outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

^I believe this is normally called "trolling".

Named for Gustave Troll, a French phrenologist and companion of Verlaine's.

^I believe this is normally called "trolling".

― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Friday, 11 February 2022 bookmarkflaglink

I believe you are farting again.

projection is pretty amazing stuff

I lucid dreamed a fart

-Maynard James Keenan

jfc

Pfizer-BioNTech & @US_FDA have shelved the idea of authorizing #Covid vaccine for children under 5 before having data on the 3rd dose. https://t.co/epi2kW65OZ

— Helen Branswell (@HelenBranswell) February 11, 2022

well, science!

everybody gets justifiably nervous when it comes to little kids and no one wants to be the fall guy if something goes wrong

early february: let's announce a plan to publicly review the data so far on feb 15
feb 11: hang on

great stuff

correct thread

Great. So my 18-month-old can’t get a vaccine Pfizer themselves say is safe & effective.

This would be like saying nobody can get vaccinated with 2 doses because 3 may be better & we’re still testing that.

Unacceptable & frankly no group that can vote would have to deal w/this https://t.co/2ijepAZh3v

— Govind Persad (@GovindPersad) February 11, 2022

also correct thread

Honestly fuck the FDA

— Joel Wertheimer (@Wertwhile) February 11, 2022

Jesus, just an absolute disaster of handling this. Awful.

correct https://emilyoster.substack.com/p/no-pediatric-vaccine-review-for-now

I cannot emphasize strongly enough what a complete messaging and public relations fiasco this is. Whether it is appropriate to approve the vaccine at this phase or not, I cannot say. What I can say with 100% certainty is that this is about the worst possible way the process could have been run.

while i value and enjoy the condescension reflex among certain posters, if you take the time to look into the details here, it's very bad.

That's an excellent post and educational.

the final "What do I do now?" section is all correct and good advice, but the penultimate paragraph glosses over the fact that the thing that is holding most parents back is not fear for their kids safety (or even care for their community). it's the mitigation policies in place at daycares which, rightly or wrongly, mean a "return to normal" is not possible because it's against the rules. vaccination is a big deal not because we'll all suddenly feel a lot safer, but because it's presumed to be the path to loosening restrictions.

fun fact: my kids are not allowed to daycare for 10 days if they travel outside LA county.

btw they were supposed to meet to discuss the data on tuesday, but they were supposed to release the data today. that's how late this change is.

So is Persad advocating that the FDA authorize the Pfizer vaccine for 6 mos. - 2 years, where efficacy has been shown? Or is he saying they should authorize for 6 mos. - 5 years, even though Pfizer says efficacy has not been shown, with 2 shots, for 2-4 year olds?

i think persad is advocating it be approved immediately at this dose for all under 5s.

the heavily trailed results (which are what caused the FDA to *ask* pfizer to submit while the trial for the third dose was WIP) are:

*efficacy* has not been shown at any age range. the goal of an immunobridging trial is to demonstrate safety and antibodies. they found levels comparable to vaccinated teenagers in 6m-2, but lower levels in 2-4. the lower levels were still higher than naive 2-4. there were no safety issues. it sounds like the omicron wave gave them a bit more efficacy data than expected but not enough for a strong result (which is not needed for approval).

i guess reasonable people can disagree about what the FDA should have recommended on tuesday, given what we know about the current data. that in itself is a pretty big clue that maybe the FDA shouldn't have encouraged pfizer to submit in this extremely unusual way. maybe then they wouldn't have announced a confidence boosting two month postponement on the day the data was supposed to be released.

good stuff from ed yong as per

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2022/02/covid-pandemic-immunocompromised-risk-vaccines/622094/

🚨I wrote about immunocompromised people—what they’ve been through, their frustrations, and their hopes.

This is a plea to think about those who don’t get to be done with the pandemic, and to prioritize them as a matter of moral and medical urgency. 1/https://t.co/DBI6ssL1a5

— Ed Yong (@edyong209) February 16, 2022

Posted this to the other thread, but early reports on child long covid symptoms largely lacked controls, and controlled studies are increasingly suggesting it's not a big worry (albeit we can't 100% know if there's some down the road effect lurking)

https://www.statnews.com/2022/02/14/controlled-studies-ease-worries-widespread-long-covid-kids/?fbclid=IwAR0Tv2MEJq0ume-UThpLNwQH5RrVXaNILeLLDAQdJOqcjjV-Hxu8hauhuE0

What I find so confusing is that people mean REALLY DIFFERENT things by "long COVID," ranging from "I still felt overtired a month later" to "I am disabled to the point of not being able to work and likely will be for life"

Definitely. "Long COVID" is a misleading term because it sounds like some kind of long-lasting virus. It is in fact just a collection of symptoms. No one actually has "Long COVID," they have a two-month persistent cough caused by COVID, or a month of fatigue caused by COVID, or six months of anosmia caused by COVID, all of which are different. And in some cases it's just correlation, not causation, which is why the controls are so important (not to mention that a lot of early reports relied on surveys where there was no actual confirmation of COVID, and prolonged symptoms seemed to be higher in self-reported COVID vs test-proven COVID).

No one actually has "Long COVID," they have a two-month persistent cough caused by COVID, or a month of fatigue caused by COVID, or six months of anosmia caused by COVID, all of which are different.

Or they have permanent disability, which is really different!

promise this isn't the beginning of tweet diarrhea from me again. it's been a while, indulge me.

anyway, of course CNN picked up on a pre-print today about BA.2 subvariant of Omicron being 'more pathogenic' than BA.1 (original Omicron), which was done in a lab study with hamsters, and as of yet doesn't really match real world observation.

that isn't what i'm sharing, but rather, sharing real world data talking about what South Africa knows about BA.2 vs BA.1.

I now am retiring for 3 months as per my contract.

[Thread] 1. How fast is BA.2 (a subvariant of the #Omicron variant) spreading in SA and is it making people sicker than BA.1 (the original form of #Omicron)?

Cheryl Cohen, @nicd_sa: pic.twitter.com/59Nd1hlATJ

— Mia Malan (@miamalan) February 16, 2022

Definitely. "Long COVID" is a misleading term because it sounds like some kind of long-lasting virus. It is in fact just a collection of symptoms. No one actually has "Long COVID," they have a two-month persistent cough caused by COVID, or a month of fatigue caused by COVID, or six months of anosmia caused by COVID, all of which are different.

please don't post shit like this

for anyone reading this who has long covid, apologies for this, we all know it's wrong but we put up with it because our world is horrible

you're right it is all those things

plus a whole lot of other things

it's the kind of thing that may be technically accurate, in the same way that i can technically be accurate about a lot of things and reduce them down to a list of things that seems logical and minimal, reducing their actual pain to a taxonomy even when the real thing is every fucking shade of hue in the RGB, it's not about accuracy it's about the whole operation

you're right. It was insensitive of me. You are a good soul.

i don't like the downplaying of covid but i didn't need to go on like that, sorry. it says more about me than it does about you.

i think it's hard because obviously people who have been more directly affected by covid, physically, should probably not read this thread or other similar conversations on the internet. i think it's normal for people to speak of things in a matter of fact way, at an arm's length. i think you can do that if you have distance from the physical reality of the thing, or you can do that if you've mastered your emotions and dealing with trauma. i'm neither of those. i have told myself not to read this thread so many times.

at the same time, i also think it's normal for people affected by some kind of trauma to be drawn to it like moths to a flame

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/21/health/covid-vaccine-antibodies-t-cells.html

this was hopeful!

yeah at last

that's in line with what I'd heard too, re: "diminishing returns on boosters". also Apoorva is good.

definitely the type of article i needed to read today so thanks

how you feeling?!

i'm good. turns out it was a false positive after all, ten tests later. guessing maybe I had an abortive infection, a thing I only just learned about in the last week (where i was exposed but it never took hold).

which is good cos taht means the folks are doing well as well. :)

was your false positive a PCR?

yes, but a home PCR test (Lucira). so yours truly coulda fucked it up. lol...

the official test my study did and confirmed in a lab (taken last Thursday) came back negative - they confirmed with me this morning. they also checked for other viruses like RSV etc and found nothing.

I guess they happen (FPs), but they rarely happen to me.

well...except on this borad

A friend tested positive using a PCR yesterday (test taken on Monday morning). Not a single symptom, she said. Then she got a rapid PCR yesterday an hour before learning the results of the first....negative lol.

I.e. she tested negative with the second one. Now she wonders if she got a false positive the first time.

ugh. one thing that is possible is that both brands of PCRs have different 'cycle' cutoffs for a positive result. a 'cycle' being a cycle of amplification to the original sample to detect the viral RNA.

Lots of tests have cycle cutoffs that are above the level that would likely result in infectious disease, and there's no standard that all tests abide by - it's up to the testmakers themselves. so if it took 38 cycles to find the presence of viral RNA, and one test's cutoff was 40 cycles, the other 37, one test might pop positive, the other might not.

that's just a theory. either that or her immune system fought off the virus and it never took hold.

she might wanna try an antigen test in a day or two. the guidance around this isn't real clear, admittedly. they usually just tell you to trust the positive, but that's understandable, because the idea is that if you take two tests, and one is positive, and one is negative, you can't easily tell which one was wrong,and going back and living your life is like playing roulette a bit. If a series of tests over several days routinely come back negative (PCR or antigen), that would seem to suggest to me that it was a false positive.

(obv I'm not a doctor or scientist so these are just layman guesses and might be hilariously wrong) - should just write that after all my posts

Yeah, I advised her to go with antigen tests for a couple cycles if she suspects a PC -- we know now how well PCRs pick up dead viral residue in the nose.

PC = FP

i still want to do an antibody test to see if I maybe had it and didn't know it sometime in the past.

I got one done as part of my blood tests in December 2020 a couple weeks before testing became widespread. Reassuring.

ooof

Newly emerging data suggest the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid vaccine works substantially less well at preventing infection and hospitalizations in children aged 5 to 11 than it does in those aged 12 to 17 — a finding that is raising questions about whether the companies chose the wrong dose for the younger children.

https://www.statnews.com/2022/02/28/pfizer-covid-vaccine-kids-5-11/

How often are kids 5-11 hospitalized for covid?

ok socrates.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzzYxTPYAcA