Coronavirus 2019-2020 thread (no unsubstantiated rumours!)

[Bellum_Romanum]

Just curious @solarz @vincent if SinoPharm, WalVax, Everest Medicine (all Chinese companies) who are investing billions to produce an mRNA vaccine, will you take a Chinese mRNA vaccine if it had similar risk (0.026% or less) of myocarditis/pericarditis as Pfizer/Moderna, or would you continue using traditional inactivated vaccines? This isn't a gotcha question, just genuinely curious if it's an anti-Western thing or just an anti-mRNA thing or a pro-China thing. I mean, I would personally take a Chinese mRNA over Pfizer because I want to support China as well, assuming equal risk levels of side effects.

I would still be hesitant to take an MRNA vaccine even if it's China made since I have more confidence with the more traditional vaccine tech being used on Sinovac and Sinopharm vaccines. I am hoping Novavax and that vaccine made by doctors from Baylor University would be available soon so that it could provide valuable options for people that are frankly hesitant to use the mRNA vaccines for health and safety reasons.

 

[solarz]

Translation: Using 0.13% as a threshold, you have to be >99.97% confident of never never getting COVID, in order to avoid the Pfizer shot.

I agree with you, if I am almost 100% confident that I will never get COVID, I would avoid the Pfizer shot too! However, @taxiya is in Europe, and I am in the US, so there is an non-zero chance (may take few years or more) that I will eventually get infected by one variant or another. Maybe you are in China, so you believe the lockdowns can eradicate the disease and you are 100% confident of never getting COVID for the rest of your life. More power to you.

Well first of all, 100% - 0.13% = 99.87%.

Second, you don't have to live in China to be 99.87% confident of not getting COVID. Since you yourself admit that we'd need annual booster shots, it's not 99.87% confident of never ever getting covid, but rather not getting covid *this year*. Just to give you a sense of scale, something which you seem to be missing with your whole argument about "tiny numbers", if 0.13% of China's population gets covid, that's 1.8 million cases. Right now, if I lived in China, I would be roughly 99.99999% confident of not getting covid this year.

The difference between 99.87% and 99.99999% is immense, despite your claims of contrary. If you don't live in China, but you work from home, your kids go to school online, you avoid public gatherings, and you sanitize everything you bring home, including yourself and your clothes, then it's not difficult to be more than 99.99% confident of not getting covid. The reason so many people in the West get covid is simply because they don't follow these precautions.

 

[solarz]

Just curious @solarz @vincent if SinoPharm, WalVax, Everest Medicine (all Chinese companies) who are investing billions to produce an mRNA vaccine, will you take a Chinese mRNA vaccine if it had similar risk (0.026% or less) of myocarditis/pericarditis as Pfizer/Moderna, or would you continue using traditional inactivated vaccines? This isn't a gotcha question, just genuinely curious if it's an anti-Western thing or just an anti-mRNA thing or a pro-China thing. I mean, I would personally take a Chinese mRNA over Pfizer because I want to support China as well, assuming equal risk levels of side effects.

The reason I am cautious about Pfizer, Moderna and Astra-Zeneca is because there are documented serious adverse effects associated with these vaccines, and the fact that their Phase III trials were clearly rushed, and the fact that this is a new technology that we don't have much clinical data about.

If a Chinese mRNA vaccine had similar risks to the above vaccines, then obviously I would opt for the inactivated vaccines. The only reason I took Pfizer is because the alternatives were equal (Moderna) or worse (AZ). If we had access to the Chinese inactivated vaccines here, not only would I have taken them, I would have my kids take them as well!

 

[Phead128]

Well first of all, 100% - 0.13% = 99.87%.

This is correct, at 0.13 threshold, you have to be >99.87% confident of never getting COVID infection in order for the Pfizer Shot to not be worth it in terms of myocarditis/pericarditis adverse effects.

Basically, you have to be nearly 100% confident of never getting COVID in order for the Pfizer Shot to not be worth it. Is that practical for anyone living in US or Europe? Not really. There is nearly a 100% chance of getting COVID infection at some point in the future as this virus is endemic and cannot be eradicated.

Just to give you a sense of scale, something which you seem to be missing with your whole argument about "tiny numbers", if 0.13% of China's population gets covid, that's 1.8 million cases

You make an

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in which you make assumptions about population-level risks based on individual-risk levels. The 0.013 or 0.13% threshold in your calculations is the estimated individual-level risk of COVID infection to make Pfizer shot not worth it. It cannot simply be applied on a population-level to estimate the total number of cases, because individual-level risk cannot be applied as an average population-level risk. The population-average risk level is very different from the individual-level risk.

The difference between 99.87% and 99.99999% is immense, despite your claims of contrary

There is no statistically significant difference between 99.87% and 99.999% in terms of individual-level risk of COVID infection.

There is no clinically meaningful difference between 99.87% and 99.999% in terms of individual-level risk of COVID infection.

An absolute risk increase of 0.01299 is so minuscule and tiny, it's almost an rounding error.

Since you yourself admit that we'd need annual booster shots, it's not 99.87% confident of never ever getting covid, but rather not getting covid *this year*

I said we need an annual booster shot because this disease cannot be eradicated and is endemic in the human and animal host population. Even in China, you officially have zero reported cases, but since 30-40% of infections are asymptomatic, these people never get tested and reported to gov't, and they are still contagious and spread disease to others and generate variants passively. So this disease will last forever, coronaviruses exist for thousands of years, I'm not sure why you focus on "this year" risk of not getting infected. Sooner or later, everyone on earth will be infected, and the best we can do is get vaccinated, and eventually bite the bullet to move on.

 

[Phead128]

The reason I am cautious about Pfizer, Moderna and Astra-Zeneca is because there are documented serious adverse effects associated with these vaccines, and the fact that their Phase III trials were clearly rushed, and the fact that this is a new technology that we don't have much clinical data about.

If a Chinese mRNA vaccine had similar risks to the above vaccines, then obviously I would opt for the inactivated vaccines. The only reason I took Pfizer is because the alternatives were equal (Moderna) or worse (AZ). If we had access to the Chinese inactivated vaccines here, not only would I have taken them, I would have my kids take them as well!

Fair points and legitimate concerns, especially the lack of long-term safety data. I agree about about accelerated Phase III trials and lack of longer-term safety data within a clinical trial setting. FDA should continue funding Phase III trials for longer follow-up safety data. I share the same concerns too. Overall though, I think vaccination outweighs the risks of side-effects. Hopefully Chinese mRNA vaccines have high-efficacy but low side-effects too.

 

[solarz]

There is no clinically meaningful difference between 99.87% and 99.999% in terms of individual-level risk of COVID infection.

This is just wrong.

0.13% chance covid infection each year works out to 1.3% chance of infection over 10 years (1 - 0.9987^10), and 2.6% over 20 years (1 - 0.9987^20). Those are pretty significant risks.

In contrast, a 0.0001% chance of covid infection each year works out to 0.001% risk of infection over 10 years and 0.002% over 20 years.

There's no such thing as "individual level risk" vs "population level risk", probability is probability.

 

[Quickie]

Wow, CDC citing the VAERS data as a reason to vote AGAINST recommending mandatory booster shots.

When will people finally face up to the truth about these rushed, experimental vaccines?

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1438935548664688643

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1438952583188602896

This is crazy.

There are 7496 VAERS-reported excess deaths over the previous year and 2021 was only 2/3 into the year. Projecting into the full-year the number would be 7496 x 4/3 = 9995.

Projecting it into China's population if China were to use the same type of vaccines, the number would be 1400/320 x 9995 = 43726.

That would be 43726/4849 = 9 times the number of death actually caused by Covid-19 itself in China!

 

[Quickie]

Corrections.

2/3 into the year would mean 7496 x 3/2 full year. So, it should be 9 x 3/2 x 3/4 = 10 times.

 

[solarz]

This is crazy.

There are 7496 VAERS-reported excess deaths over the previous year and 2021 was only 2/3 into the year. Projecting into the full-year the number would be 7496 x 4/3 = 9995.

Projecting it into China's population if China were to use the same type of vaccines, the number would be 1400/320 x 9995 = 43726.

That would be 43726/4849 = 9 times the number of death actually caused by Covid-19 itself in China!

To be fair, this could simply be a result of large numbers of vaccinations. Previous years never saw the number of vaccinations we had in 2021.

However, it does seem that the number of deaths is disproportionately higher in 2021, which could be due to the mRNA nature is the vaccines.

 

[Quickie]

To be fair, this could simply be a result of large numbers of vaccinations. Previous years never saw the number of vaccinations we had in 2021.

However, it does seem that the number of deaths is disproportionately higher in 2021, which could be due to the mRNA nature is the vaccines.

Yes, that much larger number is directly related to the Covid vaccination program that's going on. Notice that I wasn't really comparing the side effects of the covid vaccines and all the other vaccines, but was considering just the excess deaths.

If we assume 60% of the U.S. population was vaccinated, the VAERS related fatality rate would be 11244/192,000,000 which is about 1 VAERS related death out of 17,000, and that's not considering some of them haven't been fully vaccinated yet.