Lurker > Esuriat

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/pfizer-covid-vaccine-kids-fda-authorization-postponed-rcna15730?cid=mob_npd_nn_and_mar

This really sucks for families of young children.

Pfizer said on Friday that it will wait for its data on a three-dose series of the vaccine, because it believes three doses "may provide a higher level of protection in this age group." Data on the third dose is expected in early April, the company said.

Early April for a three dose regimen that may still not work because they guessed too low for their dosing.

Though in retrospect it isn't surprising since I remember reports from over a month ago that was determining that the two dose regimen was underperforming. The assumptions that this would get FDA approval were irresponsible.

colliding posted...

i mean it seems like by late january omicron will have already peaked in the states, so it's too late regardless

Yeah, that's what I'm figuring. We're already seeing the evidence that the omicron wave will clearly be receding by the end of January pretty much everywhere except some of the midwest/mountain west states. Here in Northern Virginia it's already trending down sharply and the rest of Virginia is now beginning to follow. Positivity rate is declining. But it's still better to have them than not for the "endemic phase" that may or may not be beginning. And even with a decline this wave will continue into at least March if Omicron provides solid protection against further infection from Omicron.

And there's always a chance of another major variant appearing that evades immunity from both Omicron and Alpha/Delta/Wuhan variant lineages.

On a personal note I still have yet to feel symptoms that would make me think I'm infected and have had no close exposures, so I still have never been tested even once this whole pandemic.

I learned about this offer from the USPS for free rapid COVID tests for people in the US with a mailing address a short time ago: https://special.usps.com/testkits

It isn't much and it'll get to you pretty late (shipping in "late January"), but it's something. I went ahead and ordered them because why not.

Also I hope you and your son are doing okay, Ryoko.

However Denmark is loosening restrictions (still pretty solid masking and vaccination requirements) so maybe the official opinion on the Omicron subvariant isn't one of particular concern.

In other epidemiological news, H5N6 'avian flu' is back on the table. There's been a rash of infections in China and "no confirmed human-to-human transmission." All the other outbreaks failed to demonstrate human-to-human transmission so I'm inclined to think it's just super prevalent in poultry at this time. Still something to keep an eye on. (not that our personal surveillance makes a difference given how disastrous it would be if it could transmit among human, but I digress)

There's another "subvariant" outcompeting Omicron in Denmark now. All that's known about it is that it evolved from Omicron, so nothing is known about Omicron infection protecting against this one. I would assume it's more protective than past infection with the original variant, Alpha or Delta, at least. Also recency of Omicron infection would obviously also be a factor.

Positivity rate in Virginia is 34.6% right now.

Probably safe to say I've been exposed in some capacity over the last five days. So far I'm doing fine, though.

I just spent two full days without power, 24 hours longer than I've ever experienced, and it's because central Virginia got absolutely clobbered by a snow storm that was effectively like getting an inch of ice. The local power company had such a small staff initially that they barely were able to get anything going after the first day and only got like 10-15% back on the next. I'm lucky to have it back now after two days.

They've brought in power crews from other states by now, but I seriously wonder if covid was responsible for a lot of the short staffing initially. It's such a bad confluence of events.

We estimate that the absolute number of excess myocarditis events in the 28 days following a first dose of adenovirus or mRNA vaccine is between one and six per million persons vaccinated, and the excess risk following the second dose of the mRNA-1283 vaccine is ten per million. By contrast, we estimate 40 excess myocarditis events per million in the 28 days following SARS-CoV-2 infection. The risks are more evenly balanced in younger persons aged up to 40 years, where we estimated the excess in myocarditis events following SARS-CoV-2 infection to be 10 per million with the excess following a second dose of mRNA-1273 vaccine being 15 per million.

Exclusively considering that last figure, which is the main angle I can see the vaccines being attacked from, this is still a pretty low incidence. It also lumps severity of all degrees of myocarditis together into the excess myocarditis figures. Infection with the virus tended to have more severe cardiac injury whenever it occurred. On top of that there are many more sequelae to consider with infection with the virus.

Even as a person under 40, it seems clearly stacked in favor of vaccination to me.

I'm a couple of days out from getting my Moderna booster. Definitely was the lowest impact of the three. I didn't feel even slightly ill the whole way and my arm had some soreness and tightness that's already almost gone. Good stuff.

On another note, I've been doing some further reading regarding the implications of Omicron and as far as I call tell the key universal aspect to it is just how amazingly infectious it is - to the point that avoiding exposure to it, especially with the landscape of capitalistic ambivalence to the threat, is going to be exceedingly difficult. For example the R value for Omicron in the UK presently is estimated at between 3 and 5. Delta was somewhere between 1.1 and 1.2.

I also firmly believe at this point that the message going around about the Omicron variant being more mild is... true in a relative sense, but false in an absolute sense. By that I mean that the indications are coming out of South Africa that compared with earlier variants, it seems to cause disease as severe as in the past in individuals who have not acquired either natural or induced (vaccine) immunity. The key difference is that the baseline population (or control) has been changing steadily over the course of the pandemic. It's getting uncommon to actually find people with no protection at all. T cells (especially CD8+ T cells) do a huge amount of heavy lifting in protecting against severe infection.

This is related to the seeming drop in 'efficacy' of the vaccines versus hospitalization. We've seen the Pfizer vaccine decline from 98% against D614G/Wuhan (the original) to 91% against Delta to 70 against Omicron. It may seem like that indicates outcomes worsening against the virus but if you have a population with greater immunity already as the control, the relative benefit from vaccination declines. But it doesn't mean the vaccination itself becomes useless because boosters are also out there jumping the efficacy back into the 90s and greatly cutting the risk of transmission by raising antibody titres.