COVID-19

[graphic-er]

So my almost 2 year old’s daycare has been closed for the last 2 weeks, every caregiver got Covid. My daughter was incredibly lucky or just still had some robust antibodies from having COVID back in January.

I have been working from home the past 2 weeks and today was her first day back at daycare and my first day back in the office.

after my 25 minute drive to pick her up and then 45 minutes of bumper to bumper traffic on 96th street and thru the various construction zones with a crying toddler. I couldn’t help but think that everyday for the past 2 weeks I have been more productive with work, more productive around the house, been able to see my other daughter get off the bus in the afternoons, and get dinner on the table much earlier, and spend more quality time with the wife.

were these past 2 weeks perfect? No it certainly had its challenges with trying to work and entertain and stimulate a 2 year old and 5 year old. But I saved $400 in daycare costs and not once did I have to sit in my car and lose an 1 hour 15 min of my life.

sorry I just had to get it out there.

[Gamble1]

Looks like the CDC is allowing the at risk workers to get vaccinated which goes against the CDC advisory board recommendations. As a husband of a health care worker who has unvaccinated children I am happy with this call but I do agree with the advisory board that the language is too broad and should be more defined for who is an at risk worker.

"As CDC Director, it is my job to recognize where our actions can have the greatest impact. At CDC, we are tasked with analyzing complex, often imperfect data to make concrete recommendations that optimize health. In a pandemic, even with uncertainty, we must take actions that we anticipate will do the greatest good," Walensky said in the statement.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/24/healt...sky/index.html

[Gamble1]

So my coworker got covid in the early spring then got vaccinated and now got covid again and he is symptomatic but has no breathing trouble or anything like that.

The guy is incredibly healthy which is great but he has terrible luck.

[Gamble1]

The R.1 Variant... In Kentucky:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/william...h=7acb5d023509

Lots of speculation in that article. These mutations especially in non-coding regions or synonymous mutations are less likely to be a gain of function mutations.

The coding regions that contain nonsynonymous mutations aka they actually change the amino acids are much more likely to have a functional consequence but even that is not that straight forward. Amino acids are classified in general as charge, size and how hydrophilic or phobic they are. Many fall into each category so you can change the amino acid but not the charge for example. Unless they get tested they won't know if there is a gain of function to these mutations.

[Bball]

The R.1 Variant... In Kentucky:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamhaseltine/2021/09/20/a-new-usjapan-variant-to-watch/?sh=7acb5d023509

[Bball]

So there seems to be a push on social media to say the vaccines aren't working. I've seen comments and viral memes pushing this narrative.
One of them used scissors as an example "If a pair of scissors won't cut, then I refuse to use them. That doesn't make me anti-scissors, but it does make me not use THOSE scissors". Then reader is left to apply this to the current vaccines.

How does this ignorance exist and how does it spread? You literally would have to work to avoid knowing the vaccines at minimum shorten and lessen illness and in many cases DO stop you from getting sick at all.

[Gamble1]

Here is a preprint update of the J&J vaccine. This is not a blinded study but uses an enormous control group of 1.5 million that are matched by age location and cormorbidities.

The good news is that the vaccines hold up and the boosters seem to work very well according to the company.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...85v2.full-text

[Gamble1]

What really concerns me is that the southern states have used up the monoclonal antibody therapy stock pile. In late August the Times reported that we were going through 168,000 doses per week.

So we basically are rationing this treatment now since most of these were used to treat vaccine skeptics.

We also do not know how well a person has natural immunity after this treatment. Flordia is estimating a 40 k shortage now so we will see further strain on their hospital system and probably more deaths.

[Gamble1]

This, IMO, is really the key to getting back to normalcy. Great news.

This is key for me as a person who has kids but overall the country won't get back to normal unless we get more adults vaccinated.

Just crunching the numbers we got 55.3% (181 mill) vaccinated. We have 40 mill confirmed cases of covid.

The population is 328 million. So we have 100 millionish still to go.

I am being overly simplistic here but we all have seen what 40 million cases have done in over a year. We got a lot more to go in order for us to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

[Gamble1]

I got Pfizer but my second dose was 5 weeks after my first dose. I also only had 1 side effect which was fatigue for a couple of hours.

Yeah the only large amount of data extending the second dose is from the UK. It appears that it does not alter the vaccine efficacy and you being at 5 weeks probably doesn't matter at all. What would matter is if you have a comorbidity or you are old or have received treatment for a cancer or organ donation. These are the more common factors that predict if the vaccine is going to work well for you or not.

[Motion Offense]

Without knowing the exact sequence that they used for each vaccine it is impossible to know. So moderna could be using a larger mrna sequence which would make it heavier. If it was 3 times the length of Pfizer then it would close to being proportional.

I am not sure we can say moderna is much more effective. From what I have read it is slightly better but that could also be due to the extra week in between the second dose as compared to Pfizer with the 3 week interval.

The other factor in the weight could be the lipids they are using to protect the mRNA. You can manufacture lipids to be all sorts of lengths so like I said it is impossible to know without having the details.

I got Pfizer but my second dose was 5 weeks after my first dose. I also only had 1 side effect which was fatigue for a couple of hours.

[Gamble1]

The data from Israel that is being ignored

To be completely honest with you I was a little bummed by the news.

That being said lets consider what the data from Israel really says and what the different approaches are for each country concerning the vaccines. In Israel the idea of boosters is to stop or slow transmission of cases overall and to stop hospitalizations/deaths. There data suggest the major risk factor for hospitalizations is age which they report 87% are from people 60 years or older who are vaccinated. So those who really need boosters are 60 and up or immunocompromised patients and not the entire population. IF you stop transmission than you need to require it for everyone.

The US approach for the vaccines or at least what the FDA adviser board primary goal is to protect against severe disease requiring hospitalizations and death. That was and is the primary goal for all the clinical studies that looked at the efficacy and the final approval of the FDA.

What Pfizer screwed up on when they submitted data for the booster is that they had much more data on older people than younger people and that data greatly favored efficacy for the older vaccinated group than the younger vaccinated group to meet the primary outcome justifying a booster.

I fully expect that the FDA will give approval for younger age groups for boosters but they can not get ahead of the data or else they completely call into to question the process of approving the vaccines. Where Israel and the US are in alignment is that people who are older should get a booster and people who are in high risk situations.

[Gamble1]

So the normal Pfizer shot is 30 micrograms. While the normal Moderna Shot is 100 micrograms. Are we to assume the MRNA concentrations are proportional? Meaning you get much more MRNA in the Mdoerna vaccine, which explains why its much more effective? It would seem very strange that one vaccine is like a 1/3rd of another.

Without knowing the exact sequence that they used for each vaccine it is impossible to know. So moderna could be using a larger mrna sequence which would make it heavier. If it was 3 times the length of Pfizer then it would close to being proportional.

I am not sure we can say moderna is much more effective. From what I have read it is slightly better but that could also be due to the extra week in between the second dose as compared to Pfizer with the 3 week interval.

The other factor in the weight could be the lipids they are using to protect the mRNA. You can manufacture lipids to be all sorts of lengths so like I said it is impossible to know without having the details.

[graphic-er]

So the normal Pfizer shot is 30 micrograms. While the normal Moderna Shot is 100 micrograms. Are we to assume the MRNA concentrations are proportional? Meaning you get much more MRNA in the Mdoerna vaccine, which explains why its much more effective? It would seem very strange that one vaccine is like a 1/3rd of another.

[Motion Offense]

What do you mean?

The data from Israel that is being ignored