I am in California for a few days, where the mask force is strong. Walking in a state park yesterday, most people on the trail had masks, including some runners who looked ready to keel over. And this after even the CDC has acknowledged the lack of any outdoor transmission. A lot of people are idiots, sorry, but it is true. We are definitely rolling over on cases in Minnesota, as we are getting to less favorable seasonality and vaccinations continue to do their work. It appears to be the same in other states that were having case surges. Looking at the curves, for both Texas and Florida, the primary wave last summer started in early June and peaked in mid-July, amazing how similar the curves are. So again, I would watch those two heavily populated states as we get to early June and see if there is any case bump. Both have done a pretty good job with vaccinations and should have a high percent of all adults fully vaccinated by that time.
A ton of vaccine research being done, so I suspect research summaries will be heavy on that the next few weeks.
Look, vaccines work, don’t fall for anything that suggests otherwise. Here is a study in the US on the mRNA vaccines. (Medrxiv Paper) People who were fully vaccinated were over 95% protected against death and hospitalization, and even one dose conferred some protection.
This is a matched case control study from England. (Medrxiv Paper) Emergency hospitalizations were 51% lower and cases 55% lower among the vaccinated group who were at least 21 days past their first dose, and over 70% lower after over 30 days when most of the vaccinated group had received a second dose.
The vaccines work, and research is beginning to detail exactly how in the real world. The vaccines prompt helper T cell responses most quickly, followed by killer T cell ones. As have other studies, this one indicates that in people who were infected the response after one dose is similar to the response after two doses in people who hadn’t been infected. (Medrxiv Paper)
This Kaiser Foundation report shows nationally what we have been reporting here in Minnesota; the number and proportion of LTC deaths has declined dramatically. This is the most vaccinated and most fully vaccinated group in the country and even though their adaptive immunity tends to be weaker, the vaccines are showing a strong effect. (KFF Analysis)
And this study also occurred in nursing home residents and examined the development of the adaptive immune response following vaccination in those persons. (Medrxiv Paper) The researchers compared the response in this quite old group to that in a younger cohort. The nursing home residents generated a strong T cell response, particularly in those with prior infection, but it was weaker than that in the younger group.
This analysis in California examined whether the vaccines appeared to be effective in preventing infection by variants. (Medrxiv Paper) The study was conducted among partially and fully vaccinated health care workers. Very few so-called breakthrough infections occurred after full vaccination impact had occurred. And there did not appear to be any greater presence of variant infection than in the community.
Any time you give something to tens of millions of people you are going to see side effects. According to this paper, people who had a prior CV-19 infection, especially if they were the mythical long-haulers, were more likely to experience side-effects from vaccination. (Medrxiv Paper)
All the action in CV-19 infection occurs initially in the upper respiratory tract. There are immune system cells there and this research looked at the impact of having an infection on the adaptive immune response in nasal passages. (Medrxiv Paper) The study was conducted among hospitalized patients and found both acute phase immune cell reactions, but also long-term responses in the form of memory T cells and other components.
I could probably write summaries on research like this for at least the next five years, because the bad effects of the lockdowns on people’s health will continue for that long or more. This paper details the stark rise in overdose deaths during the epidemic, which continues to this day. Delayed or disrupted treatment of known users and stress and isolation encouraging abuse by others, all contribute to this problem. This is on the governors and public health experts, not the virus. (JAMA Article)
Argentina had one of the longest and strictest lockdowns in the world and it took a tool on mental health in the country, according to this paper. (Medrxiv Paper) Lot of good it did them too, they have the same per capita death toll as no-strict lockdown Sweden.
The Healthy Skeptic is a website about the health care system, and is written by Kevin Roche, who has many years of experience working in the health industry. Mr. Roche is available to assist health care companies through consulting arrangements through Roche Consulting, LLC and may be reached at 
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HI Kevin…
“Look, vaccines work, don’t fall for anything that suggests otherwise.” Yes. They DO work for what they are intended for and that is to reduce the risk of death/hospitalization when transmitted. And there is little to no efficacy research (yet) on transmissiblity with vaccine. I was happy with that as I think everyone was until the scary variant conversation came up and I realized that although the vaccines are working, you yourself suggested that suppression leads to pushing the virus to find other ways around obstacles.
This concept is laid out in this you tube video. Bret Weinstein is an old style liberal asking many questions about the lab leak hypothesis and his evolutionary biology background leads him in a slightly different directions when looking at vaccines.
Its worth your comment:
What I and family members have noticed is that the more progressive people are, the more fearful they seem, and the more likely to rely on authorities rather than their own judgment.
The progressive movement was founded on the concept that the world should be governed by “experts,” rather than by citizens and their elected representatives. So it is logical that today’s progressives put their faith in experts. Unfortunately, “experts” are often disastrously wrong, and they make pronouncements that are outside their narrow expertise and competence.
‘And there is little to no efficacy research (yet) on transmissibility with vaccine. I was happy with that as I think everyone was until the scary variant conversation came up’
Covid19 is not some sort of new unknown type of pathogen. It is a air-borne respiratory virus and will behave as other air-borne respiratory viruses do. It is essentially a variant of SARS1. It drives me nuts that we are constantly require experimental evidence for viral behaviors which are common to all respiratory viruses or all coronaviruses. Seasonal? Of course, it’s seasonal. Can you conceive of a respiratory virus which isn’t seasonal? By their nature they have to be seasonal. (they are spread when people are close together, people are closer together in the winter, our immune systems are not as active in the winter, they are broken down by UV light, etc.)
The virus is not going to magically and quickly mutate to something which can substantially evade immunity from prior infection or the vaccines. Evolution doesn’t work that way. Viruses do not work that way. I don’t know of any examples in history and if that was the case smallpox would have finished us off as a species. This is especially the case for vaccines made to the spike protein. Think about what the virus has to do. It has to (somehow) mutate so that it cannot bind the antibodies made from the vaccine but still (somehow) bind the human receptor. That’s no easy task which will be done gradually over many months, probably years, if at all. There are already hundreds of known variants of Covid19.
The worst case scenario is that the efficacy of the vaccines may gradually decrease. Variants of Covid19 were known by May 2020 (perhaps earlier) but were rarely discussed until recently. There is a reason for that and it has nothing to do with the science.
WRT to transmissibility, if the vaccines lower viral load and reduce severity of the disease, then it stands to reason that they also must substantially reduce the chance of the virus being transmitted. How could it be otherwise? Again, that’s the way viruses work. This is confirmed by almost a hundred years of virus research. As an analogy, if I throw a ball up in the air, I don’t need to wait around to find out if it is going to come back down. It has to obey the laws of physics just as a virus must obey the laws of biology.
From what I can find in the history of virology literature, viruses are ‘smart’ in the sense that they evolve based on their own odds of survival. Therefore, variants will become more transmissive and less lethal as/if they occur. If it were the other way around, they wouldn’t survive, which is their evolutionally goal. It’s par for the course at this point to have the talking heads repeating each other and parroting gloom and doom as their control slips away. Are ‘leaders’ are all ‘followers’. Useless ass tits on a bull as my grandfather used to say !
A short trip to Charleston this weekend, where the gov ditched all mask mandates and was quoted as saying “it’s time for adults’ to think for themselves”. Unfortunately, CA type results. 95% of the people are wandering around with masks on just like it’s April 2020. So, 2 options here; a) they don’t read the news papers, or b) as Kevin mentioned above, 95% are idiots. I’m going with ‘b’.
Last ditty on masks, I grabbed a box of the blue ‘medical’ style masks off the conference table at work and read the end panel, since there have been edited versions floating around. I can swear to the fact that the box clearly says they provide ‘Bacteria’ protection. So, bacteria are .3 to 60 microns and viruses are .006 to .3 (according to several technical references). Further validating the ‘idiot’ theory above, despite the hundreds upon hundreds of charts and graphs now available for all idiots to find.
Lastly, I had the opportunity to listen to a variety of talk radio on the long drives to and from Charleston. At this point, everyone, including all of us on this blog, are sufficiently aware of the fact that we’ve all been bamboozled by the government. I don’t see (hear) anyone providing direction on what’s required to untangle this mess. Why aren’t these outlets bombing us with voter info on who’s coming up for re-election and the timing of the processes in their respective states. I’m ranting, but we don’t need more statements of the obvious, we need solutions and an organized dismemberment of the leftist machine at the state and local levels at every opportunity.
Worldmeters has the US ‘case’ count at 33 million. As per other posts, that’s made up of millions of false positives. So lets be generous and say that the number of unknown infections is equal to the number of false positives. That puts spread at roughly 10% of the population. I wouldn’t call this too much of an ‘invasion’ that you can’t make safe progress with a vaccine as per the video’s concern. Interesting discussion none the less, gives you some perspective on how others think.
Did ya’ll see the uprising in the UK yesterday?? People “just aren’t going to take it anymore!” About half a million fed up people and the BBC was nowhere to be found. Actually, none of the MSM covered it. Good Lord, the media bias is everywhere. It needs to stop, but how as J. Thomas asks….?
How indeed.