COVID-19/Coronavirus Information and Support Thread (see OP for useful links)

[Tired Tyres]

Had my second jab on the first of June. I got the same side effects in a few hours that I got after two days with the first jab - sore arm and the world's mildest form of pins and needles. (Only detectable if using a touch screen) but they disappeared a few hours after that and no problems since then.

 

[Daz555]

So right now, almost 64% AstraZeneca on first doses (about 58% on second doses) but since Pfizer or Moderna is preferred for under-40s that will end up closer to 50%. This is clearly relevant since the protection against delta is markedly worse for AstraZeneca.

Is it? I have not managed to find any solid data that says this is so.

 

[Touring Mars]

Some reports say that it is the Pfizer vaccine that is less effective against the Delta variant...

https://www.crick.ac.uk/news/2021-0...g-the-delta-variant-first-discovered-in-india

My parents and my sister all got AZ, I got Pfizer...

 

[Outspacer]

Is it? I have not managed to find any solid data that says this is so.

Sorry, I stated that ambiguously. Current estimate is that AstraZeneca is only 60% effective against symptomatic B.1.617.2, which is markedly lower than the 88% estimate for Pfizer, and definitely lower than its 66% effectiveness against B.1.1.7 (all figures after two doses). It should be noted that these are from a PHE study that is preprint and some caveats may apply to the limited extent of the data.

The mix of vaccines with different effectiveness was always going to be something of a concern, but with an average of close to 80% effectiveness against symptoms (assuming an equal split of Astra vs Pfizer) and 90%+ take-up it looked to be enough overall against B.1.1.7. Even if the vaccines were as effective on B.1.617.2 as they were on B.1.1.7, the increased fitness of B.1.617.2 raises the bar for herd immunity, perhaps closer to 80% than 70% (I haven't seen solid data for that number yet). So now if the average protection is reduced to 74% (lower in that 40 to 65 age range I mentioned, predominantly Astra, and with lower take-up), it may in theory not be enough to suppress the spread (even with two doses).

(Multiply protection by take-up for an estimate of herd immunity level from vaccination, e.g. 74% * 80% = 59.2%, then add on a best guess of immunity from previous infection (5% ???) to get overall herd immunity. On the other side, how much we need is reduced by behavioural measures like mask wearing, meeting people outside, shopping less, etc, that will still happen to some extent even when not mandated).

Clearly I can't predict whether there will be a large increase in hospitalisations from B.1.617.2 or whether a more vaccine resistant variant will emerge. Admissions over the next week or two may tell us the former. The latter is my main concern though, especially since new variants don't seem to trade off severity of disease for transmissibility. But what does seem clear is that we're going to have higher levels of symptomatic cases rumbling on than we would like, making variants much more likely.

My earlier post was mainly just trying to identify relevant factors other than the raw case rates etc that were shown in the Indie_SAGE video, not particularly to draw any firm conclusions.

 

[Touring Mars]

I don't envy those tasked with making the big calls right now.

Today marks 6 months since the first person outside of a clinical trial received the first vaccine jab in the UK...

https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/uk-news/six-months-first-jab-how-20763352

Yet another major unknown is how long different vaccines provide their full protection - all I have seen thus far is that efficacy of vaccines is expected to wane after a period of time, but hopefully boosters will be available for the most vulnerable groups whose protection is likely to wear off soonest.

 

[Outspacer]

Some reports say that it is the Pfizer vaccine that is less effective against the Delta variant...

https://www.crick.ac.uk/news/2021-0...g-the-delta-variant-first-discovered-in-india

My parents and my sister all got AZ, I got Pfizer...

Not sure how to translate this to efficacy, but maybe it sounds scarier than it is:

"They found that in people who had been fully vaccinated with two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, levels of neutralising antibodies were more than five times lower* against the B.1.617.2 variant when compared to the original strain, upon which current vaccines are based."

To correlate at all with the PHE figures, first it must be an inverse, then to compare to B.1.1.7 (for which the result was approx 2.3 times lower than wild-type) it's only 2 to 3 times lower... correlating to 93% = 100-7% and 88% - 100-12% ???

I don't envy those tasked with making the big calls right now.

Today marks 6 months since the first person outside of a clinical trial received the first vaccine jab in the UK...

https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/uk-news/six-months-first-jab-how-20763352

Yet another major unknown is how long different vaccines provide their full protection - all I have seen thus far is that efficacy of vaccines is expected to wane after a period of time, but hopefully boosters will be available for the most vulnerable groups whose protection is likely to wear off soonest.

Isn't that also really hard to get any measure of, since immune cells fade away and only leave T-cells that know how to rebuild them, or some process like that?

The trials of giving people a different type of vaccine will be interesting to watch, but they've only just started. It would be useful if giving one dose of Pfizer to someone who's had two of Astra gave significant extra protection, rather than waiting for a variant-specific vaccine.

 

[TexRex]

Had my second jab on the first of June. I got the same side effects in a few hours that I got after two days with the first jab - sore arm and the world's mildest form of pins and needles. (Only detectable if using a touch screen) but they disappeared a few hours after that and no problems since then.

Chip short causing an arc at your fingertips when making contact with an electronic device?

 

[Tired Tyres]

Chip short causing an arc at your fingertips when making contact with an electronic device?

No. Just discovered the pins and needles when scrolling. Used the left arm and it wasn't happening. Back to the right and it was. Only lasted a couple of hours though.

 

[TexRex]

No. Just discovered the pins and needles when scrolling. Used the left arm and it wasn't happening. Back to the right and it was. Only lasted a couple of hours though.

That's why it couldn't have been an issue with a microchip.

 

[PeterJB]

Booked in at the local stabbery for Sunday. Parents had theirs a few months ago, sister no. 1 had hers in January cause she has no spleen and works for the NHS and sister no. 2 and her husband are having theirs the day before me on Saturday, so the whole family will be done then, save for my two-year old nephew.

 

[35mm]

And yet, less than a week later, Portugal is now off the UK's "green list"... meaning that UK tourists "should not travel to the country" and returnees "must self-isolate for 10 days on return"

I know there were a lot of English tourists already at Algarve, and many more to come. I can only imagine how that went (or how it's going...).

This obviously also had implications on other, more important things, like at a professional level.
As an example, my company was about to send a couple of engineers on site to England, where recently a big moveable wall of ours was installed - this is part of a final step of the whole process, which includes fine-tuning the panels and training the client's personnel on how to handle the wall, etc.
Since there are no exceptions for the quarantine (i.e. workers, for example), that's not happening anymore now... We had it all planned in advance for some time now, so it felt a bit like falling at the last hurdle, to be honest.

The ironic part is that the job site is an AstraZeneca project, in Cambridge.

 

[Touring Mars]

I got an unexpected surprise on arriving home just now - my 2nd shot invite... penciled in for 1st July, 5 weeks earlier than planned.

-

Meanwhile, the Spanish football team are expected to get 'emergency vaccinations' before Euro 2020 as two team members test positive.

Sorry, but that is almost comically stupid. It's clearly too late - two positive cases already, and Spain's first game is on Monday... what do they think vaccines do, exactly??

 

[Blitz24]

I got an unexpected surprise on arriving home just now - my 2nd shot invite... penciled in for 1st July, 5 weeks earlier than planned.

-

Meanwhile, the Spanish football team are expected to get 'emergency vaccinations' before Euro 2020 as two team members test positive.

Sorry, but that is almost comically stupid. It's clearly too late - two positive cases already, and Spain's first game is on Monday... what do they think vaccines do, exactly??

Clearly they help solve the problem of already having the virus. Simple, just insert more virus!

 

[Joey D]

Simple, just insert more virus!

Yo dawg, I heard you like viruses....

X to the Z...Xzibit

 

[Touring Mars]

I recently connected with a friend's sister as I found out she was a musician, and she sent me a friend request on Facebook. We chatted about music and she has apparently been suffering from depression, and hence my positive comments about her music were very much appreciated.

Anyway, it turns out she's an anti-vaxxer...

 

[Danoff]

Anyway, it turns out she's an anti-vaxxer...

 

[Touring Mars]

Fortunately she is the identical twin of my friend, so Plan A it is then...

 

[kikie]

Can I put this here?

A new case of Bird flu in China. This time it supposedly jumped from birds to humans. Is this the beginning of a new pandemic?

 

[Moglet]

The ironic part is that the job site is an AstraZeneca project, in Cambridge.

Is it the Darwin building on the Science Park? If so I used to work directly next door to that and now work about 6 doors down. It's a very cool looking building on the inside!

 

[Touring Mars]

Here's my back-of-a-fag-packet graph comparing the COVID hospitalisations versus cases in Scotland right now...

Hopefully it shows a fairly good situation.

Tl;dr - the number of hospitalisations we are seeing today (hosp 2, RHS) is significantly lower than the hospitalisations from the same number of cases in the previous wave (hosp 1).

When cases started to rise from a low background in the second wave (late last year), hospitalisations lagged almost exactly 2 weeks behind cases. Now, we are seeing a similar trajectory in terms of new cases, starting from a slightly higher baseline.

This graph shows the seven day rolling average of cases as a dotted red line, and hospitalisations as a solid orange line.

I've added a few lines on there manually... a baseline for the start of the 2nd wave and a second baseline for the start of this new wave.

I've then drawn a line to mark today's case level ('cases 2') and then drawn another line (cases 1) which marks the same level of cases relative to the baseline for the previous wave. Then, from that case level, I've dropped down to find the number of hospitalisations on that date.

Finally, I've taken the hospitalisations in the earlier wave and marked where they ought to be in the current wave if all things were equal.

As you can (hopefully) see, they are nowhere near where they 'should' be... current hospitalisations due to COVID are considerably lower than they were at the same point in the earlier wave.

Cases are rising as fast as before, however, and hospitalisations are also increasing, but it does (at this early stage) at least look like the 'link' between cases and hospitalisations may have bee significantly disrupted.

 

[Stotty]

Here's my back-of-a-fag-packet graph comparing the COVID hospitalisations versus cases in Scotland right now...

Hopefully it shows a fairly good situation.

View attachment 1016548

Tl;dr - the number of hospitalisations we are seeing today (hosp 2, RHS) is significantly lower than the hospitalisations from the same number of cases in the previous wave (hosp 1).

When cases started to rise from a low background in the second wave (late last year), hospitalisations lagged almost exactly 2 weeks behind cases. Now, we are seeing a similar trajectory in terms of new cases, starting from a slightly higher baseline.

This graph shows the seven day rolling average of cases as a dotted red line, and hospitalisations as a solid orange line.

I've added a few lines on there manually... a baseline for the start of the 2nd wave and a second baseline for the start of this new wave.

I've then drawn a line to mark today's case level ('cases 2') and then drawn another line (cases 1) which marks the same level of cases relative to the baseline for the previous wave. Then, from that case level, I've dropped down to find the number of hospitalisations on that date.

Finally, I've taken the hospitalisations in the earlier wave and marked where they ought to be in the current wave if all things were equal.

As you can (hopefully) see, they are nowhere near where they 'should' be... current hospitalisations due to COVID are considerably lower than they were at the same point in the earlier wave.

Cases are rising as fast as before, however, and hospitalisations are also increasing, but it does (at this early stage) at least look like the 'link' between cases and hospitalisations may have bee significantly disrupted.

No doubt ‘cases’ are either understated for the 1st period or overstated for the 2nd period, relatively, given testing is currently c.3x higher /day c.f September.

So the current situation is, proportionally, even less severe than the raw data suggests.

 

[Touring Mars]

No doubt ‘cases’ are either understated for the 1st period or overstated for the 2nd period, relatively, given testing is currently c.3x higher /day c.f September.

So the current situation is, proportionally, even less severe than the raw data suggests.

Surely that would make it worse than the current (raw) data suggests, not better...?

 

[Stotty]

They are going only finding a similar number of cases despite carrying out 3x the number of tests and doing targeted testing in high risk areas.

Boris needs to stop ****ing about and get the country fully opened up again.

The only thing that could cause a problem now is a vaccine resistant variant, and there’s no evidence of that.

 

[Touring Mars]

They are going only finding a similar number of cases despite carrying out 3x the number of tests and doing targeted testing in high risk areas.

No, they are going on the number of people turning up at hospital requiring treatment for COVID symptoms first and foremost. Case numbers (the number of people testing positive) were a harbinger for how many people are going to need hospital treatment within 2 weeks, but now that link has (hopefully) been disrupted by vaccination i.e. the same number of cases now will translate into fewer hospitalisations because infection with the virus is now less dangerous to a large chunk of the population thanks to vaccination. But, as you point out, if case numbers were understated before (and/or are relatively overstated now), then the evidence for that disruption is weaker than it might appear to be - which would be very bad news indeed.

The only thing that could cause a problem now is a vaccine resistant variant, and there’s no evidence of that.

Again, no. It simply depends on how many people get COVID, period. Existing vaccines are not (and never were) 100% effective even against the wildtype virus that they are designed to protect against. Any variant is likely to reduce the efficacy of the vaccine(s), and there is plenty evidence for that.

Boris needs to stop ****ing about and get the country fully opened up again.

Opening up fully before either the virus is contained or we have reliable ways of keeping case numbers under control is the exact opposite of what we should be doing. The more cases there are, the more variants there will be - the more variants there are, the more likely there is to be a variant that evades vaccines.

 

[Adamgp]

Illinois opens back up tomorrow.

Things are nearly back to normal now, but tomorrow everything opens up 100%.

 

[Outspacer]

No, they are going on the number of people turning up at hospital requiring treatment for COVID symptoms first and foremost. Case numbers (the number of people testing positive) were a harbinger for how many people are going to need hospital treatment within 2 weeks, but now that link has (hopefully) been disrupted by vaccination i.e. the same number of cases now will translate into fewer hospitalisations because infection with the virus is now less dangerous to a large chunk of the population thanks to vaccination. But, as you point out, if case numbers were understated before (and/or are relatively overstated now), then the evidence for that disruption is weaker than it might appear to be - which would be very bad news indeed.

My opinion is that even large changes in the number of tests don't significantly affect the number of cases found, at a national level, as long as the number of tests is sufficiently greater than the number of cases. Comparing early Nov to late Jan, the ratio of hospital admissions to cases (delayed by 10 days) holds fairly steady at about 13%, even though testing more than doubled. At the Jan peak, that ratio rose to 15%, perhaps indicating that testing was insufficient at that point (about 10% of tests returning positive).

Besides which, the recent trebling of cases has occured while the number of tests has been fairly steady (with a brief dip).

 

[Touring Mars]

Great point.

The difference in testing is (hopefully) largely irrelevant, since it is the difference in the rates of increase between cases and hospitalisations that is important firstly, and then establishing if that difference has changed.

In the 2nd wave, the rate in increase of cases and hospitalisations was almost identical (i.e. the gradient of the red line and orange line matches), whereas now there is a clear divergence in gradients (so far anyway), and that suggests a real change in the link between cases and hospitalisations.

 

[Outspacer]

Yep, I'd agree there looks like a real change in that relationship, which is of course good news. If that holds we should at least avoid any real threat of hospitals being overrun, since the number of cases required would be off the scale - after all, there are limits to how big a wave can be even without mandated restrictions (we don't know what those limits are though). However, at the current rate we could (mathematically) be at about 80k cases/day in 40 days time, 160k in 50 days time... if the increase is able to persist that long.

 

[CodeRedR51]

I can pretty much go to most places now without a mask requirement.....except for my work. They seem to be dragging their feet.

 

[35mm]

Is it the Darwin building on the Science Park? If so I used to work directly next door to that and now work about 6 doors down. It's a very cool looking building on the inside!

All I know is that it is part of the new AZ's HQ and R&D Centre, to be honest.
Because we only deal with the design and fabrication, we just had the plans of the specific rooms (for the implementation of our system) and not much more. Even installation was done by a local UK company.
Will know more if and once we go there.

Sorry for the OT.