CNN: Delta variant might be the last major wave of Coronavirus, says former Trump FDA commissioner

[MrSunshine]

Many real life studies have pointed towards an effectiveness of 39% or lower for Pfizer.

Israel says Pfizer Covid vaccine is just 39% effective as delta spreads, but still prevents severe illness

Pfizer and BioNTech's Covid-19 vaccine is just 39% effective against delta in Israel, but still provides strong protection against severe illness and hospitalization.

www.cnbc.com

Iirc according to the OMS, vaccine under 50% for transmission is not considered effective to break chains of infection.

The wave would have happened regardless and it might happen again during the winter. But ultimately the point is not about infections, is about hospital admissions. So we won't have that issue during the winter if people are sufficiently vaxxed.

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As more studies are released, the older Israel figures begin to look more anomalous. Whether that's methods or different circumstances, I haven't the foggiest. A characterization of other studies as landing between 55-80% here from Australian Broadcasting Corp. with a click through to a review article. A mention of two-thirds reduction in infection from a CDC study on CNN here which is a bit older but also cites a study of health care workers with 19/488 (unvax) vs 24/2352 (vax) positive tests which is closer to 3/4 infection reduction.

I'd also be interested to see an expert claiming that 50% is a kind of digital "exponential spread/no spread" trigger. At first glance, that seems oddly reductive since any immunity has an outsize impact on the spread parameter (there are both fewer people getting infected and fewer to infect) and because it neglects things like duration and viral load that, even in the case of breakthrough infection, still make the vaccinated less effective spreaders. Lots of things impact the ave number of people that a new infection infects, which is the central figure for determining spread.

I'm no one's idea of a biomed expert, but as a numerical modeler, I can't see how we could have had anything resembling this wave if the eligible had been vaccinated by say, May. It doesn't seem possible to credibly argue that the willfully unvaccinated don't bear the responsibility for this wave in fact (ie numerically) and in a moral, social sense.

 

[Freakzilla]

Unfortunately no. They said their best guess was a virus as they could see no other reason for it.

One day after work I told my girlfriend I felt like I was having trouble breathing after work. I laid down for a bit and then said I needed to go to the ER. I don't remember much after that. I woke up in a different hospital with my parents there as they called and told them they needed to fly in because I wasn't going to make it.

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Holy fuck....Glad you made it.

 

[clearacell]

It may...or it may not. We don't know enough about it to predict the future

 

[Nida]

Holy fuck....Glad you made it.

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Thanks. It made people downplaying COVID extra anger-inducing.

 

[WarMacheen]

why would CNN publish, without a clown horn, anything said by an ex Trump admin official

 

[Mgs2master2]

This is Trump's FDA commissioner and longtime Republican advisor, currently a creature of conservative think tanks. He's been overly optimistic about the pandemic repeatedly and I think that context is super important before people get too excited unfortunately

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This was my thoughts too. Its not like Trump or his FDA staff were actually reliable or legitimate in this thing.

 

[Bing147]

It's worth noting just how infectious DELTA really is. Look at India's numbers:

India COVID - Coronavirus Statistics - Worldometer

India Coronavirus update with statistics and graphs: total and new cases, deaths per day, mortality and recovery rates, current active cases, recoveries, trends and timeline.

www.worldometers.info

They had the massive surge that we all heard about, with the country on fire for about two months. Then cases started dropping fast, at almost the same rate they rose in the first place. Much like the cases here in the US look to be doing. India has now plateaued for about 3 months, with daily case loads that are relatively low, though not as low as their pre DELTA numbers were.

We're in a lot better place than India though. Even now India is still only 15% fully vaccinated with 45% having a first dose and they were way worse off when the cases started dropping. Compare their 45/15 to our 64/55 and the difference is pretty major. Even as cases have mostly plateaued for 3 months, deaths have also kept dropping there too, not as fast as during that initial drop but still dropping.

Why have things gone down so much and more or less stayed there (trending down still but at a very slow pace)? Because DELTA burns through a population incredibly quickly. Its incredibly infectious. Eventually though enough people get it that it becomes harder to spread because there are so few available people left to easily infect. That's going to be even more true here in the US with our vaccination rates.

You just have to look at somewhere like Florida even, as awful as their response has been, to see it. Things have dropped like crazy over the last month. Look at the numbers:

Florida COVID - Coronavirus Statistics - Worldometer

Florida COVID-19 Coronavirus update by county with statistics and graphs: total and new cases, deaths per day, current active cases, recoveries, historical data, trends, projections, and timeline.

www.worldometers.info

They've fallen off a cliff and are still dropping super fast. Why? It isn't like they've reinstituted significant guidelines/rules. A few cities might have but huge portions of the state are proudly doing nothing to stop COVID, and yet its still being stopped. It seems likely that when you combine the state's pretty decent vaccination rate with how many people have gotten the virus there, its become much harder for it to find targets to spread to.

The Republicans wanted to get herd immunity through infections from the start, but that would have taken forever with the original COVID. Alpha was contagious but not so much so that it could burn through the whole population, with no vaccines especially, in short order. Doing it that way would have taken forever and cost an absurd amount of lives along the way, not to mention completely overrunning hospitals. DELTA though seems like it might be contagious enough for that to work, especially when you throw in how many people are vaccinated. The problem of course becomes that it still is costing far too many lives along the way, and it still overran hospitals, not to mention how many people who survived it will have long term health impacts from this.

Sadly it actually looks like Republican states are dropping off much faster from this surge. They of course surged harder in the first place. Why? Because they pretty much let COVID loose, and it tore through and reached most of the vulnerable people. Now you're left without nearly as many targets. Blue states did a better job of protecting people, but as a result there's still a lot more vulnerable people out there who haven't had it. They got what they want, killing people to get things back to normal. Might actually work too, just you know, with a lot of killing your own people.

 

[XMonkey]

India is an interesting case. They have very good serology surveillance and the last thing I read was after the Delta wave something like 70% of the population was estimated to have antibodies. Delta had doubled the previous estimates in a very short period of time. This was before vaccinations had really started going. The spikes seen after the big surge were mostly in rural areas that hadn't been hit yet.

Seems to me it's quite possible that given the immense scale of natural infections there that they are looking at a situation where natural immunity is going to be much higher than immunity from vaccines for awhile and looking strictly at the vaccinated numbers may not be as important as other countries. They should have a fairly strong herd immunity effect already I think, at least in the more populous regions.

 

[Bing147]

India is an interesting case. They have very good serology surveillance and the last thing I read was after the Delta wave something like 70% of the population was estimated to have antibodies. Delta had doubled the previous estimates in a very short period of time. This was before vaccinations had really started going. The spikes seen after the big surge were mostly in rural areas that hadn't been hit yet.

Seems to me it's quite possible that given the immense scale of natural infections there that they are looking at a situation where natural immunity is going to be much higher than immunity from vaccines for awhile and looking strictly at the vaccinated numbers may not be as important as other countries. They should have a fairly strong herd immunity effect already I think, at least in the more populous regions.

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Absolutely. I'm arguing though that places here which have been torn up by DELTA probably have similar or even higher numbers now.

One study found that in May 83% of Americans over 16 had COVID antibodies.

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article253987048.html

That was before DELTA really hit here. Imagine what that must be at now. When you see things like that it becomes a lot easier to believe this will be the last major surge. Certainly could be wrong of course but it's not a fringe opinion and it makes sense.

 

[XMonkey]

Absolutely. I'm arguing though that places here which have been torn up by DELTA probably have similar or even higher numbers now.

One study found that in May 83% of Americans over 16 had COVID antibodies.

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article253987048.html

That was before DELTA really hit here. Imagine what that must be at now. When you see things like that it becomes a lot easier to believe this will be the last major surge. Certainly could be wrong of course but it's not a fringe opinion and it makes sense.

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Oh I wasn't disagreeing with anything you were saying, just adding my thoughts :)

I'm with you and I think we're getting close to the end of further large surges in some places, barring another drastic variant showing up of course *knocks on wood*.