Article / visualization on superspreading:
https://vis.sciencemag.org/covid-clusters/
It also mentions the need for backward contact tracing, since most people with COVID-19 do not spread it to anyone else, but are much more likely to have gotten it from a superspreader event.
^ well letās sure hope so. I just got word about my closest contact yet. Someone in my office is positive. In an office of 10 and 1 person out sick, it isnāt hard to figure. We all sit in our cubbies unmasked all of the time. I am hoping that the fact heās usually in the field for half the day helps, and we do have super high ceiling and decent ventilation (I hope?!)
I am more worried for my coworker who sits across from me. He spends the field time with him in close contact. They drive together and Iām pretty sure they donāt mask up. And he has a wife finishing up her first trimester of a super high risk pregnancy.
I am also a bit miffed as I suspect he knew yesterday. At the end of the day he made some loud comment about it only killing old people (I had a lot to say about that one) and someone else saw him using wipes on his desk. But that didnāt stop him from hitting the Halloween candy dish every other minute that someone brought in yesterday. I am SO GLAD that I resisted. No communal food for me since the pandemic started. Usually, Iām first in line
I hope that you and your co-workers will be ok. I donāt understand why you all arenāt wearing masks in the office?
I donāt understand that either. Everyone in my dental office wears one all day long. No exceptions. You only take it off if you are eating, and it goes back on immediately when finished. Staggered lunches. You can take it off in your car.
Another piece of good news, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/09/health/covid-vaccine-pfizer.html
That is NOT good news. It is UNBELIEVABLE, WORLD-CHANGING, MASSIVE-LIGHT-AT-THE-END-OF-THE-TUNNEL, HUMANITY-SAVING news!!!
Agree with @EmptyNestSoon2: WONDERFUL news, if confirmed, which it probably will be. Not only does the Pfizer vaccine seem to work, but it targets the same spike protein that other vaccines target, so we should expect some of the other candidates also to work.
The two big caveats: Does it prevent serious disease? Are vaccinated people prevented from spreading disease? We donāt know the answer to those questions. Before the vaccine is approved, weāll know whether it prevents serious disease because thatās now a condition of approval,. We probably wonāt know for many months whether the Pfizer vaccine does anything at all to prevent infection and disease spreading.
Here is an article in Nature about the Pfizer / BioNtech vaccine trial partial results:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03166-8
It does mention questions about how severe the cases of COVID-19 are that it prevents, and whether it can reduce transmission of the virus. Also, there are questions about effectiveness in subgroups like the elderly. Obviously, how long immunity lasts is another question that cannot be determined yet.
This is from a childhood friend who participated in the Moderna trial
He posted this on fb this evening,
"The first shot is 100 mg and the second a month later is 150 mg. The only side effects I had with the first shot (100 mg) was strong arm pain around the injection site and underarm gland pain for about four or five days. However, the second shot (150 mg) caused me to have some slight dizziness, body fatigue, some chills, and some serious head aches for a few days ā unlike any headaches I had ever experienced before.
Despite these side affects, I feel so blessed to be the part of the 50% who received the actual injection. Last week, I received an antibody showing that I had the identical Covid-19 antibodies in my system created by my vaccine that I would have had if I had actually been sick with Covid in the recent past."
This is was his response to my question about the trial.
āModerna does not tell the patient whether or not they received the placebo or the actual vaccine. I found out I had the actual Covid (IGG) antibodies last week when I had an antibody test done on my own at a local urgent care centerā¦ which is exactly 5 weeks after my second shotā.
Just a note ā the Pfizer vaccine needs to be shipped and stored at ultra-low temperatures ( -94 Fahrenheit) which will present some significant logistical challenges if and when it is approved. Not to diminish the good news in any way, but it is going to put some constraints on availability. Some info about that here: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coronavirus-vaccine-distribution-storage-financial-needs/
Ha, I was about to ask how he knew he had the shot after seeing your first post ;-). I would imagine the participants were asked NOT to do what your friend didāthis is very much intended to be a blind trial. If people know that they had the shot, it can affect their behavior (they may feel invincible and attend parties and gatherings without masks more, etc) which can screw up the results. And if people like your friend all post about their experience and side effects, the people who do not get the same reaction may (perhaps rightly) all assume they had placebo, and stay holed up in their houses because they feel unprotected, so that group may not get exposed to the virus equally. I wonder if he had to sign something saying he would not test for antibodies, and if he just blatantly ignored that. Itās irritating to me to see someone mess with the blindness before itās time for reveal. Oh well.
Did you watch the 60 Minutes episode yesterday on this topic? It showed the incredible work being done on distribution, interviewing the general in charge of distribution, the FedEx people, and others. It is definitely a huge logistical project to get the vaccine distributed, but I felt great about it after seeing the episode. It showed how they are handling the things mentioned in the article above. Also, I think the general said he had spent about $12 B so far, but expects to spend about $26 B (this is from memory, i could be off), so itās unclear to me how much the states need to pay for vs what Operation Warp Speed is paying for. Anyway, I recommend that episode, it shows the software they have developed to know exactly where every dose is and if itās been administered, etc. and a lot more. Very impressive operation!
And then there is the issue of distribution to the rest of the worldā¦https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-distribute-a-covid-19-vaccine-ethically/
Weāre a long way from ready. This is all just one of many steps.
But you can see how everyone gets excited.
Admittedly this is selfish, but Iām happy to see a vaccine on the horizon to get our kids back to college in a normal way. Iām getting the feeling that colleges will mandate that students get the vaccine to be on campus and, if the effectiveness is really 90%, life could be back to close to normal for them come fall. Bowdoinās president said as much a few weeks ago in a town hall - if thereās a vaccine then itās back to normal. Whether other people in this country take the vaccine is an issue, of course, but if students and faculty are required to take it, then it puts college life in a better spot for next school year.
Given the reaction that was described for the second shot ā āthe second shot (150 mg) caused me to have some slight dizziness, body fatigue, some chills, and some serious head aches for a few days ā unlike any headaches I had ever experienced before.ā ā I think that the trial participant knew, with or without follow up testing for antibodies
That is one general limitation with any kind of trial that relies on a placebo group --if the vaccine or drug being trialed causes a particular reaction or has strong side effects. More mild effects can also occur in the placebo group ā just the psychological effect of a placeboā but there is a tipping point at which it is pretty unmistakable that the injection has caused a reaction.
Iām not sure itās a bad thing if the vaccinated group in a trial gets careless ā I realize it throws off the data, but it also puts the vaccine to the test, similar to a challenge trial. If all the participants in a trial are also social distancing and masking, then that can lead to overly confident assessment of the vaccineās effectiveness. Though given the fact that we donāt know if the vaccine has an impact on the transmission of the virus, maybe back to normal is an unreasonable expectation in any case. We donāt want a lot of asymptomatic, vaccinated people unwittingly spreading the disease to unvaccinated people in their communities.
I have a physician friend who was part of a vaccine trial. He said he is sure he got the real thing because he had very strong side effects.
A new report in The Lancet (https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0366(20)30462-4/fulltext) finds that 20% of Covid-19 survivors received a first time diagnosis of a mental health disorder within 90 days of the initial infection.
The most common psychiatric diagnoses are: anxiety disorders (generalized anxiety disorder, adjustment disorders, post traumatic stress disorder, and panic disorder), chronic insomnia, depression, and dementia.
Researchers discovered Covid patients are significantly more likely to develop a psychiatric illness than clinically matched patients (age, sex, race, general health, pre-exisiting conditions) with 6 other acute health disorders across diagnostic spectrum (pneumonia, influenza, skin infection, cholelithesis, and fracture of a large bone).
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0366(20)30462-4/fulltext seems to work better.
It does mention that inpatient admission was associated with a higher risk of psychiatric illness, but even for those not admitted as inpatients had a higher risk with COVID-19 than other illnesses.
But there was no mention of whether being a ālong haulā COVID-19 patient was associated, even though that could plausibly be related ā if it seemed like you were now permanently sick or had a permanent disability due to COVID-19, that could plausibly result in mental health issues.
@homerdog Fauci said on CNN that we could have widespread vaccine access as early as April. Also, President Biddy Martin of Amherst College has made similar implications about life on-campus returning to normal after a vaccine comes in some of her emails to the student body. I would be shocked if students werenāt required to get a vaccine to return to campus once one is widely available.