Coronamonomania Lives Forever, Part 145

We have a new entrant and likely winner in the stupidest piece of research during the epidemic contest, although that is a contest with hundreds of participants.  These ding-dongs attempt to claim that if the US had just had a single-payer system tens of thousands of lives would have been saved during the epidemic.  There is no way to describe just how imbecilic this garbage is.  It is a model of course, so a great starting point.  The authors claim our system kept people from getting care they needed.  That is ridiculous.  Every bit of care in the epidemic was made available to anyone free of charge and providers were paid extra to treat CV-19, which ensured that they went overboard to drag in anyone they could possibly claim was infected.  This is completely made up conjecture, not research, full of outright lies and misinformation.  Can you imagine how bad our health care would have been during the epidemic if we had a single-payer system?  Oh wait, you don’t have to imagine, look at Canada, England, all of Europe.  No better outcomes than we had, and in some cases worse.   (PNAS Study)

To my point earlier this week about there being no population immunity in regard to CV-19 and everyone will be subject to repeated “reinfections” which are very mild, this paper from the UK notes that as many as 18% of recent Omicron cases in the country were reinfections and postulates that we will continue to see cases, most of which eventually will be reinfections.  (Medrxiv Paper)

Another piece of flawed research regarding vaccine effectiveness against hospitalization.  The effect of a booster was compared to just the two-dose vaccine series.  Prior infection status was not considered.  Boosters provided greater protection against hospitalization, as you would expect, but the passage of time lessened that effectiveness, beginning as early as 4 months post-booster.  Importantly, the analysis was limited to patients actually hospitalized to treat CV-19, which is an admission that the number of hosps attributed to CV-19 has been hyped up.    (Medrxiv Paper)

Canada is experiencing the same lessening of vaccine effectiveness that the US is, which makes sense, and they do the same things to try to hide it.  But good analysts can figure out the truth.  The country generally trys to talk about vaccine effectiveness throughout the whole epidemic and not talk about recent weeks.  But this article lays out the data showing that as in Minnesota, Canada now has an epidemic among the vaxed.  (Canada Article)

Turns out the Pfizer’s new wonder antiviral drug, Paxlovid, isn’t so great at treating CV-19 disease, in fact it is generally pretty worthless.  This is why I am so skeptical of all these claims about therapeutics, and yep, that includes invermectine, hydrochloroquinine, vitamin C and all the other supposed miracle cures.  Well-designed research usually gets at the truth.  (Pfizer Trial)

This study from Spain suggests that Omicron has a secondary attack rate about 50% higher than that of Delta, and has a reduced incubation period and reduced time between infection and transmission.  Many instances of transmission occurred before the transmitter was symptomatic.  (EID Article)

This research from a region in Italy is the latest to explore the relative role of vaccination or prior infection in preventing subsequent infection.  As is usually the case, a combination of vax and prior infection appeared to offer the greatest protection.  One limitation, however, is that only people with a documented prior infection fell into that category, thereby missing those who may have been infected but never had a positive test.  Before Omicron, a prior infection and being vaxed and boosted gave identical protection from a subsequent infection.   A combination offered slightly greater protection.  In the Omicron era, protection dropped substantially for a prior infection and less so for being boosted, while the combination was somewhat better.  I am dubious about the finding in regard to prior infections and suspect many prior infection were not accounted for in the vaxed and boosted groups.     (SSRN Article)