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Coronamonomania Lives Forever, Part 104

By February 12, 2022Commentary

DOH processing continues to be bizarre at best, with reports now of a death in December 2020 and in January 2021.  I simply am baffled as to how you attribute a death from that long ago to CV-19 now.  DOH has received hundreds of millions of dollars in additional funding and can’t process events in a timely manner.

If you look at the table of cases by specimen collection date and do a week-over-week look, starting about a week ago, you can see how rapidly cases are declining.  Hospitals are falling as well.  Still a lot of deaths, mostly in the elderly and increasingly in nursing home residents.  Vaccines and boosters, just as with the flu vaccines, are not a lot of help to the frail elderly after a few months.

Some kind of serious slip-up occurred at the politicized CDC, or they are creating “the science changed” for vax mandates just like for mask mandates.  I don’t how else to explain CDC publishing this study, which shows that not only does protection against infection lessen from 2 doses of the vaccine but it does from boosters as well.  In fact, in regard to Omicron, over time effectiveness against an ER visit or hospitalization also lessened by a modest amount.  57% of all hosps were in the vaxed.  Once more, no assessment of prior infections’ role.  (CDC Study)

And another CDC-published paper validates a fundamental flaw of PCR testing–it frequently fails to distinguish between viable virus and fragments.  (CDC Study)

But in a more typical CDC move, about a month ago they published an article claiming that CV-19 might be associated with Type 1 diabetes.  Completely debunked by this much more thorough study from Scotland.  (Diabetes Study)

According to our criminal teachers’ unions it was really important to close schools, although there continues to be no evidence that this makes the slightest bit of difference to spread and it likely increases risk to children.  This paper from Brazil finds that reopening schools had zero impact on transmission.  (JAMA Paper)

There are pockets of sanity in the medical community.  This article argued that prior infected health care workers should not be subjected to vax mandates, since their adaptive immunity was likely to be as good as that from vax.  (Lancet Article)

And another piece of research that validates the effectiveness of prior infection against reinfection comes from this paper looking at Canadian health care workers.  Reinfection was extremely rare, only 3 per 100 person years.  Detectable antibody responses lasted well over a year in those with a symptomatic infection, for a somewhat shorter time period in those who were asymptomatic.  (Medrxiv Paper)

According to this study, two doses of mRNA vaccine was very effective against hospitalization with both the Delta and Alpha variants, falling slightly in regard to Omicron, with three doses being more effective in all cases.  Vaccinated persons had less severe hosps than did unvaxed ones.  While this purports to be a case control study, the matching does not appear rigorous.  No assessment of effect of length of time from last vax dose was included, which is pathetic in a supposedly prestigious research network, nor was the role of prior infection assessed.  A piss-poor piece of research which you have to suspect was slanted to maximize the use as support for vaccines. (Medrxiv Paper)

Nursing home residents remain at elevated risk from CV-19.  This research found that having a prior infection led to far greater neutralizing antibody activity when subsequently vaxed than occurred in residents without a prior infection.  A third dose helped those without prior infection, but we know now that that 3rd dose loses effectiveness as well.  (Medrxiv Paper)

England has had an ongoing prospective surveillance of the population for CV-19.  While the test group is randomly selected, who actually sends a swab in probably isn’t.  The results are interesting nonetheless.  The latest round of about 100,000 samples occurred during the rise of Omicron, although most positives appeared to still be Delta.  England is heavily vaxed, and there was a suggestion that vaccination did limit infection risk, at least in adolescents and in boosted adults but it was unclear whether this was true in regard to Omicron.  Total prevalence was 1.4%.  More will be learned from the next round.  (UK Study)

How does the severity of disease compare in vaxed and unvaxed persons with Delta infections?  That question was addressed in this study.  Hospitalized vaxed patients were older, more likely to be male and had more comorbidities.  Only 59% were admitted for CV-19 treatment, compared to 75% for the unvaxed group.  Let that sink in for a minute.  40% of vaxed hosps and 25% of unvaxed were incidental.  The protective effective against hosp lessened somewhat after a few months.  Mentioned only in passing was that a prior infection appeared as protective as vax.  And note that more of the vaxed group had a prior infection than the unvaxed group, so it is likely that some of their apparent lower risk was due to the prior infection.  (Medrxiv Paper)

And this large study from the UK found that in Omicron as compared to Delta infections, there tended to be a different mix of symptoms, the period of symptoms was shorter and there was a substantially lower risk of hospitalization.  (SSRN Paper)

This research from Germany finds that children tend to have long-term antibody responses to CV-19 infection.  (Medrxiv Paper)

This small study suggests that while prior infection or 2 dose vax has limited effectiveness in preventing a subsequent Omicron infection, both 3 dose vax, and the combination of vax and prior infection are protective.  I am betting that the booster, as research already shows, will lose effectiveness against Omicron to a greater degree than will prior infection.  (Medrxiv Paper)

 

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  • Stacey Atneosen says:

    Can you tell me why today’s Star Tribune Front Page is suggesting a 4th shot??? Aside from the obvious fact they do NOT follow the science.

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