Coronamonomania Lives Forever, Part 164

The only clearly confirmed serious, even somewhat widespread, vax safety risk is heart inflammation, partiularly among young males.  This study being pimped by the vax safety alarmists, as usual, has multiple flaws.  First, once more we see the exclusive use of self-reported, although in some cases by a provider as well as the patient, survey data, which no researcher takes as anything meaningful much less conclusive.  It is subject to recall bias, to focus bias, to selection bias in who responds, etc.  Note first that 81% of these patients were considered fully recovered at the time of the survey by their clinician.  Note also that the quality of life responses were identical to those obtained in pre-epidemic surveys.  There were very few lingering issues in this study group.  But that won’t stop the conspiracy theorists.  (Lancet Study)

A study from China on household transmission from children during Omicron indicates that the incubation period is about 5 days, which is long, that the time from a person being infected and infecting another person is about 4 days, and that the transmission rate in a household was around 80%, largely asymptomatic and presymptomatic transmission.  Vaccination, including a booster, had very low effectiveness in preventing infection.  (Medrxiv Paper)

Part of the apparent effectiveness of vaccines may be an illusion created by a “healthy vaccinee” bias, in other words, people who are generally healthier and better about getting any appropriate health care may be more likely to get vaccinated and less likely to get infected and have serious disease even if not vaxed.  This study validates that concern showing that an apparent association between getting a flu vaccine and reduced risk of CV-19 infection is due to that healthy vaccinee bias.  (JAMA Paper)

This very large study comes from North Carolina and suggests that the vax and a prior infection are each independently associated with a lower risk of serious outcomes from CV-19 infection, but protection lessens over time.  Performance against Omicron was worse.  Big flaw in study is no ability to capture home testing results, which dramatically exploded during a lengthy part of the study period.  Although the authors’ minimize it, a prior infection was clearly more protective than vax, and not identifying vaxed persons with infections found through home-testing, may make vax seem more protective than it is and infection less protective.  (JAMA Study)

Small study from Washington examined duration of symptoms and infectiousness during Omicron.  People remained positive by testing for around 10 to 12 days, although PCR tests would be positive for longer and were not associated with accuracy in determining infectiousness by viral culture.  Testing for the nucleocapsid antigen was the most effective method of identifying possible viral culture positivity.  (Medrxiv Paper)

This study suggested that the likelihood of extended CV-19 symptoms was highest during the original strain predominance, and was very reduced during Omicron.  Both vax and prior infection seemed to limit the likelihood of long CV-19 symptoms.  (Medrxiv Paper)

And this study indicates that those persons with long CV-19 symptoms may have a different immune response to infection, one that is an over-reaction likely prompted by cross-reactivity due to prior seasonal CV infection.  (Medrxiv Paper)

Not only being overweight, but being underweight, is associated with a higher risk of CV-19 infection and serious disease.  (Lancet Study)