Coronavirus 2019-2020 thread (no unsubstantiated rumours!)

[MortyandRick]

Comorbidities were addressed in the HK mortality paper I posted:

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I wasn’t referring to this paper but the MOH news That you posted previously. Again in the HK mortalities paper, the two vaccines were the same statistically in preventing deaths. Their confidence intervals overlapped.

That observation regarding 18-50 mortality after 3 doses is the only time I've ever seen inactivated vaccines showing superiority over mRNA. It doesn't hold true for any of the other age groups regarding severity or mortality, or for those who received 1-2 doses

My point was there was no difference statistically. Both were similar in preventing death from COVID at 3 doses Which is what counts.

In this thread I'm attempting to refute the claim that inactivated vaccines are superior. They have acceptable efficacy against severity and mortality after 3 doses. The study from Singapore suggests after 3 doses inactivated vaccines wane faster and more significantly than mRNA vaccines. So I'd hesitate to say they're on par, only that they are acceptable for surviving a few waves not long after vaccination (for those vulnerable in the first place).

Again the Singaporean study that you posted previously used population data and could not control for co morbidities. Not a lot of people used the inactivated vaccines and those that chose inactivated likely had not comobidities as shown in the HK side effect study you posted. Having those comorbidities will certainly decrease immune response and I suspect faster antibody waning.

My main point overall is that the rate of older age groups who received 2 doses, let alone 3 doses, is too low in China for the mortality figures currently being released to be credible or representative of the near future.

Time will tell. Looks like they are on their way to catch up.

 

[KYli]

I'm not going to do all your homework for you. Vaccination rates, not even including the booster, are consistently higher for elderly in Western countries than in China. You can look at Our World in Data or elsewhere. It's widely available information.

Let see, Croatia, Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary etc.

I literally just posted updated Chinese vaccination rates for 80 and over from China Daily/NHC as of December. So it's not outdated data. It moved up to 68% for fully vaccinated, leaving 32% with less than 2 doses. That's not much better.

It is outdated. Before new vaccination drive, China administrated around 100,000 doses per day for months. Your statistic comes from 11/28 data. After 11/28, over 24 millions doses have been administrated for elderly. At least a few million doses are for first, second or third dose.

ICU capacity has only recently increased, which most likely largely reflects the raw number of beds and not the actual HCWs needed. China just hasn't trained as many HCWs as its developed peers, and this time they can't be moved around and allocated according to the location of particular outbreaks. Plus the case fatality ratio for the current variant in China (0.16%, similar to that of influenza) was already reached by non-Covid Zero countries when BA.1 and BA.2 were prevalent. As Hong Kong during its BA.2 wave showed, the intrinsic CFR for immuno-naive (no previous infection or vaccination history) is similar to that of the ancestral strain (in Wuhan).

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Not sure why you wrote all of above, I don't disagree with what you said. However, Hong Kong outbreak tells us ICU capacity is just as relevant as experience staffs. Hong Kong number is due to a huge surge of patients that are mostly not vaccinated. It is a good data for the worst case scenario that would have occurred if China has similar vaccination rate among elderly. Luckily, that isn't the case.

 

[Icmer]

Let see, Croatia, Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary etc.

It is outdated. Before new vaccination drive, China administrated around 100,000 doses per day for months. Your statistic comes from 11/28 data. After 11/28, over 24 millions doses have been administrated for elderly. At least a few million doses are for first, second or third dose.

Not sure why you wrote all of above, I don't disagree with what you said. However, Hong Kong outbreak tells us ICU capacity is just as relevant as experience staffs. Hong Kong number is due to a huge surge of patients that are mostly not vaccinated. It is a good data for the worst case scenario that would have occurred if China has similar vaccination rate among elderly. Luckily, that isn't the case.

Those are Slavic (except Hungary)/Eastern European countries, which are not traditionally considered Western and only Western in the sense that they are in the EU/are European. You might as well add Russia or Ukraine to your list, which both have very low vaccination rates.

For 2nd or 3rd doses administered after 11/28 to have any impact, there must be at least 14 days for the immune response to build. For those who were completely unvaccinated even more time be allotted for the intervals between the 1st and 2nd or 2nd and 3rd doses. In the past 20 days the NHC has estimated 18% of China's population has been infected. There are approximately 264 million people over age 60 in China and 35.8 million over 80 (as of 2020). So about 11.45 million were unvaccinated and over 80 as of 11/28 (using 32% subtracted from NHC data), who are the most vulnerable to death. If we assume those 24 million doses covered all of those unvaccinated 11 million, they would still be vulnerable for 1.5 (primary series) to 4 months (boosted) given the 3 month minimum interval (recently shortened) before being boosted.

 

[Icmer]

Not sure why you wrote all of above, I don't disagree with what you said. However, Hong Kong outbreak tells us ICU capacity is just as relevant as experience staffs. Hong Kong number is due to a huge surge of patients that are mostly not vaccinated. It is a good data for the worst case scenario that would have occurred if China has similar vaccination rate among elderly. Luckily, that isn't the case.

I suppose now you can see what will occur when China has a similar vaccination rate among elderly to that of Taiwan (maybe 5-15% higher accounting for the recent push), plus a lower ICU capacity than both Taiwan and Hong Kong's. Yes, Hong Kong was the worst case scenario. Taiwan was better because their rate for over 80 was 66% (Hong Kong's rate for over 80 was 43%.)

There's no way China can reach 90% or higher for its most vulnerable age groups as Japan, South Korea, and all of Western Europe + 5 Eyes did in a meaningful timeframe to prevent mass death in the 100,000's, as extrapolating Taiwan's deaths even with incredibly generous assumptions about the recent vaccination drive or ICU capacity building does not point to any other outcome (unless you believe in wildly exaggerated claims about inactivated vaccines' effectiveness or Lianhua Qingwen/TCM). The virus isn't several times milder than what impacted Taiwan either. Despite what government experts in China are currently saying, it's possible that the intrinsic severity discounting any previous exposures is only slightly lower than that of the ancestral strain.

I write all this because some people even refused to think this was possible and believe the current death figure in this wave is somehow indicative of what's to come.

 

[Icmer]

I suppose now you can see what will occur when China has a similar vaccination rate among elderly to that of Taiwan (maybe 5-15% higher accounting for the recent push), plus a lower ICU capacity than both Taiwan and Hong Kong's. Yes, Hong Kong was the worst case scenario. Taiwan was better because their rate for over 80 was 66% (Hong Kong's rate for over 80 was 43%.)

There's no way China can reach 90% or higher for its most vulnerable age groups as Japan, South Korea, and all of Western Europe + 5 Eyes did in a meaningful timeframe to prevent mass death in the 100,000's, as extrapolating Taiwan's deaths even with incredibly generous assumptions about the recent vaccination drive or ICU capacity building does not point to any other outcome (unless you believe in wildly exaggerated claims about inactivated vaccines' effectiveness or Lianhua Qingwen/TCM). The virus isn't several times milder than what impacted Taiwan either. Despite what government experts in China are currently saying, it's possible that the intrinsic severity discounting any previous exposures is only slightly lower than that of the ancestral strain.

I write all this because some people even refused to think this was possible and believe the current death figure in this wave is somehow indicative of what's to come.

It's also still possible that variants with increased severity will evolve despite what the government experts have been saying.

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The milder clinical manifestations of Omicron infection relative to pre-Omicron SARS-CoV-2 raises the possibility that extensive evolution results in reduced pathogenicity. To test this hypothesis, we quantified induction of cell fusion and cell death in SARS-CoV-2 evolved from ancestral virus during long-term infection. Both cell fusion and death were reduced in Omicron BA.1 infection relative to ancestral virus. Evolved virus was isolated at different times during a 6-month infection in an immunosuppressed individual with advanced HIV disease. The virus isolated 16 days post-reported symptom onset induced fusogenicity and cell death at levels similar to BA.1. However, fusogenicity was increased in virus isolated at 6 months post-symptoms to levels intermediate between BA.1 and ancestral SARS-CoV-2. Similarly, infected cell death showed a graded increase from earlier to later isolates. These results may indicate that, at least by the cellular measures used here, evolution in long-term infection does not necessarily attenuate the virus.

 

[Quickie]

Those are Slavic (except Hungary)/Eastern European countries, which are not traditionally considered Western and only Western in the sense that they are in the EU/are European. You might as well add Russia or Ukraine to your list, which both have very low vaccination rates.

For 2nd or 3rd doses administered after 11/28 to have any impact, there must be at least 14 days for the immune response to build. For those who were completely unvaccinated even more time be allotted for the intervals between the 1st and 2nd or 2nd and 3rd doses. In the past 20 days the NHC has estimated 18% of China's population has been infected. There are approximately 264 million people over age 60 in China and 35.8 million over 80 (as of 2020). So about 11.45 million were unvaccinated and over 80 as of 11/28 (using 32% subtracted from NHC data), who are the most vulnerable to death. If we assume those 24 million doses covered all of those unvaccinated 11 million, they would still be vulnerable for 1.5 (primary series) to 4 months (boosted) given the 3 month minimum interval (recently shortened) before being boosted.

Why quote and reply to me on those things? I didn't write those stuff.

 

[Icmer]

Why quote and reply to me on those things? I didn't write those stuff.

The quote feature is buggy and put your username for some reason. It was a reply to KYli.

Let see, Croatia, Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary etc.

It is outdated. Before new vaccination drive, China administrated around 100,000 doses per day for months. Your statistic comes from 11/28 data. After 11/28, over 24 millions doses have been administrated for elderly. At least a few million doses are for first, second or third dose.

Not sure why you wrote all of above, I don't disagree with what you said. However, Hong Kong outbreak tells us ICU capacity is just as relevant as experience staffs. Hong Kong number is due to a huge surge of patients that are mostly not vaccinated. It is a good data for the worst case scenario that would have occurred if China has similar vaccination rate among elderly. Luckily, that isn't the case.

 

[tokenanalyst]

mrna vaccines that were made for the earliest variants are basically useless against Omicron

For China's 150 hab/km2 density, does that include sparsely populated areas?

Yes.

 

[Han Patriot]

mrna vaccines that were made for the earliest variants are basically useless against Omicron

Yes.

Why the f are idiots here still arguing about vaccine efficacy. Pfizer and Sinovac 3 dose had not much difference in efficacy for omicron. Both are pretty much useless against infections but for defense against severe infections, Pfizer was 86% vs 80% Sinopharm according to a Jordanian study done. I posted it in PDF, i am lazy to repost again. PFIZER is 130$, Sinopharm is 3$. There is no argument which vaccine gets chosen for 3rd world countries. My uncle got cancer after Pfizer second dose, it is not a coincidence. Pfizer Mrna turns into Dna in the Lund University studies. This is never about the virus, it is about China, if China don't reopen, they will bash, if China reopens thy will also bash, they need to justify the 1.1mil dead.

 

[zhangjim]

Not quite. After pondering a bit about the sequence of events in China, the one thing that stood out to me was the mask-less Xi Jinping and Peng Liyuan at the G20 and subsequent meetings. The rest of his staff members wore KN95 masks while those two didn't wear a mask at all. Chinese people are really sensitive in this regard since they expect the leader to set an example for the people, so Xi not wearing a mask contradicts his zero-Covid policy. Considering the fact that Xi personally emphasized zero-Covid so hard in the past, I wonder if he did that on purpose.

At present, people are still arguing on the Internet because of the policy change.
Many people have given their own analysis of the reasons：
Some people think that this is because the serious financial difficulties lead to the policy can not continue to implement.

Others believe that the adjustment of the epidemic prevention plan at the beginning of this year was a mistake.

Here's a message from an alleged "insider" in Beijing：

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He believed that by November, the policy could no longer be implemented, and adjustment was inevitable.
He believes the main reason is that the people are becoming less cooperative. Even administrators are generally demoralized.
In the past, people were willing to cooperate because of their fear of viruses.
“The problem is that in the past few months, people's fear of viruses has been completely dispelled by the amazing data reported in some parts of China.”
This makes many people feel that the current policy is meaningless.Then the situation deteriorated rapidly.

Chang Kaishen（常凯申）, a famous user in Zhihu（Account has been blocked），he thinks that this policy change is obviously an unplanned advance action.

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No matter the drug production capacity, season or personnel mobility, it is not the best time, which leads us to be passive overnight.
But his focus is more on the government's response to public opinion.
He believed that if the plan for policy change was announced to the public in advance, the mood of those who opposed it could be appropriately pacified and a three-month buffer period could be provided.
However, as always, the public opinion was out of control, but the government did not respond and allowed the situation to get out of control. The unwillingness to communicate, explain, illustrate and persuade directly leads to the government falling into a disadvantageous position repeatedly in emergencies.

To be honest, I don't know whether it is meaningful to discuss these, but the debate has not stopped. Some people think it would be better to postpone it to next year, while others think it should be fully open at the beginning of this year.