Sen. Warren and two other Democratic lawmakers tests positive for Covid-19 - all fully vaccinated with boosters

Eric

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This thing is everywhere, it's sounds more and more like exposure means there's a good chance you'll get it, regardless of vaccine status. :(

(CNN)Three Democratic members of Congress announced Sunday that they have breakthrough coronavirus infections.
Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Cory Booker of New Jersey as well as Rep. Jason Crow of Colorado shared that they had tested positive for Covid-19 via tweets from their official accounts.
They all reported having received Covid-19 booster shots and experiencing mild symptoms.

 

Edd

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My wife and I have never had COVID symptoms or tested positive. At this point I hope we’ve had it and not noticed, for whatever protection natural immunity provides.
 

fooferdoggie

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My wife and I have never had COVID symptoms or tested positive. At this point I hope we’ve had it and not noticed, for whatever protection natural immunity provides.
you only get immunity from covid by catching covid or getting the vaccine. even then it might not work.
 

Roller

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Are you saying an asymptotic case of COVID leaves no immunity?
Being infected with COVID confers some immunity, whether or not you are symptomatic. But vaccination in addition to prior infection provides far more protection. If you've never been vaccinated, you could have a test to measure whether you were previously infected, but you'd be taking a risk by just relying on so-called natural immunity alone. BTW, that is a horrible term. All vaccine-induced immunity is natural — the vaccine just presents your immune system with the same antigen as the virus does to elicit an immune response.
 

Thomas Veil

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This thing is everywhere, it's sounds more and more like exposure means there's a good chance you'll get it, regardless of vaccine status. :(
They are now saying, in so many words, you WILL get it.


“To be clear - you will get COVID. If you can hear my voice right now, you will get COVID.” It’s a stark warning from Dr. Amy Edwards, pediatric infectious disease doctor at UH Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital.
“Understand that even if you’ve done everything right throughout the pandemic, and as frustrating as this may seem, you likely will be infected at some point and that’s just something we all have to come to terms with,” said Dr. Iahn Gonsenhauser, chief quality and patient safety officer at Ohio State University, Wexner Medical Center.
Now it’s just a matter of how bad it will be. Spoiler alert: if you’re not vaxxed, you are in deep waters.

“Because omicron is so contagious and I imagine we have more contagious variants in our future, everybody is going to get COVID at some point. Let’s just be very clear about that.” Edwards said. “We are no longer talking about absolute protection from disease, we have now moved into this world where the question is, ‘when you get COVID, how is it going to be?’ Are you going to have mild disease fully protected by the vaccine that you almost don’t even notice it? Or are you going to come visit me in the hospital?”
 

Edd

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Being infected with COVID confers some immunity, whether or not you are symptomatic. But vaccination in addition to prior infection provides far more protection. If you've never been vaccinated, you could have a test to measure whether you were previously infected, but you'd be taking a risk by just relying on so-called natural immunity alone. BTW, that is a horrible term. All vaccine-induced immunity is natural — the vaccine just presents your immune system with the same antigen as the virus does to elicit an immune response.
Indeed that’s what I thought and have been saying I appreciate everyone confirming this.
 

fischersd

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So, we now see the actual protection from the vaccines (for not contracting the virus, not for protection against severe symptoms) is dropping off after about 3 months.

..and that Omicron has a significantly different spike protein than the others suggests our immune systems may not recognize it as the threat that we've been vaccinated against.

It's looking like the booster may be a "Hail Mary" / Wish and a Prayer - hopefully it buys us some protection - but it's beginning to look like we need a new vaccination solution. :(
 
U

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So, we now see the actual protection from the vaccines (for not contracting the virus, not for protection against severe symptoms) is dropping off after about 3 months.
To be clear the original phase III studies covered 4 months. So the original efficacy data came from a 4 month period.
..and that Omicron has a significantly different spike protein than the others suggests our immune systems may not recognize it as the threat that we've been vaccinated against.

It's looking like the booster may be a "Hail Mary" / Wish and a Prayer - hopefully it buys us some protection - but it's beginning to look like we need a new vaccination solution. :(
Based on preliminary data there is clear crosstalk, so the current nth vaccine doses seem to work, just not last that long. There's a significant difference between the two. And as the data is maturing and the patterns become clearer, you can see we have +200K new cases in the USA for the past week, yet we still don't see the uptick in deaths which are around 1.2K/day. To compare, last year when we had similar numbers in new cases, we had ~3x more daily deaths. I suspect what's going on is as Omicron is taking over Delta, I suspect the deaths are still driven by the Delta cases, and the role of vaccines of keeping the mortality rates relatively low should not be underestimated. Especially, if my hypothesis of Delta still driving deaths is correct.
 

fischersd

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To be clear the original phase III studies covered 4 months. So the original efficacy data came from a 4 month period.



Based on preliminary data there is clear crosstalk, so the current nth vaccine doses seem to work, just not last that long. There's a significant difference between the two. And as the data is maturing and the patterns become clearer, you can see we have +200K new cases in the USA for the past week, yet we still don't see the uptick in deaths which are around 1.2K/day. To compare, last year when we had similar numbers in new cases, we had ~3x more daily deaths. I suspect what's going on is as Omicron is taking over Delta, I suspect the deaths are still driven by the Delta cases, and the role of vaccines of keeping the mortality rates relatively low should not be underestimated. Especially, if my hypothesis of Delta still driving deaths is correct.
Sorry, but you're off by an order of magnitude on the US daily case count. (if you're trying to find the data on the CDC site, I get it - their UI is awful!)

The NY Times has a pretty navigable site: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html

DAILY case count in the US as of Dec 30 was 344,543.

There have been deaths due to Omicron. If you read what I wrote, the vaccines DO help prevent severe symptoms - so we should definitely see lower rates of hospitalizations, deaths and long-covid. BUT - that's rates we're talking about. The variant is at least 4x more transmissible than Delta and has quickly become the dominant strain in every country it's landed in.

Here in BC, we're lucky to enjoy very high vaccination rates - and we've seen the number of people being hospitalized and put in ICU inch up very slowly, but the daily case counts have gone through the roof! The testing centres are actually overwhelmed, so we know the daily numbers are much higher than reported. (People are also being told that if they don't actually NEED a test to stay home and self-isolate for 7-10 days).
 
U

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Sorry, but you're off by an order of magnitude on the US daily case count. (if you're trying to find the data on the CDC site, I get it - their UI is awful!)

The NY Times has a pretty navigable site: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html

DAILY case count in the US as of Dec 30 was 344,543.
You should also read again what I wrote. (FYI, order of magnitude means something else).

And as the data is maturing and the patterns become clearer, you can see we have +200K new cases in the USA for the past week, yet we still don't see the uptick in deaths which are around 1.2K/day.
I used +200K referring to last week specifically to compensate for delay of 10-14 days that deaths follow cases and symptomatic case reporting delays. This approach has been pretty decent in detecting how bad the situation is with the previous waves even when cases were underestimated, and you have also noted the phenomenon:
the number of people being hospitalized and put in ICU inch up very slowly, but the daily case counts have gone through the roof! The testing centres are actually overwhelmed, so we know the daily numbers are much higher than reported. (People are also being told that if they don't actually NEED a test to stay home and self-isolate for 7-10 days).
1640961610973.png


If you look at past waves, you could always see rising deaths by this time of the spike of cases so the current situation is objectively different. We can argue that since we see hospitalizations going up (again at a much lower rate than with other waves) but not deaths, the mortality differential could be due to a number of factors:
Mortality reducing:
A) A new variant with lower mortality​
B) Better treatments​
C) Better immunity​
Mortality increasing:
D) Staffing shortage​
Reporting modifiers:
E) Delays in reporting deaths​
F) New variant with protracted course (i.e. delayed death)​
G) Multiple variants with highly different prevalence and mortality rates (e.g. a concurrent Delta outbreak)​

This is where the present data is way immature and laggy to make a comment, but again I try to account for reporting modifiers by looking at cases 7-14 days before deaths. I could make an analysis to factor all of these in, but I don't get paid for it, and all of these variables get into place without me using a lot of my time, so why bother.

There have been deaths due to Omicron. If you read what I wrote, the vaccines DO help prevent severe symptoms - so we should definitely see lower rates of hospitalizations, deaths and long-covid.
Yes, reading your post the third time, I did miss the statement in parentheses on the symptoms, as my attention was grabbed away by your calling the 3rd doses "wish and prayer" and your call for a "new vaccination solution."

The new vaccination solution I can foresee in the near future is using predictive modeling to time the annual/semiannual booster dose. Vaccines just cannot be developed (safely) quicker than these variants develop. Probably we'll do what we do with the Flu: try to predict what's coming and rotate vaccines based on these predictions.

My trigger point here was that a method that reduces hospitalization risk is never a hail Mary.
 
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U

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I'll add some clarifications for those who hadn't seen my posts in the past 22 months:
1. COVID kills the most by overwhelming healthcare systems. It can literally decimate populations by depleting healthcare resources.
2. Wanna fight the wave? Upgrade your mask. Get the 3rd dose of vaccine. Avoid crowded places. Social distance. Keep your social bubble small and vaccinated. Work from home if you can.

My frustration is that we are 2-years deep into the pandemic, but we still have people who can't wear masks properly, or pretend there's no pandemic. Like my 20-some year old neighbors having a (maskless) NYE party. It's like climate change, it won't do much if only half of people take it seriously. But at this point, I just don't know what to say.
 
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