outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

Effectiveness in what sense? Protection against catching it, or protection against serious illness (hospitalization) and death? Because I could have sworn I read/heard that the current vaccines are likely still effective against Omicron when it comes to preventing hospitalization and death.

Vaccines have always been about protecting against serious illness and death.

These jabs, that is.

Take a look at these jabs.

They're passing in between us.

They're the only three I got

Effectiveness in what sense?

That was my first thought, too. Presenting those numbers, that chart and that brief explanation in such an info-limited format as a tweet requires a whole load of background knowledge be present before you could interpret it correctly. It was practically begging to be misunderstood by the average lay reader.

Limiting spread is definitely a part of the vaccination goal, and I think underplaying that when it's been fairly successful has been a major messaging flaw. It may not be as effective either omicron, we don't really know yet, but we shouldn't give up on that goal.

It literally says "symptomatic infection" right next to Vaccine Effectiveness

These estimates keep in mind are not based on real world data (hence the word estimate). I've seen other estimates with lower estimates for boosted.

Kall is a reliable source though, was just reading her last night.

Honesty 75% against symp infection for boosted would be pretty great considering the mutations

What does "symptomatic infection" mean? Does that mean everything from the sniffles to serious trouble breathing?

It literally says "symptomatic infection" right next to Vaccine Effectiveness

yes, sure ,but "symptomatic" can mean anything from some sniffles and feeling abnormally tired up to dying and "effectiveness" doesn't explain who qualified to be among the individuals who made up the subjects, so that seeing "30%" we would also know who the other 70 members of the group of 100 included, whether the subject group was "all humans" or "healthy adults between 20 and 50 spending X hours per week in environments filled with the omicron contagion", or some other set of criteria.

Correction, this VE estimate IS based on some real world data.

That's actually reassuring but only for the boosted. Dying to know what it means for severe disease but obviously know why we can't calculate yet

Symptomatic infection means people who tested positive and have symptoms. It has never spoken to severity.

Yup. This data refers to symptomatic infection. This is the biggest/best/least anecdotal study I’ve seen so far. I’m not posting every tweet I see here.

The trials for authorizing use of the vaccines mostly focussed on severe illness and death (because a sniffle doesn’t justify emergency use authorization and severe symptoms are easier to detect for obvious reasons).

Symptomatic infection data is usually more useful for public health decisions since it’s to a great extent what determines whether you infect other people.

Not Kall herself, but one of the study contributors says she believes that VE against severe illness and death will hold at high levels even for 2-dosed individuals. That would tend to make sense considering how early data seems to be showing the rate of severe disease is lower at this point of Omicron than it was for Delta in SA - they either had prior infection from a different strain (majority) or possibly had vaccine (less folks) and have some but not complete protection, but at least are going to avoid the worst of it.

however, still not known "for sure". but such guesses aren't made purely from the gut, either. it's based on extrapolating what we saw in other variants with some form of immune escape.

frankly, this is good news compared to what was feared, as it should at least temporarily shut up the doomsayers who are saying basically we're back to March 2020 now. that is bullshit, we are not, which doesn't mean it's bad, because it is, but if we were back to square one with *this* strain, we would have to begin digging mass graves on every street corner right now.

(fully aware in some countries, this WAS a necessity, but it'd be a necessity pretty much everywhere)

Symptomatic infection data is usually more useful for public health decisions

I'm sure that is true. My only point was that for the vast numbers of us who have no background in epidemiology and are not tasked with making public health decisions, the only piece of information I can safely derive from the tweet and chart is that if you have had two doses of mRNA vaccine followed by a booster, then you are better protected from omicron than others who have not.

Since this extremely simple bit of information is much easier to convey in the extremely simple terms I just used, then unless you provide all the necessary concomitants for interpreting the extra information in the chart and numbers, we non-experts who read that tweet are very likely to make incorrect guesses about what those numbers mean. And then, we're likely to pass along our misinterpretations to others in a game of telephone, where the information gets even further garbled.

little more on the speculative side but I enjoy John Burns-Murdoch's statistical analysis of what's being seen in SA currently, and he's spent a lot of time talking to scientists and medical teams there in addition to statistical analysis.

long-thread, skip if you hate those

NEW thread: data show South Africa’s Omicron wave is resulting in less severe disease and death than past waves, though health officials say it’s too early to be sure, and severe outcomes will continue to climb.

Story by me, @jsphctrl, @mroliverbarnes: https://t.co/32sIrIQQ8M pic.twitter.com/6DClwASKVi

— John Burn-Murdoch (@jburnmurdoch) December 10, 2021

Christ. Aimless, it may surprise you to learn that sharing information with you is not the author of that tweet’s main job.

more thorough data which doesn't tell us much but still interesting to me to keep an eye on

18. Summary:
1. The nr of new #COVID19 cases are on a sharp increase and so is the test positivity rate
2. % of younger admissions = changing (becoming a smaller % of total admissions)
3. No signals of more severe disease
4. Most hospital admissions = unvaccinated people pic.twitter.com/vf6zlcf0Bo

— Mia Malan (@miamalan) December 10, 2021

58,194 Covid cases in the UK today: the highest number of cases reported since 9 January, when there were 59,937.

Another 120 deaths within 28 days of a positive test have also been recorded.

Christ. Aimless, it may surprise you to learn that sharing information with you is not the author of that tweet’s main job.

Try to chill, ok? Writing tweets is probably not that author's main job either. I'm just guessing here, but I'd say it's probably not even the recommended way of communicating important parts of recent studies to her colleagues. Tweeting is tempting, because it is easy and swift, but it can bring unintended consequences as tweets ricochet around the twittersphere.

I'm also NGL— Twitter sucks, and epidemiology/Covid expert Twitter is also bad.

Twitter is bad.

that individual tweet is an accurate summary of a chart, and posted in a thread that is an accurate summary of a 42 page PDF published by the UK government. if you would prefer, you can read the PDF.

the fact that it was posted on twitter dot com is not really relevant, although if the medium bothers you that much then you can set up your ad blocker to block embedded tweets.

I'm just a little tired of this thread being a stream of tweets that are either "this looks bad" or "wow okay this looks okay" or "we're totally doomed" accompanied by incomprehensible charts and epidemiological jargon.

The Omicron outbreak in SA with its extraordinary fast rise, and apparently nearly equally fast fall, is one of the most mind-boggling things I've ever seen during my career as an infectious disease epidemiologist.
2/

— Prof Francois Balloux (@BallouxFrancois) December 11, 2021

Diseases are unlikely to act like that. Data gathering anomalies often look like that.

BREAKING: We have no idea what's going on

Talked about in the responses. But it's 100k worth of tests, don't know how much the delays would add to that xp

Wow looks bad

BREAKING: We have no idea what's going on

― Muad'Doob (Moodles), Saturday, December 11, 2021 1:56 PM (eleven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Nevertheless, here is a multi-part tweet because I need to keep my engagement up or everyone will forget about me.

the thing is that prior waves DIDN'T look like that at this point of the data gathering.

positivity rate decreased significantly despite number of tests skyrocketing. that is..not usual for a wave that only just begun.

Nevertheless, here is a multi-part tweet because I need to keep my engagement up or everyone will forget about me.

― ma dmac's fury road (PBKR), Saturday, December 11, 2021 2:11 PM bookmarkflaglink

you keep making this tedious point here, and it's gone from mildly annoying to rage-inducing.

just stfu if you're not gonna read it

like you write these takes about actual reasoned posts from actual experts and make it sound like they're just out to grift, and I'm sorry but it's not a terribly far distant cousin from "what do scientists really know about COVID anyway?"

prior waves DIDN'T look like that at this point of the data gathering

there is obviously something anomalous about this data. that's about as far as you can go until it has been more carefully vetted. immediately concluding that omicron acts like no other infectious disease seems premature. the tweet itself calls this apparent behavior "mind-boggling".

I think he's more thinking out loud there, and is noting that confounders have already been considered.

in either case though....i'm going to wait for the next major publication on the matter (a la the one caek posted)

Yeah it's just an aside from his experience.

which he appropriately hedged by calling it an 'apparently fast fall'

Yes, it's not certain, day-to-day and hour-to-hour tweets to read at your leisure, deal with it

people are really testy on ile today

'today'?

dudes being dudes

Let’s say this true about the fast fall, idg how that is bad…?

how that is bad…?

the heightened fear of omicron seems to have kicked up US levels of vaccination, but if that fear disappears, then so does that extra motivation to get vaccinated. so, it would be a very bad thing.

^joek btw

Don't think he meant it was bad per se, just puzzling

there has to be something more fulfilling than armchair quarterbacking other people's attitudes to tweets

A very recommended read

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/12/09/opinions/infectious-disease-expert-warned-covid-19-deaths-bergen/index.html