers in bars, football tailgate parties, and large concerts is less than US.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1111696/covid19-cases-percentage-by-country/
Distribution of coronavirus (COVID-19) cases in select countries worldwide as of January 12, 2022
[Bar chart and an article at link ]
January 22, 2022
Coronavirus
United States
Cases ( 71,728,557)
Deaths ( 888,623)
Deaths per million ( 2,660)
China
Cases ( 105,547)
Deaths ( 4,636)
Deaths per million ( 3)
https://english.news.cn/20220123/07cd038b5f90496aa24890a86b38f32a/c.html
January 23, 2022
Over 2.96 bln COVID-19 vaccine doses administered on Chinese mainland
BEIJING — Over 2.96 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses had been administered on the Chinese mainland as of Saturday, data from the National Health Commission showed Sunday.
[ January 15, 2022
Over 1.22 billion fully vaccinated against COVID-19 on Chinese mainland. ]
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2022-01-23/Chinese-mainland-records-56-confirmed-COVID-19-cases-1735DycHtBK/index.html
January 23, 2022
Chinese mainland reports 56 new COVID-19 cases
The Chinese mainland recorded 56 confirmed COVID-19 cases on Saturday, with 19 linked to local transmissions and 37 from overseas, data from the National Health Commission showed on Sunday.
A total of 34 new asymptomatic cases were also recorded, and 751 asymptomatic patients remain under medical observation.
Confirmed cases on the Chinese mainland now total 105,603, with the death toll remaining unchanged at 4,636 since January last year.
Chinese mainland new locally transmitted cases
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2022-01-23/Chinese-mainland-records-56-confirmed-COVID-19-cases-1735DycHtBK/img/30d3ce777ac045ceaf2039250300408e/30d3ce777ac045ceaf2039250300408e.jpeg
Chinese mainland new imported cases
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2022-01-23/Chinese-mainland-records-56-confirmed-COVID-19-cases-1735DycHtBK/img/cad653c56162482a9dcef9dc5beeadb1/cad653c56162482a9dcef9dc5beeadb1.jpeg
Chinese mainland new asymptomatic cases
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2022-01-23/Chinese-mainland-records-56-confirmed-COVID-19-cases-1735DycHtBK/img/6dfe5c010f7442f3a6aeec49bba8256a/6dfe5c010f7442f3a6aeec49bba8256a.jpeg
RJS:
I’m still having a problem with US Covid deaths…
[ Looking at even a Canada or Germany for answers seems culturally difficult in the United States. Notice the difference in life expectancy and the comparative problem is there as well. Why and what can be done? ]
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=L7vL
January 30, 2018
Life Expectancy at Birth for United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany and France, 2000-2019
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=L7wc
January 30, 2018
Infant Mortality Rate for United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany and France, 2000-2019
you might recall that i brought up the Covid hit to our life expectancy when the new data came out, maybe 2 – 3 weeks ago….it doesn’t appear that FRED has updated those graphs for 2020 yet, ltr, so they don’t show the effects of Covid on our life expectancy yet…but just look at that graph and imagine if the US line went down 1.8 years! it’s like we’re heading for 3rd world status…
here are the articles i linked to previously:
as i pointed out when i first posted those articles, based on the larger hit to US male life expectancy, i already lost one-third of the years i had remaining, and my life expectancy had fallen to 4.1 years below that of a Chinese woman….and that’s only including the hit my lifetime took in 2020….by the time the 2021 data is in, i might find i’m living on borrowed time..
‘
it’s not just the large number of Americans who are dying from Covid that’s having an impact on us; those who survive a serious case appear to have biologically aged significantly as well:
Ron
i wonder if this thread counts as evidence of the wisdom of crowds?
my take is, maybe. at least by the end of it I feel no wiser than before. Which is probably the safest conclusion to draw. At least i avoid being sucked in by mathematical models that project the unpredictable and ignore all the “side” effects. And I avoid calling people who disagree with me “idiots”, even though I am constantly tempted to do so.
That said, my personal experiences are not disimilar to yours, and I think Eric was pointing out something we forget to think about..if kids are not likely to get very sick from covid, and the current vaccines fail to protect people from infection by the current variant, though they protect those likely to get very sick from getting very sick…what is the point of vaccinating kids?
I hope this is not taken as a rhetorical question. I get tired of rhetorical answers.
Coberly,
First of all, from the perspective of wisdom from diversity of biases then AB is far more an echo chamber than a broadly representative crowd without common biases. Just because the pitchforks are metaphorical, then they are still being carried by an angry mob.
The second question is a little more complicated. We are waging war against a critter so small that it can only be seen with an electron microscope (or something called an enhanced light microscope that I have yet to read up on). Yet it has a natural ability to mutate easily enough that natural selection has already been able to broadcast a more lethal form (Delta) and a more contagious form (Omicron). Now is no time for unilateral disarmament in this war. Rather we should be fortifying and learning all that we can about fighting it. That is the mile high view.
Closer to Earth, then children have teachers and other adults at school and at home that are vulnerable and some children themselves have had long term effects that appear largely disconnected to the level of symptoms in their initial infection. Covid-19 is an opportunistic infection hitting humanity where it is most vulnerable especially here in the US, which is to say that the virus has the advantage of our own over-confidence and hubris which we also see in our response to climate change. So when we evaluate the usefulness of vaccinations for children then we need to be mindful of all that we do not know. Just because asymptomatic individuals can spread Covid-19, then is there any reason that we should think that they spread as effectively as someone constantly coughing and sneezing? Just that alone is not so simple as we might think. Asymptomatic victims do not announce themselves so that they can be isolated and testing is limited (and possibly dubious with false +/-). How well does any family isolate their children in a household? Given the newness of Omicron, then how much do we know of the long term effects on asymptomatic cases? Of course the anti-vaccination tribe is also mindful of what they do not know, so it is important to understand the distinction between cautious confidence and blatant over-confidence or the difference between being mindful and being mindless.
Of course we cannot predict the future. We do not know what will happen. It is possible that Covid-19 will burn itself out much like the Spanish flu did one hundred years ago, but it is also possible that Covid-19 will develop a strain that will combine the contagious capability of Omicron with the deadliness of Delta and thereby solve the climate change problem by radically reducing the population of our species on Earth. Public health decisions regarding new viral pathogens are not simple or easy. An enlightened view of such must stay open minded and forever reevaluating as new information becomes available. They need a diverse pool of highly educated people with informative research to be at their best. When we devolve to decisions made on personal comfort, then we are not likely to help either ourselves nor the general public. In such complex situations then our fears inform us more of our ignorance than our wisdom.
It is fine to be afraid of snakes, spiders, and guns. Those are all rational fears. OTOH, when we become afraid of things that we can neither observe nor understand then those fears can easily become irrational since our senses provide us with no inputs for establishing boundaries. E.g, one might recognize a poisoness snake or spider or a gun pointed in their direction and distiquish it from a nonpoisoness snake or spider or gun stored safely in a locked case, which each is a boundary for our fears. How do we recognize boundaries for the fears of a virus? What makes us fear mandated precautions against a virus? It certainly could not be a piece of cloth over our mouth and nose, maybe a vaccination although millions of others are getting vaccinated which fear seems irrational. Are we really afraid of losing our freedom to state control that already taxes and licenses much of human activity or rather are we afraid to admit that we are powerless ourselves against a potentially deadly virus? That deadly potential is nothing new, but it is new in acknowledgement by most of the living who have long been protected similarly from so many other deadly diseases that they have come to take those protections for granted.
[One of the fear factors affecting the acceptance of vaccine safety is the apparent newness of the vaccines. A lot of that has to do with lousy mass media coverage attuned to short attention spans and scientific illiteracy. Perhaps even long term memory deficiency is involved. A lot of what we learned in high school gets crowded out by popular fascinations with sports and other celebrity. I attribute my exceptional long term memory to a lack of interest in both popular celebrity and mainstream trivia.]
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02483-w
The tangled history of mRNA vaccines
Hundreds of scientists had worked on mRNA vaccines for decades before the coronavirus pandemic brought a breakthrough.
In late 1987, Robert Malone performed a landmark experiment. He mixed strands of messenger RNA with droplets of fat, to create a kind of molecular stew. Human cells bathed in this genetic gumbo absorbed the mRNA, and began producing proteins from it1.
Realizing that this discovery might have far-reaching potential in medicine, Malone, a graduate student at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, later jotted down some notes, which he signed and dated. If cells could create proteins from mRNA delivered into them, he wrote on 11 January 1988, it might be possible to “treat RNA as a drug”. Another member of the Salk lab signed the notes, too, for posterity. Later that year, Malone’s experiments showed that frog embryos absorbed such mRNA2. It was the first time anyone had used fatty droplets to ease mRNA’s passage into a living organism.
Those experiments were a stepping stone towards two of the most important and profitable vaccines in history: the mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines given to hundreds of millions of people around the world. Global sales of these are expected to top US$50 billion in 2021 alone.
But the path to success was not direct. For many years after Malone’s experiments, which themselves had drawn on the work of other researchers, mRNA was seen as too unstable and expensive to be used as a drug or a vaccine. Dozens of academic labs and companies worked on the idea, struggling with finding the right formula of fats and nucleic acids — the building blocks of mRNA vaccines…
*
[How easily we forget.]
My dad lost his mom and two brothers to the Spanish Flu in 1919 and was himself sick enough with it that he was actually pronounced dead before his miraculous recovery in time to miss his own premature burial. It stunted his growth to the effect that his limbs were long compared to his relatively short torso and the only among his mail siblings under six foot tall.
There have been some 2.96 billions vaccine doses administered on the Chinese mainland, fully vaccinating more than 1.22 billion persons from children to the elderly. Since vaccination began on an experimental basis in June 2020, there have only been 2 coronavirus deaths on the Chinese mainland. There has been “no coronavirus death” since January 2021.
I fail to understand why the Chinese experience and success in preventing and treating the coronavirus is apparently of so little interest in America. Look how successful the Chinese vaccination program has been, and this completely voluntary…
Because they lie. All the time. Not a reputable source for anything but PR BS, which you feel needs to be shared with people that could care less about China.
Sadly indeed, children are becoming ill, becoming seriously ill, and need to be protected. The Chinese are vaccinating children from 3 and older, safely and effectively. Vaccination is always with parent voluntary consent and presence.
…if kids are not likely to get very sick from covid, and the current vaccines fail to protect people from infection by the current variant, though they protect those likely to get very sick from getting very sick…what is the point of vaccinating kids?
[ This is incorrect; kids, always with the consent of parents, need to be vaccinated. ]
ltr
There is always the issue of a long term impact from Omicron also.
Run:
There is always the issue of a long term impact from Omicron also.
[ Surely so; there is need to be very, very concerned and cautious. ]
Again, China will report only 57 cases tomorrow, of which only 18 are local, 39 from overseas, and no deaths. This is critically important, for instance possibly telling of an advantage in inactivated virus vaccines. China has developed and tested at least ten coronavirus vaccines, but has chosen to rely so far on 2 inactivated virus vaccines. Could there be an advantage with the coronavirus? Obviously, Chinese doctors are confident in the inactivated virus vaccines.
New Zealand has just found a very few coronavirus cases, and has gone to Code Red, but the Prime Minister has warned there will soon be thousands of cases a day. China however has seemingly contained coronavirus infections. We need to understand just why China is so successful.
I’d just as soon pay attention to DeSantis as the Chinese. You know, the government that put new meaning into re-education camps?
“China is another story. Its official statistics understate the Chinese Covid death rate by 17,000% (according to The Economist’s model).
In fact, based on excess mortality calculations, The Economist estimates that the true number of Covid deaths in China is not 4,636 – but something like 1.7 million.
That is, China’s cumulative death toll is likely at least double that of the United States. “
https://www.forbes.com/sites/georgecalhoun/2022/01/02/beijing-is-intentionally-underreporting-chinas-covid-death-rate-part-1/?sh=53877c914352
i should post this piece here too, since there seems to be a widespread assumption that people will only get infected by Covid once:
anecdotally, it was in the news yesterday that Sarah Palin had tested positive for a second time after being infected with a earlier variant, while last week Iowa Rep. Ashley Hinson announced that she had tested positive for the virus a second time within two years. Palin was not vaccinated, while Hinson was fully vaccinated and boosted.