The Reality of Living in Australia and Covid

[El Pinguino]

Originally Posted by RaymondR

Gee, leaders of countries get to fly around in airplanes who would have known.

It probably worked out cheaper without all the security vehicles and people making up the convoy required for a three hour car ride, particularly through western Sydney.

There's half a zillion executives flying all over the place in private jets these days and you want our national leader to stand on the steps hailing a cab to go to the bus station to catch a bus. Get real.

Paul Keeting(sic) once sent a 707 to Perth and back, to pick up a member of the house of representatives, who had gone back to his electorate for a birthday party without organizing a second, to ensure he had the number in a vote.

Another one for the 'Boys' Own Book of Whataboutism'.

[El Pinguino]

I see Jacinda has just bought a swag of Phizer from Spain so no hiccups in her big push into South Auckland.
And cases keeping falling day on day - only 13 today.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by El Pinguino

. . .

Risk to the left uf us, risk to the right, oh dear what to do.. . ..

At least bloody well distinguish between orders of magnitude of risk. The sheer innumeracy, not to mention irrationality, of the population is breathtaking. "My God, I have a risk from the vax [one in two million*]; I'm afraid! I guess I'm better off taking my chance with the virus [one in 2903 if you're under 50**]." Sheer irrational fear.



I have actually met a MATHEMATICIAN who couldn't figure this out, or rather didn't bother to think about it


*Cite for AZ risk: https://www.news.com.au/world/corona...a1d51c6facf304


** SWL post above

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by El Pinguino

I see Jacinda has just bought a swag of Phizer from Spain so no hiccups in her big push into South Auckland.
And cases keeping falling day on day - only 13 today.

Small dip in Australian death rate -- good:





Cases still following a mildly exponential curve (two week doubling rate):





64 per million today on a rolling 7 day average. That's a "yellow light" level of infection here (green is below 25 per million or in some countries the equivalent two week rate).

[El Pinguino]

Originally Posted by RaymondR

I'm un-baling.

Why would a minister of the federal government bother to talk to a big pharma company who does not yet have a product to sell. It is not a matter of arrogance it's that they have better things to do with their time than waste it listening to an hour of hard sell from someone selling vaporware.

This sort of thing gets shunted to the lowest executive in the organization and if there is anything to it and and their boss agrees they might get to mention it at the morning meeting.

Interesting interview on TV a few days ago wherein there was a discussion of why the Israelis are having such high case numbers when such a high proportion of the population is already fully immunized. Their is a suspicion that the vacine favored is not as effective and a third dose may be required.

They weren't ordered gin for the lodge.....

[Seaworthy Lass]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

At least bloody well distinguish between orders of magnitude of risk. The sheer innumeracy, not to mention irrationality, of the population is breathtaking…….

I agree that the short term risks of vaccination (blood clots and cardiac issues) are minuscule and absolutely negligible compared to all the other risks we face on a day to day basis. However, for the healthy young the risks of dying from vaccination are not dramatically less than dying from COVID-19. Long term risks we know nothing about (not to be dismissed lightly, no matter how unlikely you think this is).

I know you are skeptical, but plugging data into the University of Oxford’s risk calculator helps illustrate this.

Eg For a 19 year female, with no risk factors, the risk of dying from COVID-19 is 1 in 500,000, for a 30 year old it is 1 in 250,000.

https://qcovid.org/

From the link you gave the risk of dying from a COVID-19 vaccine is 0.5 per million. We are not discussing a degree of magnitude of difference here.

SWL

[Seaworthy Lass]

Plug in data for a 75 year old female, not overweight or in a nursing home etc, but with diabetes and heart problems. Nothing unusual at that age.

Compared to the healthy 19 year old, the risk of dying from COVID-19 changes from 1 in 500,000 to 1 in 489.

This calculator is a cold, clear way of looking at risk without the influence of media bias and politics.

SWL

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by Seaworthy Lass

... For a 19 year female, with no risk factors, the risk of dying from COVID-19 is 1 in 500,000, for a 30 year old it is 1 in 250,000.
https://qcovid.org/
From the link you gave the risk of dying from a COVID-19 vaccine is 0.5 per million. We are not discussing a degree of magnitude of difference here.
SWL

Not a conventional order of magnitude [10x], but, isn’t an increased risk of 4 times, still very significant?

[Seaworthy Lass]

Originally Posted by GordMay

Not a conventional order of magnitude [10x], but, isn’t an increased risk of 4 times, still very significant?

When the risk is so low, 4 x greater is still extremely low, but if there were no other risks associated with vaccination then this would be a sensible choice.

However, we know nothing about long term risk. Vaccinating a few thousand or even few hundred thousand young adults and children is one thing, but mass vaccinating the young worldwide when we know nothing about the long term risks of these vaccines is an unreasonable risk in my opinion. We have nothing to compare these vaccines to, as they use modes of action never before approved for human use.

SWL

[El Pinguino]

Originally Posted by Seaworthy Lass

Plug in data for a 75 year old female, not overweight or in a nursing home etc, but with diabetes and heart problems. Nothing unusual at that age.

Compared to the healthy 19 year old, the risk of dying from COVID-19 changes from 1 in 500,000 to 1 in 489.

This calculator is a cold, clear way of looking at risk without the influence of media bias and politics.

SWL

I'll give you the drum, if I was a 75 year old with the two conditions mentioned above and I lived in either metropolitan Melbourne or Sydney I would not be wittering on on CF and trying to change something that is not going to change in the near future.

I would be getting the first available vaccine.
Never mind 1 in 500,000 or 1 in 489 - the chances of contracting covid in either of those citys is 'pretty good' and having contracted it the chance of a 75 year unvaccinated person with two health problems dying is 'excellent'.

This is why 91.9% of 75 to 79 year olds across Australia have had at least one shot of Astra Zenica.

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by Seaworthy Lass

... However, we know nothing about long term risk.... mass vaccinating the young worldwide when we know nothing about the long term risks of these vaccines is an unreasonable risk in my opinion. We have nothing to compare these vaccines to, as they use modes of action never before approved for human use.
SWL

I think it may be a bit hyperbolic to say "we know nothing".

The fight against COVID-19 has seen vaccine development move at record speed, with more than 170 different vaccines entering trials.
There are four categories of vaccines in clinical trials: whole virus, protein subunit, viral vector and nucleic acid (RNA and DNA).
I [perhaps too boldly] presume you are referring to the nucleic acid [mRNA] vaccines [eg: Pfizer & Moderna].

According to Gavi [citing the WHO], 21vaccines are currently being offered to the general population, and 37 vaccines are undergoing safety tests in healthy young individuals,
➥ https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork?gc...iAAEgIED_D_BwE

Messenger RNA, or mRNA, is not new. Research on it actually began in the early 1990s, and two diseases that are very close to COVID, [SARS, and MERS], helped bring the mRNA vaccine development to present day use. They've been studied for use in flu, Zika, rabies and cytomegalovirus (CMV). Researchers have also used mRNA to trigger the immune system to target certain cancer cells.
These vaccines went through all the regulatory steps like any other vaccines. None of this was rushed.
An unprecedented number of mass vaccination efforts have been under way, worldwide. Globally, billions of doses of vaccine have been administered, and monitored, though not in children, since the first vaccines were approved.

[Seaworthy Lass]

Originally Posted by GordMay

I think it may be a bit hyperbolic to say "we know nothing".

The fight against COVID-19 has seen vaccine development move at record speed, with more than 170 different vaccines entering trials.
There are four categories of vaccines in clinical trials: whole virus, protein subunit, viral vector and nucleic acid (RNA and DNA).
I [perhaps too boldly] presume you are referring to the nucleic acid [mRNA] vaccines [eg: Pfizer & Moderna].

According to Gavi [citing the WHO], 21vaccines are currently being offered to the general population, and 37 vaccines are undergoing safety tests in healthy young individuals,
➥ https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork?gc...iAAEgIED_D_BwE

Messenger RNA, or mRNA, is not new. Research on it actually began in the early 1990s, and two diseases that are very close to COVID, [SARS, and MERS], helped bring the mRNA vaccine development to present day use. They've been studied for use in flu, Zika, rabies and cytomegalovirus (CMV). Researchers have also used mRNA to trigger the immune system to target certain cancer cells.
These vaccines went through all the regulatory steps like any other vaccines. None of this was rushed.
An unprecedented number of mass vaccination efforts have been under way, worldwide. Globally, billions of doses of vaccine have been administered, and monitored, though not in children, since the first vaccines were approved.

Long term issues are actually quite critical.

Despite decades of research, the first human trials on adults using mRNA vaccines of any kind started mid last year, not years or decades ago. On children it was only months ago. Usually before drugs or vaccines are approved they go through years of trials. I think this is particularly important if the way they work is light years from the way any other vaccine or drug works. And particularly important if mass vaccination is involved. These trials were rushed by any definition, but for good reasons.

We have excellent short term data now with several billion doses administered worldwide over the last nine months and the short term side effects have a very low incidence and have been well documented. However, I stick by my comment that we know nothing long term when it comes to human use.

You have asked before how many years I would personally be comfortable with before mass vaccinating the healthy young who are at negligible risk of severe disease or death. I don’t know. The risk goes down with time, so the more years the better. Certainly not none or one.

SWL

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Seaworthy Lass

Long term issues are actually quite critical.

Despite decades of research, the first human trials on adults using mRNA vaccines started mid last year, not years or decades ago. On children it was only months ago. Usually before drugs or vaccines are approved they go through years of trials. I think this is particularly important if the way they work is light years from the way any other vaccine or drug works. These trials were rushed by any definition, but for good reasons.

We have excellent short term data now with several billion doses administered worldwide over the last nine months and the short term side effects have a very low incidence and have been well documented. However, I stick by my comment that we know nothing long term when it comes to human use.

You have asked before how many years I would personally be comfortable with before mass vaccinating the young. I don’t know. The risk goes down with time, so the more years the better. Certainly not none or one.

SWL

But we have long-term consequences from COVID, too, which are not reflected in the death statistics. You can't compare the just the risk of death from COVID vs. the risk of death PLUS risk of long term consequences from the vaccine.


Just a guess, but as we ALREADY see long term consequences from COVID in a relatively small but very much not insignificant percentage of cases, but have not yet seen ANY long term consequences from the vaccine, wouldn't considering long term consequences of both vaccine and COVID make an even stronger argument for the young to get vaxxed?

[GordMay]

What Dockhead said, and ...

Even as infections soar, the new cases have, so far, not been putting significant pressure on hospital systems, because the intensity of sickness has generally been milder.

The problem with having high transmission rates, even if hospitalization rates don't soar, is that the higher the transmission rate, the more mutations. The more mutations, the more variants, and the more likely there is to be a variant that escapes the vaccine[s], and, eventually, the health-care system may come under extreme pressure, again.

With transmissibility being the key to a COVID variant surviving, and becoming dominant, the reproductive number (R0), showing how many people an infected person could spread the virus to, is key to predicting which variants will become the most concerning.

One of the things we've learned with Delta, is that it squelched out less transmissible variants. It's the most transmissible variants that dominate, and everything else just becomes less and less of an issue. In the U.K. for example, when Delta got a foothold in the country [late 2020] the Alpha variant was almost completely dominated.

As an example, influenza has a reproductive number of two, which means that on average every person who gets sick with flu infects two others. The initial COVID-19 strain had an R0 between two and three.
The Delta Covid-19 variant, on the other hand, currently has an estimated R0 between 5 and 9, with the CDC putting its R0 at 8.5 [nearly as transmissible as chickenpox], in August. [1]

With the original strain of SARS-CoV-2, one person would infect about three people, and each of those people would infect three more. So, after only two rounds of transmission, cases would rise by nine (3 x 3 = 9). After three rounds, cases would rise by 27 (3 x 3 x 3 = 27).
But with the delta variant, the first person would infect six others, who would each then infect six more people. So after two rounds of transmission, cases would already rise by 36 (6 x 6 = 36). After three rounds, cases would surge by 216 (6 x 6 x 6 = 216).

If we allow the virus to run, [more or less] unchecked, in [unvaccinated] children, it WILL mutate, likely evolving into a more transmissible sub-lineage disease, perhaps [perhaps not] more virulent.

[Seaworthy Lass]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

…….Just a guess, but as we ALREADY see long term consequences from COVID in a relatively small but very much not insignificant percentage of cases, but have not yet seen ANY long term consequences from the vaccine, wouldn't considering long term consequences of both vaccine and COVID make an even stronger argument for the young to get vaxxed?

By long term consequences, do you mean “long covid”? My impression from general reading is that this occurs primarily for those who have been severely ill. The healthy young simply don’t get severely ill that I have heard about.

The severely ill may be left with damage that will be with them for life, but again, I am not aware that this issue involves children or young adults.

We don’t know if there are post viral effects that crop up years down the track. We do have something to compare this to though: other coronavirus infections. Nothing has been shown conclusively.

We don’t know of any post vaccine years down the track either, but we have nothing to base any guesswork on. No other even any vaguely similar vaccine or drug that has been used before. We can’t make an educated guess.

SWL