Coronamonomania Lives Forever, Part 74

Nothing like two sets of research summaries in a day!!

And here is my brilliant insight for the afternoon.  Talking about Moronic cases is like having a headline saying “one million Americans have a cold.”

I don’t like it when people who purport to want a more rational response to the epidemic are as misleading about research or data as those trying to force lockdowns, masking, etc.  So the way this study is being portrayed is very misleading–it does not say you are more likely to get infected by Moronic if you are vaxed.  The study was done in Denmark and was nominally an effort to assess relative vaccine effectiveness against Delta and Moronic.  But here is something you absolutely have to keep in mind and that should be adjusted for–people were vaccinated far closer in time to subsequent exposure to Delta than to Moronic.  So vaccine waning, if not properly accounted for, and that is hard to do, is a major confounder.  This study made some effort to account for that, but probably can’t do so fully because of the high levels of vax in the population at the time of Moronic introduction.  In addition, we see the usual failure to identify those with prior infections, which can affect level of protection.  What the paper actually shows that as with Delta, the vaccines are initially quite effective against Moronic, with the usual lessening over time, and at all times have a lower effectiveness, but a booster restores effectiveness to some extent.   The study is further limited by small numbers.  And the authors specifically address the estimate of negative effectiveness in the last period as a likely artefact of the design.  But all you vaccine haters go right ahead and misrepresent the results.  (Medrxiv Paper)

An article in the Telegraph claims that a very high percent, as much as 70%, of hospitalizations attributed to CV-19 in England are actually admissions for another purpose and the patient has an incidental positive.  While I doubt it is that high, it like is a significant percent and many of those actually acquired CV-19 while in the hospital.  (ZH Article)

CV-19 generally enters through the upper respiratory tract, so what happens from an immune response perspective is important.  This study tracked the response both during acute CV-19 infection and following resolution.  Following infection there remained a population of T cells in the mucosal tissue which would serve as sentinels to detect attempted re-infection.  I am doubtful the same happens with vaccination, which may explain why reinfection rates are lower than breakthru rates.  (Nature Article)

Here is a study from Scotland on vaccine effectiveness against Moronic.  The vaccine appeared to either be pretty effective, or the Moronic variant is less likely to cause serious disease. There was about a two-thirds reduction in the likelihood of hospitalization versus that existing with Delta.  A booster dose appeared to further bolster protection.  Note that this is a better design than the Danish paper and avoids use of extremely small numbers of unvaxed persons for comparisons.  There were too few deaths to even make an accurate estimate of vax effectiveness in that regard.  I suspect that effectiveness is likely understated because of the mild nature of Moronic infections, which may lead to a lower detection of total infections.  And finally, it appears that prior infection was highly protective against subsequent infection, even in regard to Moronic.  (Scotland Paper)

This study claims that blood from people who had a prior infection is far less likely to neutralize Moronic than prior strains.  I am quite dubious, since this merely tests circulating antibodies.  (Medrxiv Paper)

And this paper looked at whether B memory cells (B cells are largely responsible for antibody production) sparked by mRNA vaccination will work against Moronic.  Although there is a large degree of evasion, there still is a significant level of action against Moronic.  (Medrxiv Paper)

Just a reminder of a seminal paper from a year ago summarizing research showing that high cycle numbers in PCR tests were rarely associated with whole or viable virus.  (JID Paper)