"Coronavirus" is the category, dangit. (COVID-19 thread)

[Thad]

Interest in vaccinations increased after CDC announced new mask guidance

Data obtained exclusively by CNN shows that interest in getting vaccinated against Covid-19 increased right after Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, announced two weeks ago that vaccinated people could take off their masks.

"This shows incentives matter," said Dr. Jonathan Reiner, professor of medicine and surgery at George Washington University School of Medicine. "People needed a carrot, and the carrot was the ability to drop the mask in most settings."

It was a risky move, and of course the downside is you can't tell which maskless people have been vaccinated and which ones haven't. But if it gets more people to go get the shot, there's a pretty good argument that it was the right call.

[beatbandito]

from the article:

"the decision that the CDC made was not as an incentive to get people vaccinated, but this could actually have the indirect effect of getting people to be incentivized to get vaccinated."

I don't know if I'd go so far as to call it the "right call". That was also the week that multiple states starting offering straight cash and tax rebates to get people out. So a lot of correlation but I'm not calling it not a dumb move yet.

[KingRoyal]

Things like this, plus being vocal about your own vaccination and being honest about it to your social circle are other ways. Realistically, most people are probably in "wait and see" category and aren't driven by ideological alignment with the anti-vaccine movement. The best motivator is just everyone around them getting it and having a good time.

[Mongrel]

[Mongrel]

Me, trying to do a magic trick.

[Mongrel]

Delta variant be dangerous y'all.

[Brantly B.]

Absolute perfect timing if you want everybody to just accept that death from COVID is going to be an unavoidable fact of life now.

[Mongrel]

As several people have pointed out, the simple fact that most of the population is getting vaccinated, so simple math will mean that an increasing percentage of the covid deaths will be among vaccinated folks, even in a nearly optimal situation. Which is something we already know - vaccines aren't perfect; the real goal is to get herd immunity through a COMBINATION of vaccination and a low incidence rate.

As long as OVERALL numbers keep going down we should be okay. Especially if we can get them back down to where useful contact tracing is possible again.

Also, if you click through, the story is certainly a bit less bleak for anyone on a two-shot vaccine.

[Mongrel]

Better news

[Friday]

From my understanding the two doses was so that your body would 100% for sure create the memory cells and keep them.

Like, what I'm saying is the two doses were for the original strain. You were at higher risk for the original strain on one dose.

[mharr]

AFAIK both vaccines target the specific mutation that made the virus communicable to humans, so they should be somewhat effective on any variants that matter to us?

[Upthorn]

You were at higher risk for the original strain on one dose.

If I correctly understand what you're saying, I believe you're wrong? Having received a single dose of vaccine is better than having received zero doses. But not as good as receiving two doses.

AFAIK both vaccines target the specific mutation that made the virus communicable to humans, so they should be somewhat effective on any variants that matter to us?

The vaccines target a specific spike-shaped protein that makes the virus easily communicable to humans. The vaccines should remain fully effective against any variants that don't have a mutation affecting that protein.

Because our immune system uses fuzzy matching, they should retain partial effectiveness against any variant that uses a similar protein. Because all forms of coronavirus use some form of spike protein (this is the definition of a corona virus), it's even possible that the Covid-19 shots provide some level of protection against the common cold!

So even variants that have one or two mutations affecting that spike protein should be well protected against. However, the more the spike protein evolves through mutation, the less effective these initial vaccines will become. And increasing vaccine adoption creates a selection pressure towards vaccine-evasive strains.

Coronaviruses are notorious for their fast rate of mutation, too, which is why nobody's ever put the money and effort into creating a vaccine for the common cold. The advent of this delta strain indicates that we're in for one of three broad possible futures:

1) We may be in for a few years of new variant -> new vaccine -> new variant -> new vaccine... until eventually the continued creation of vaccines exert a collective pressure that causes the disease to evolve in a direction of creating milder symptoms.

2) We will have to make a collective effort to completely eradicate the disease, similarly to how we responded to polio. This seems a bit less likely because it will require politically expensive things like mandatory vaccinations, which are going to be difficult to convince the public to cooperate with in this climate of science-skepticism.

3) Humanity simply gives up and lets Covid continually wipe significant chunks of the population. Because it mutates as it spreads, there will always be a new strain that can re-infect people that survived the previous versions, and we go into a global population decline until people with some form of genetic immunity to covid come to dominate the population of humanity. Again, this seems less likely than the first scenario, because pharmaceutical companies can make money by selling vaccines to governments and/or individuals.

[Friday]

If I correctly understand what you're saying, I believe you're wrong? Having received a single dose of vaccine is better than having received zero doses. But not as good as receiving two doses.

No no, I meant you're at higher risk from the original strain on only one dose compared to two. Sorry, it was poorly worded.

To be 100% clear, I was saying that one dose was not as good as two doses for ANY strain.

As it was explained to me, the second dose is the same thing again. It makes your body absolutely certain to create the memory cells needed to know what to do if that shit ever shows up again. Apparently, a single exposure to a new foreign body doesn't always make the immune system create those cells so that it can deal with it later. But two exposures in quick succession seems to make the body go "oh, shit, this is a thing now. *jots down notes*"

[Upthorn]

Okay, yes, that's correct.

Edit:
I see, I missed part of mongrel's post with numbers comparing vaccine effectiveness with alpha vs delta. Now it makes sense why you said what you said. Also, looking over those numbers, delta looks quite a bit less frightening for fully vaccinated people than I was originally thinking.

[Thad]

Yeah, my cousin was telling me the other day that her boss just died of COVID-19 after getting one dose of the vaccine.

It's a hell of a thing, seeing people let their guard down when they're so close to being able to...well, still not let their guard down, but change things up modestly.

[pacobird]

Yeah, my cousin was telling me the other day that her boss just died of COVID-19 after getting one dose of the vaccine.

It's a hell of a thing, seeing people let their guard down when they're so close to being able to...well, still not let their guard down, but change things up modestly.

possibly time for a one flew over the cuckoo's nest remake

[Mongrel]

Also, to be fair to the #1 spot, the Russians are probably being offered Russian vaccines, so.

[KingRoyal]

That's one way to interpret that data. What's similar is just straight up unwillingness, which is true, but in the larger context our overall hesitancy is less than Australia and equal to Japan, and honestly not that far ahead of other countries. But our actual vaccination rate is still light years beyond Russia*

*This is most likely due to availability

[Yoji]

Well, my wife and I have signed up our kids for clinical trials of the moderna vaccine. No placebo control, and it's going to involve drawing blood and nasal swabs.

Feeling mixed about this. I'm trying to figure out how to comfort them through this. But I'm also thinking about how heroic this is compared to... whatever the fuck I've done through this plague. Hid in a bunker? Got a couple tiny jabs? Slowly misplaced my marbles?


I've been thinking about the US death toll and estimates of excess deaths, too. If I'm remembering right, there were about 400,000 COVID deaths by the time Biden was inaugurated, and I've heard estimates that up to 90% (~360,000) of them could've been prevented if Screaming Pumpkin Demon bothered to act like a real president.

I wondered, how does that compare to something like World War 2? Because defense.gov says the European theater saw roughly 552,000 total US casualties, 102,000 were killed in action. If I'm reading this right, President Plaguelord put more Americans in the ground than Hitler. That can't be right, can it? I'm pretty rubbish at math, but it sure seems that way.

[Mongrel]

Early studies are showing the mNRA-based vaccines are showing favourable outcomes for producing long-term immunity to coronaviruses in recipients, including many mutated forms