At least in Minnesota, I am pretty sure we are actually having a case wave, but the way it is being handled is making it largely invisible, which is a good thing. In my extended family–kids, grandkids, spouses–6 people have tested positive in the last week and a half, and I hear similar stories from everyone I talk to. Only one of those people took an official PCR test, so only one of those 5 cases will show up in the numbers. All have mild symptoms at most. I keep saying this, and I don’t do it for effect, CV-19 has become the 5th seasonal coronavirus and it is going to be causing colds forever, and very rarely, more serious disease, just like the other coronaviruses do. The right way to handle it at this point is basically to ignore it and use common sense. Don’t test because you have cold symptoms. Keep kids out of school and stay home from work if they or you are really sick, but otherwise go on with life as normal. We all got colds before, they are actually good for us and our immune systems. That should be the official policy, but our public health ninnies are too stupid and too scared to tell the truth.
Here is a thread that shows how the CDC intentionally publishes misleading “research” to scare the public about the risk to unvaxed children. Note the perseverance of this physician who managed to get the truth out of the authors, which is that there actually is no difference in hospitalization rates of vaxed and unvaxed kids if you account for actual vaccination rates over time. Astounding that anyone at the CDC is surprised that people think they are untrustworthy charlatans. (Twitter thread)
This study comes from the Cleveland Clinic among its employees examining whether a booster for vaccinated but not previously infected or vaxed and prior infected persons helped protect against a subsequent Omicron infections. For people who had been vaccinated, having a booster lessened the risk of subsequent Omicron infection compared to those vaxed persons without a booster. But for those with a prior infection, a booster did not change the likelihood of a subsequent infection compared to unboosted persons. In general, the protective effect of both vaccination and a prior infection appeared to lessen over time. The authors conclude that prior infection provides a stronger protection that does vax alone, even in regard to Omicron. (JID Study)
Here is an official version of the preprint for the CDC paper on actual seroprevalence and official count to real number of infections ratios, by state. Apparently this will be published in Lancet. Note that the undercount is at least by a factor of two at all times. Since hosps and deaths are unlikely to be missed and in fact are over-attributed to CV-19, this means official case rates are also overstated by that much at all times. Remember how I have said that CV-19 is no worse than the flu, especially if we treated them the same in terms of testing and attribution. These numbers demonstrate that. Interestingly the Midwest has the highest prevalence, at over 60% of the entire population. Let us apply these numbers to Minnesota. We have 1452547 reported cases, as of Friday. 60% of our population of around 5.3 million people is about 3.2 million people. This is similar to if we assumed about there is one undetected case for every detected one. We have had 12,508 deaths attributed to CV-19, a large number of which actually had nothing to do with it. But that is an IFR of .39%, far lower than the assumptions used in the horrific modeling at the start of the epidemic; assumptions which were used to scare the crap out of the population. And for people under 30, the IFR is essentially zero. And if you take out long-term care deaths and long-term care residents out of the calculation, about 5700 deaths, the IFR among the general population is around .2%. (SSRN Paper)
This study on death attribution to CV-19 in England found wide variation in descriptions and a number of implausible or unlikely attributions to CV-19. It is completely accurate to say that the method used to ascribe deaths to CV-19 both in the US and England is unprecedented and almost certainly results in many deaths being attributed to the virus that had nothing to do with it. And at least in the US, the epidemic has revealed a lot of issues with general filling out of death certificates, with no consistency in who does it or how much attention they pay to what is put on the form. (Medrxiv Paper)
How do people with a prior infection do when exposed to Omicron, whether they are vaxed or unvaxed? According to this study from China, people who had a non-Omicron infection and were unvaxed had about a 44% overall reduction in re-infection risk, but that declined greatly over the study period, from around 60% a few months after the initial infection to under 30% after 6 months. The more severe the initial infection was, the greater the subsequent protection against Omicron infection. Being vaxed and having a prior infection was consistently associated with greater protection than just being vaxed. Protection lasted longer among vaxed and infected persons than vaxed alone. And boosters provided no additional protection to those who had a prior infection. These differences in protection were also observed in regard to hospitalizations. (Medrxiv Paper)
Households are the single largest location of CV-19 transmission. (So let’s do lock people in their houses.) This research collected findings from a number of studies on household transmission over time and found that the secondary attack rate was over 40% for Omicron, around 36% for Alpha and 30% for Delta. Makes you wonder about that notion that Delta was so much more contagious. And while the authors say the findings show that there was less transmission in vaccinated than unvaxed households, I don’t buy that in the Omicron period for sure, when vaccination rates were highest. Not plausible but the secondary attack rate would be so much higher and it all was among the unvaxed. (JAMA Article)
This study compared the results of rapid antigen tests, PCR tests and viral cultures during the course of an infection. RATs were slowest to pick up on an infection. But as we have seen with other studies, the rapid tests more closely tracked the cultures determination that a person actually had viable virus and were much better at determining the end of an infectious period. (JAMA Study)
Another piece of research that compared Omicron and Delta is found in Lancet. More of the Omicron infectees were vaxed compared to Delta ones. Omicron patients were far less likely to be hospitalized or die. There was no difference in viral loads or viral culture positivity, including when adjusting for vax status, in regard to Omicron. (Lancet Study)
My cat had covid for a few days last week, but now he’s all better.
Completely agree about testing. Tests should only be conducted for severe illnesses, and only if the results will impact the course of treatment or to rule out potential causes (E.g., extreme sore throat and strep tests). We know for CV-19 that testing was virtually never to prescribe a course of treatment, but rather used as a mechanism to continue the fear campaign – “cases”.
Mr. Roche,
Your point about getting sick periodically being good for our immune system has a parallel in economics: recessions can be good for a market-based economy. The aversion to economic recessions seems to have increased significantly during my lifetime. The overreaction to economic slowdowns can have unintended consequences for the economy. We are seeing that the overreaction to a virus also has unintended consequences—many of them negative.
Keep up the good work—sadly it’s as important as ever.
Cheers!
I’m sure the new ‘Dis-Info’ Czar will jump right on the bogus CDC reports …
Great info in this set … nice work !