Coronamonomania Lives Forever, Part 131

On and on and on we go.

This review of studies on children’s mental health during the epidemic finds what is now common knowledge–we did terrible things to their lives.  Really disgraceful and our leaders, like the former teacher, now Incompetent Blowhard leader of Walz Ditzy World, also known as Minnesota, are completely to blame and didn’t give two craps about children.  Especially when they were gettting millions of dollars in contributions from teachers.  (Medrxiv Study)

There have been a lot of studies on the trend in deaths in the US during the epidemic.  Many are badly done, but nothing approaches the dreadful idiocy of this study.  These authors literally think that that every “excess” death must be attributable to CV-19, notwithstanding the fact that in a number of separate categories, overdoses being a most notable one, there has been a sharp rise.  The truth, which many people just don’t want to hear, is that deaths are over-attributed to CV-19, not under-attributed, and that many of the excess deaths are due to missed health care and other factors which stem from the lockdowns and terror campaign run by our so-called leaders.  Far better studies, most notably one published a few weeks ago by NBER, have clearly shown that many of the excess deaths have nothing to do with CV-19.  (Medrxiv Paper)

Must be a day for bad study methodology.  This paper attempts to suggest that reduced vaccine effectiveness is an illusion caused by the fact that maybe vaxed people have more contacts.  As usual, you can only justify this level of dumbness by using a model.  Every piece of research now shows that vaccine effectiveness is low because the adaptive immunity the vaccines produces essentially goes away within a year in regard to infections.  It has nothing to do with changes in behavior.  (Medrxiv Paper)

And here is an example of research that tells you what is blindingly obvious by common sense.  People with serious comorbidities who are vaxed are more likely than those without comorbidities to experience a breakthrough infection and to have serious CV-19 disease as a result.  Duuh.  What this is really telling us unfortunately is that the vaccines work least well for those who need them the most.  (Medrxiv Paper)

If you assume that cycle numbers from a PCR test are an accurate indicator of viral load, then this study looks at what factors correlate with a lower viral load over the course of an infection.  As you would hope, vaccination appears linked with lower loads, although this finding is contradicted by other research.  Remdesivir also appeared to have an impact on viral load level.  (SSRN Paper)

This study shows just how weak the protection against Omicron infection is even from a relatively recent vaccination.  It also shows that Omicron has a far lower risk of serious disease, but that the vax lose effectiveness even against serious disease over time, as does adaptive immunity from a prior infection.  The reality is that this virus is just going to be out there infecting people constantly, largely with minor symptoms, just like a number of other respiratory viruses.  (JID Article)