Muh Muh Muh My Corona (virus)

i think it does. My go-to is COVID19-projections.con. They estimate that ~26% of the US has already been infected and we are infecting about 1.5% of the population each week at the current pace. We are also vaccinating about 1.5%, although some of those are overlapping with the previous infection group. So it would be safe to say about 2.5% of the US is becoming newly immune each week right now. At that rate, we would reach 100% in the fall. We are hoping to double that vaccination rate within a few months. But if we don’t, that just means infections will stay high longer, so we still get there about the same time.

The variant thing is evolution. The virus copies itself constantly. Once in a while, the copy has an error in it. Almost all of those errors are inconsequential or make the virus worse. Once in a great while, the error makes the virus a little bit better. That little bit better virus does a better job of spreading than the old version, so it slowly takes over. We are hearing about more or them now partially because there’s so much virus out there copying itself that there’s more chances for errors, and partially because stories about new variants are popular right now and there’s a lot of incentive to go looking for them.

We should be a little bit concerned, but it’s honestly not *that* big of a deal. Some of this stuff gets overblown because the governments are desperate for anything to scare people to get them to follow the rules. Some of it is because scientists and the media have a mutual interest in drawing attention.

And same as earlier: more infectious doesn’t necessarily mean it will drag things out. For countries that have kept it under control and want to keep it that way, a more infectious variant drags things out. For the US, more infectious would just burn us through even faster. More people would die, so it’s still very bad, but it won’t drag things out.

 

Are they strengthening or becoming more contagious? Because they're not the same thing, and I haven't read anything about increased virus strength.

 

Or are they the same thing and I'm thinking of a different word?

 

i don’t think there’s an official definition. To clarify, the new versions of the virus seem like they might be more efficient at infecting new people. They do not appear to lead to worse outcomes after infection.

 

That's a good question about this, viz. strength. Who knows how to assess it. Obviously the death rate is critical, but the ability for it to reproduce quickly is a mark of prowess as well.

I just want to go back to the comic book store.

Thank you for the link and explanation.

 

That's really interesting ... and it makes me wonder if my son is among the lucky 5 percent with these antibodies.

Early in the summer, many (12 to 15) of his friends and co-workers came down with COVID. My son felt sick for a day or two, then it passed. COVID test came back negative, although he had the aches, fever, etc. for those 36-48 hours.

It's possible he had a mild case of COVID and now has the super antibodies. He's been around a bunch more people who tested positive, including the other four guys who live with him off-campus, and came through with negative tests.

 

California always makes a convenient straw man.

 

Total US hospitalized has dropped from a peak of 132,474 ten days ago to 126,139 today.

The first vaccine doses were hitting a week before Christmas, it takes a week or two to for the immune response to become notable; and it takes a couple of weeks after exposure to be hospitalized. So the math works out that this might be the first of their effects showing up.

Unless people see this news and loosen their behavior (and Us behavior is already awfully loose), I don’t see any reason we can’t not only continue to improve but actually accelerate the speed of the improvement as vaccines become more prominent and spread continues.

 

I'm starting to wonder if Covid will hang around and mutate, leading us to get annual immunization shots the way we do the flu.

 

Fauci: Two more Covid vaccines just ‘weeks’ away from US distribution


Johnson/Johnson and Oxford vaccines both wrapping up their trials and are on pace to submit for emergency use in a few weeks

The former is a one-dose shot, which is great, and they are both able to be stored in normal refrigeration after delivery.

Getting both approved means not only should we have plenty of supply going into March, but we are have redundancy in case something goes wrong in the manufacturing process with one of them and our supplies are interrupted.

 

Exciting - do we have any data about how effective they are?

 

The J/J vaccine showed a strong immune response in earlier, smaller trials. They haven't released their Phase III data yet, that's what is about to come in the next few weeks, but they're sure acting like they expect it to be approved.

The Oxford vaccine claims ~70% effectiveness at preventing severe infection.