outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

i've never met anyone who had a more than three day reaction to the vaccines/booster
i've met a few people who got taken out by a month + by covid

My neighbor told me today that both previous boosters coincided with some serious hearing loss that took weeks to resolve. He knows correlation is not causation, but his doctor nonetheless recommended against the latest vaccine for the time being.

I had a fairly mild reaction to the bivalent booster, but two weeks after that I got a not exactly mild case of Covid. Now I'm wondering if it makes any sense to get a second jab of that booster.

My wife and I got our Pfizer bivalent boosters last week and it took us down for a couple days. Still miles better than actual covid though.

Saw a story the other day saying that research indicates those with (normal) reactions to the vaccine might actually gain better immunity. Then again, I could have sworn I've seen that story multiple times over the past almost three years.

Been reading/hearing/seeing some things that at least so far studies are not showing the latest vaccine much if any more effective than its predecessors, which as far as messaging goes may partly explain the lax embrace of the current vax. They kind of have to overpromise to get/keep people motivated (iirc the bivalent was supposed to be 99.9% effective against omicron), but when they underdeliver it breeds skepticism or complacency. Maybe they should slow down a little, take their time with boosters, and release them when they have better research. If people aren't in a rush to get the boosters, then they should maybe stop rushing them out.

Anecdotally, we barely have heard of anyone around here testing positive these days (knock wood), maybe two or three we've heard about in the past few months, up to date with boosters or no. People are getting more and more used to the perpetual prospect of covid and how to handle it. Even the last public place I know to require a mask (the food pantry where I volunteer) has just gone mask optional.

All the research in the world ain't getting these people jabbed.

Re infections: yeah, it's the quietest it's been all year, maybe a three-month stretch when no one I know has gotten infected.

I never heard or thought the bivalent booster was supposed to be 99.9% effective against omicron (that seems really unrealistic!) nor have I seen anything to suggest that it's less effective than expected (which, speaking roughly, I would say means "about as effective in diminishing chance of transmission as original vax was against original strain.")

As for me, I continue to not try very hard to not get COVID (getting the bivalent booster and wearing an N95 when I'm indoors with people is about as much as I do, and I take it off to eat and drink) and to not, as far as I know, get COVID.

1 in 30 people in the UK has COVID right now

I never heard or thought the bivalent booster was supposed to be 99.9% effective against omicron (that seems really unrealistic!) nor have I seen anything to suggest that it's less effective than expected (which, speaking roughly, I would say means "about as effective in diminishing chance of transmission as original vax was against original strain.")

I recall hearing last month or so Allison Arwady, commissioner of the Chicago Department of Public Health, really playing up the bivalent vaccine as tailored specifically to omicron and highly, highly effective. Maybe she didn't say 99%, but that's what I remember. As for less effective than expected, this is what I heard yesterday:

https://www.npr.org/2022/10/25/1131449380/two-new-research-papers-cast-doubt-on-the-new-covid-booster

SUMMERS: So these new boosters are the first to target the omicron variant, and they're being promoted as providing better protection than the original shots. So what do these new studies tell us?

STEIN: Yeah, you might remember that these new boosters were authorized without any direct data about how well they work. To save time, the authorizations were based on how well shots aimed at an earlier omicron subvariant stimulated the immune system and on tests on mice. So these new studies provide the first direct data from people. Researchers at Columbia and Harvard compared how the immune systems of volunteers responded to the new bivalent boosters versus the original vaccine. Dr. David Ho at Columbia says the research suggests that the new shots may not be all that much better than the old ones.

DAVID HO: To disappointment, the bivalent vaccine did not show superiority over the original vaccine.

STEIN: About a month after getting the shots, the new boosters did not stimulate significantly higher levels of antibodies that could neutralize the omicron subvariants infecting most people right now.

xxpost I'm not just talking about the great unjabbed. Reportedly only 20 million of the 200 million now eligible for the bivalent have gotten the shot, which means tens of millions of people that *have* been vaccinated are at least holding off. And old people specifically, among those most at risk, have shown a precipitous decline in vaccination. Something like 90% got the first shots, 70% the first booster, 40% the second booster, and as of a couple of days ago just 8% had gotten the bivalent.

From that same article

STEIN: No, no. No, not at all. First of all, some researchers say the jury is still out about how effective the new boosters are. Deepta Bhattacharya at the University of Arizona says the new studies were too small and too short to reach any firm conclusions.

For sure. But by the time the jury is in we'll already be on the next vaccine/strain/virus.

Both studies were 20 people or less over a 3-5 week period and are preprints that haven't been peer reviewed.

People will only notice the headline. Good job again media

Yeah, it doesn't help. But apparently neither has the formal push for people to get the bivalent.

that was hurt by an already deep ambivalence towards more vaccines PLUS publicly known doctors like Celine Gounder who were writing op-eds suggesting maybe we shouldn't have approved this booster, hmm idk just asking questions.

It is interesting that general vaccine resistance/reluctance should reach an inflection point this far down the line. Like, what's different? Why say yes to shots one, two and three or four, but not five? The biggest factor I can see is that so many people vaxxed or not have had direct experience with covid that maybe they feel more confident. Certainly less afraid.

Most if not all the reluctance is from people who didn't get the fourth shot or even the third.

Y’all are ignoring the completely rational (yes i mean that) thought process that goes through many minds, even those of people like my husband who worked in an ER for the first two years of Covid— “these shots knock me on my ass, I am already working too hard and can’t make ends meet, i cannot afford to be knocked on my ass.” it’s not like most companies’ sick policies have changed in regards to getting the vax— hell, many companies are forcing people to return to work while they still have Covid. my husband and others who have had three shots have all expressed variations of this thinking to me, shouldn’t be that hard to understand.

table, I love you, but most of your posts are so damn condescending. Everything you wrote was valid (and correct) without your having to stick that last phrase in. I value your husband's work in medicine; most of us, including you, are not doctors. Shouldn't be that hard to understand.

Yeah I do tend to forget that there are some people who feel sick for a day from the vaccine itself!

I think a lot of people who got breakthrough infections jumped off the booster bandwagon, thinking "the hell are these things actually doing for me?!", forgetting that the primary aim of the boosters is to help minimize, not eliminate, the effects of the virus.

Not five minutes ago a lib colleague who's up to date on boosters (and got bad COVID during the Delta wave) hasn't gotten the fifth yet. No reason. She forgets. With COVID not a daily reality for many people anymore, it's just not a priority (she got her flu shot, though, so go figure).

that's what I mean, I know lots of compliant vaxxed people in no hurry this time. anecdotal for sure.

Maybe they should slow down a little, take their time with boosters, and release them when they have better research. If people aren't in a rush to get the boosters, then they should maybe stop rushing them out.

god, yes, this endless chain of strain-specific booster after strain-specific booster. why have there been so many of them, and been rushed to market so fast, well before the strains they have been designed for have started to subside?

that could neutralize the omicron subvariants infecting most people right now

why don't they just develop a booster that will update itself against variants that don't exist yet. stupid lazy scientists.

We'll just ask the scientists to put in some weekend work and redo all the vaccines, should just take a few hours

sorry for the condescension— it’s just that sometimes the guileless musings of posters here that include heavy judgment of those who don’t “just get the jab already” is really irritating. i want people to get the jab, too, but not everyone works remotely or has adequate company leave.

I went in for a boost today at my HMO (Kaiser Permanente) and they didn't have any of the fancy new boosters, or they'd just run out. So I just got another shot of the same Pfizer I got last time (I believe), as well as a flu shot which hurt quite a bit more than the vaccine. I'm not too worried about it, I think it'll do what it's supposed to do.

sorry for the condescension— it’s just that sometimes the guileless musings of posters here that include heavy judgment of those who don’t “just get the jab already” is really irritating. i want people to get the jab, too, but not everyone works remotely or has adequate company leave.

― broccoli rabe thomas (the table is the table),

all good! I hear you.

I don't really think that's what the convo was about, though? Like, there is definitely a hesitancy to get the newest booster, just as there was a hesitancy to get the original booster in the first place, and it goes well beyond people who are trying not to miss work due to not having sick leave (although yes, that does contribute to it and is an understandable reason).

the uptake of the newest booster and the previous booster are both abysmal enough to be useless at the population level - and there's a myriad of reasons. Yes, one of them being the reason you gave, but some being people who refuse to get the vaccine at all, some who are vaccine-fatigued and were ok getting one or two shots, but don't want to keep doing it, some who have been mislead by misinformation and won't be swayed no matter what you do, some who question the benefit of the booster at all, and some media outlets spreading doubt on the abilities of the booster even before any peer-reviewed articles or robust studies have been published. and also some who mistakenly think COVID is already 'endemic' and basically seasonal so who cares.

I didn't really see any shade thrown at individuals who just haven't gotten to it yet. hell, if you only recently got a non-bivalent booster two months ago or so, it wouldn't make sense to get it now.

xxxpost

I haven't gotten the booster yet because I had covid over the summer and figured that would buy me a few months, and the later I get the booster the longer it will last.

that's pretty sound. having the vid kinda like a boost in itself.

Since the bivalent booster is valid to take just two months after your previous jab, there might be a tweaked bivalent available in the new year anyway. Low takeup of the current shot means the US is likely to catch the UK’s latest wave and roll it into a Thanksgiving / Christmas surge yet again, so the more immunity anyone can add to their personal pile the better imo.

(Current bivalent at least 3 weeks before Thanksgiving is especially advisable for folks travelling then, or gathering with others who have.)

Some interesting new information about goings on at the Wuhan lab on the eve of the outbreak:

https://www.propublica.org/article/senate-report-covid-19-origin-wuhan-lab

Yea that's a no from me

It's very hard to take journalists—and thus, their work—seriously when they:

1. Misquote a source

2. Misrepresent that source's concerns that they might be misquoted

3. Refuse to correct inaccuracies, even when they are pointed out publicly https://t.co/MplvPpATbU

— Dr. Angela Rasmussen (@angie_rasmussen) October 28, 2022

And here. Just conservative politician using a committee to blame China so they can dump the blame for our government's mishandling on them

Recently I've been too busy to engage with the latest cuckoo discussions on SARS-CoV-2 origins, but I wanted to comment on the Senator Burr report that's making the rounds, especially since they use a figure I made (!) for their fig2 https://t.co/jCURIJlAtg

— Spyros Lytras (@SpyrosLytras) October 28, 2022

I think the (fairly minor) correction requested by Worobey has been added to the piece online.

This line from the article seems accurate:

The dispute over COVID-19’s origins, fought in the halls of Congress and on the web pages of scientific preprints, has become more toxic and divisive as time has passed. On Twitter, what should be scientific debate has devolved into a mosh pit of poop emojis and middle school insults. It is unclear what is driving the animus, but political advantage, egos, scientific reputations and research dollars all hang in the balance.

It is unclear what’s driving the animus? O rly?

I truly don't understand why people care about this so much

(And maybe people don't care about this so much and it just gets vocalized a lot on media; I have probably had 1000 conversations about COVID in real life and never once has the origin question come up)

I admit my interest in the question is a bit perverse, in that I’m fascinated by how certain factual questions become coded as partisan and the animus towards the “just askin’ questions” guy that comes from all sides when one of these touchy areas is needled.

One needs only look at the average account pumping the Lab Leak theory to understand what their motivations are.

It's telling that none of the leading virologists endorse the theory - the lab leak theory has been pushed by conspiracy theorists and cranks since basically the beginning of the pandemic, even when we actually had much less of a clue how it unfolded.

Not sure it’s accurate to say that all leading virologists dismiss the possibility, but I don’t have the references handy.

Conversely, you don't see these same sources that discredit the lab leak as a viable theory defending how the Chinese government handled the initial outbreak, or pushing vaccines that underwent little testing and had poor efficacy, so it isn't as if they're being Captain Save-a-China.

Lab leak theorists have since the beginning sought to cast blame on China in an attempt to hold them fiscally responsible, deflect blame away from individual countries that also mishandled the pandemic, and also incite panic that it's going to eventually evade immunity entirely.

I'm going to trust respected peers in the field over Richard Burr and non-peer reviewed preprints every time

Xpost I mean if you want to go the confirmation bias route I'm sure you could find a few rogue scientists sure

Just going to leave the same good article from May that I always do and peace from this discussion

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-lab-leak-hypothesis-made-it-harder-for-scientists-to-seek-the-truth/

Meantime: the hospital where I work at has had single digit cases for the past couple of months. Today it broke back into double digits.

I mean, China is absolutely responsible in that it never shut down the exotic animal/food markets which are a proven source of novel diseases, despite acknowledging this was needed and claiming they had done so. But yet again its almost certainly a case of corruption, laziness and stupidity, not some high-tech conspiracy.

Mike Davis RIP totally called it when he wrote years ago that capitalism had created conditions that made a disastrous pandemic all but inevitable (and likely to increase in frequency); in that respect the origin matters, particularly given those conditions have if anything been exacerbated since covid, but I’m not too bothered about the details or even the where. The next outbreak seems likely to happen in china but per MD it could just as easily happen in the slums of Kenya or at a kfc chicken farm

I appreciated that Scientific American link. That is a good discussion of the perennial popularity of conspiracy theories, and certainly it's fair to say that the lab-leak theory has its share of nutty proponents. However, buried towards the end of the article is this: "Plausible routes for a lab origin do exist—but they differ from the engineering-based hypotheses that most lab-leak rhetoric relies on. The lab in Wuhan could be a relay point in a zoonotic chain in which a worker became infected while sampling in the field or being accidentally contaminated during an attempt to isolate the virus from a sample." So they are redefining "lab leak" hypothesis to include only the engineered virus scenario, however, I would say that if a lab worker became infected from a virus they were working on, that is also a "lab leak" scenario. Perhaps our disagreement is mainly a matter of definition.