Coronamonomania Lives Forever, Part 151

There are a lot of cases around the world, mostly multiple Omicron variants, generally very mild, and by and large the authorities appear to have learned their lesson and are avoiding the past futile efforts to stop spread.   This is going to go on pretty much forever.  This coronavirus strain is not going away.  We are adapting to it and it is adapting to us pretty well.  If we would stop treating every hospitalization in which someone happens to have or to have had CV-19 as a hospitalization for CV-19 treatment and every death in which someone happened to have CV-19 at some point as a CV-19 death, the toll from the virus would be quite small, less than a typical influenza season.  But we do still have dunces who can’t let go, who need this virus to define their lives and give meaning to it, which is simply pathetic.

The AMA and the Journal of the American Medical Association have gone full ideological woke and no longer do science.  They also get paid off by drug companies.  You can’t trust a thing you read there.  Here is how pathetic their editing is.  This article deals with excess deaths in Massachusetts.  They in essence treat them all as though caused by CV-19.  Note the vast majority are in the elderly.  There is a table that supposedly compares all excess deaths with deaths said to have been caused by CV-19, but there is no column for CV-19 deaths.  I think the JAMA editors, now selected solely on the basis of race and gender and sexual orientation, can’t read or do math.  And really, looking at excess deaths in total tells you nothing.  The analysis has to be done by cause and ideally by location of death as well.  Truly pathetic.  (JAMA Article)

And another outstanding (sarcasm) study published in JAMA deals with the comparative rate of significant adverse events in veterans vaxed with Pfizer versus Moderna.  Pfizer had more adverse events, but there is no control group to help us understand whether these adverse events were occurring at a higher rate than the background rate pre-epidemic.  This would have been an extremely easy analysis to perform, but they didn’t do it.  Why?  (JAMA Article)

Iceland has a very small population and so can test and trace and track cases pretty well.  It looked at all cases in children during the epidemic and found exactly zero serious cases, no hospitalizations and generally very mild infections.  Oh, and 65% of transmissions occurred in the home and only a small number in school.  (Iceland Study)

I yammer a lot about the issue of incidental hospitalizations.  This research letter from California found that 67% of hospitalizations reported as being for CV-19 were incidental, that is they were not for treatment of CV-19.  The majority of these were in people with prior infections or who had been vaccinated.  (JID Letter)

And while this is a small study from the US, it is fairly detailed and very clearly illustrates the failure of the vaccines to prevent either infection or transmission.  This was another intensive household tracing study which regularly tested infected persons and their household contacts.  There were 42 cases and 74 household contacts.  45% of contacts became infected.  16% of those were completely asymptomatic.  80% of transmission occurred within five days.  From the unvaccinated cases, the rates of infection were essentially identical in vaxed and unvaxed contacts.  From the vaxed cases, the rates of infection were essentially identical in vaxed and unvaxed contacts.  Draw your own conclusions.  (JID Study)

Two studies from Qatar continue the country’s excellent research on the effectiveness of vaccines and prior infections.  In the first the impact on infectiousness was studied.  Using cycle numbers as a proxy for infectiousness, Delta appeared more infectious than other variants.  Viral load increased with age. Children under the age of 10 had particularly low viral loads.  People with a prior infection had lower viral loads in a subsequent infection, and that difference did not significantly change over time.  They also had lower viral loads than those who were vaxed.  People who were vaxed with also had lower viral loads than the unvaxed, but that difference did lessen over time.  (Medrxiv Paper)

And the second Qatar study similarly focussed on the effect of a prior infection.  For persons infected before Omicron, effectiveness against a second non-Omicron infection was over 90% but lessened slowly over time.  Those with a prior non-Omicron infection had limited initial protection against Omicron, only a 40% reduction in risk, and that also faded.  In all cases, however, a prior infection offered strong and durable, 95% or more, protection against serious disease.  (Medrxiv Paper)

This meta-analysis of data on the effectiveness of the vax against infection over time finds a rapid waning both from the primary series and boosters, with the speed of the decline even greater in regard to Omicron compared to prior variants.  (Medrxiv Study)

This study found that antigen-based home tests actually did a pretty good job of identifying someone who is actually infected or infectious compared with viral culture, picking up 84% of true infections.  The home tests tended to become more accurate in picking up true positives a couple of days after the start of the infection.  Oh, and PCR tests call a person positive long, long after they are no longer infected or infectious.  (JAMA Article)