I saw the Pfizer news earlier today. I am not surprised but don't love it. We are never going to get higher vaccine compliance than we are right now. If people need one every year it's going to be a hard sell just like it is with the flu shot. Also. If people need a booster shot as soon as say December how does that work? Many other countries won't even be done with round one yet.
ETA:
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Could get messy, too, with young kids not even eligible yet. SO much progress has been made and I am truly amazed by what we have accomplished but some of these hurdles just make me want to give up.
wambam, how are you feeling? We got our shots at, like, the exact same time yesterday. My arm is *barely* sore this morning, like only if I press on it hard. It wasn't at all yesterday and I was getting paranoid that the guy didn't actually give me the vaccine or something. I feel a little shitty today, but I'm 99% sure that's from all of the crying yesterday and grief and terrible night's sleep I got. I hope you're feeling ok!
Thank you for asking! I had a headache that started yesterday in the late afternoon and lasted until about noon today. I am that deep kind of tired you feel when you’re sick. But no fever and no nausea so that’s good!
I saw the Pfizer news earlier today. I am not surprised but don't love it. We are never going to get higher vaccine compliance than we are right now. If people need one every year it's going to be a hard sell just like it is with the flu shot. Also. If people need a booster shot as soon as say December how does that work? Many other countries won't even be done with round one yet.
ETA:
@@@@@
Could get messy, too, with young kids not even eligible yet. SO much progress has been made and I am truly amazed by what we have accomplished but some of these hurdles just make me want to give up.
And if we see this high plateau of cases each day, that does not bode well either. Fingers crossed we start seeing dramatic declines soon.
Velar Fricative, cases are falling pretty dramatically in several places. My city is one of them. We aren't seeing it a national level though which I do find pretty surprising.
I had someone tell me today that they won’t get the vaccine because when you get the vaccine you only have a life expectancy of another 10 years. I talk up the vaccine as much as possible but I didn’t even know how to respond to that.
I had someone tell me today that they won’t get the vaccine because when you get the vaccine you only have a life expectancy of another 10 years. I talk up the vaccine as much as possible but I didn’t even know how to respond to that.
Wow. Sometimes I think the only response to stuff like that is to ask for a source so you can read it yourself. (With emphasis on an actual source of information, not just someone writing about what they read/heard.) Then once you know that, you can move forward. Sometimes people that far out are more willing to listen if they feel like you’re listening to them, too.
But also, there are people who are a lost cause and not worth your energy on this. You could change 10 minds with less energy than it would take for them to even budge.
Velar Fricative, cases are falling pretty dramatically in several places. My city is one of them. We aren't seeing it a national level though which I do find pretty surprising.
There was an interesting article about who is getting sick these days, specifically in Michigan, the current epicenter. Hospitalizations are declining in the 60+ crowd, but increasing among younger adults (which makes sense since many states expanded eligibility for vaccines relatively recently. I think your state was one of the earlier ones to expand to everyone 16+, which might be skewing your perception a bit.) Hospitalizations are also hitting a record high among @@@children, who of course can’t be vaccinated yet. /@@@
And then if you think of some of the largest groups not yet vaccinated — either because of access or hesitancy — it’s the same vulnerable communities (disproportionately low-income, disproportionately POC) that have been hardest hit by this pandemic in general.
Separately, I also think there could be some seasonality to this virus. The states getting hit now are almost exactly the ones that got hit hardest during the 2020 spring wave; there’s really not much correlation between case rates and vaccination rates if you look at tracking sites like CovidActNow. And if that’s the case, I’m bracing myself for what the summer could look like in my state, the first time we saw a surge last year.
Velar Fricative , cases are falling pretty dramatically in several places. My city is one of them. We aren't seeing it a national level though which I do find pretty surprising.
There was an interesting article about who is getting sick these days, specifically in Michigan, the current epicenter. Hospitalizations are declining in the 60+ crowd, but increasing among younger adults (which makes sense since many states expanded eligibility for vaccines relatively recently. I think your state was one of the earlier ones to expand to everyone 16+, which might be skewing your perception a bit.) Hospitalizations are also hitting a record high among @@@children, who of course can’t be vaccinated yet. /@@@
And then if you think of some of the largest groups not yet vaccinated — either because of access or hesitancy — it’s the same vulnerable communities (disproportionately low-income, disproportionately POC) that have been hardest hit by this pandemic in general.
Separately, I also think there could be some seasonality to this virus. The states getting hit now are almost exactly the ones that got hit hardest during the 2020 spring wave; there’s really not much correlation between case rates and vaccination rates if you look at tracking sites like CovidActNow. And if that’s the case, I’m bracing myself for what the summer could look like in my state, the first time we saw a surge last year.
I think seasonality definitely plays a hand in this, but I truly hope that while we may not be seeing the huge downward trend we'd love to see from our vaccination efforts quite yet, that by summer we should be able to hold back any large surges we saw last summer.
Velar Fricative , cases are falling pretty dramatically in several places. My city is one of them. We aren't seeing it a national level though which I do find pretty surprising.
There was an interesting article about who is getting sick these days, specifically in Michigan, the current epicenter. Hospitalizations are declining in the 60+ crowd, but increasing among younger adults (which makes sense since many states expanded eligibility for vaccines relatively recently. I think your state was one of the earlier ones to expand to everyone 16+, which might be skewing your perception a bit.) Hospitalizations are also hitting a record high among @@@children, who of course can’t be vaccinated yet. /@@@
And then if you think of some of the largest groups not yet vaccinated — either because of access or hesitancy — it’s the same vulnerable communities (disproportionately low-income, disproportionately POC) that have been hardest hit by this pandemic in general.
Separately, I also think there could be some seasonality to this virus. The states getting hit now are almost exactly the ones that got hit hardest during the 2020 spring wave; there’s really not much correlation between case rates and vaccination rates if you look at tracking sites like CovidActNow. And if that’s the case, I’m bracing myself for what the summer could look like in my state, the first time we saw a surge last year.
Yeah, I noticed the same thing re: which states are being hit hardest now. Also...while cases are low in many places, more and more people are traveling now. So I do try to focus on national numbers for that reason. ETA: I don't think we will see the same summer surges because of the timing of better rollout of the vaccines, but we could see issues in places where supply is currently exceeding demand.
I feel like everything I thought I understood about vaccines was wrong. I thought the reason we have to vaccinate annually for the flu was it mutates rapidly enough that you need to be protected against the latest strain going around. And other vaccines, like whooping cough you have to get more frequently because your immune system lets go of recognizing it quicker than other diseases.
The part where I thought I understood, but apparently I didn’t, has me hesitant to look into it on my own, because I don’t know if I’ll understand it any better this time.
Post by Velar Fricative on Apr 15, 2021 20:54:00 GMT -5
Our numbers today are actually comparable to the peak of last summer’s surge, and higher than last spring. Now, last spring almost surely was undercounted in terms of cases, and possibly last summer as well to a smaller extent, but per the experts we just never managed to get cases as low as we needed to after last spring. And plateauing here just does not bode well if we see a plateauing of vaccinations.
I’m not quite as optimistic as you are but I would love to be wrong. I think deaths will decline because older people are being vaccinated in large numbers. But I think case counts will continue to surge over the summer because I’m not convinced we’ll get the vaccination rates we need.
The number of people who have expressed vaccine hesitancy is well above the number we need to achieve herd immunity.(https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2020/12/24/health/herd-immunity-covid-coronavirus.amp.html) I’m pretty skeptical that we’ll turn those numbers around, especially in three months. There could be very good reason why someone doesn’t want a vaccine, but if you leave 1/3 of the population unvaccinated (which some surveys say is number of people who will be holdouts) — AND you throw open the doors of the economy — the virus will run rampant. That’s a huge number of hosts.
And whether it’s lack of access or hesitancy, we know that vaccination rates are lower for vulnerable groups like lower income individuals and POC, and those are the same groups who are hit every wave. Life might look more normal for wealthier people, but I’m not expecting to see that reflected in national case counts.
Cases are higher now than this time last year. Yes, they were most definitely under-counted but cases now are still higher than they were over the summer and nationally hospitalizations are increasing and cases are rising.
I feel like everything I thought I understood about vaccines was wrong. I thought the reason we have to vaccinate annually for the flu was it mutates rapidly enough that you need to be protected against the latest strain going around. And other vaccines, like whooping cough you have to get more frequently because your immune system lets go of recognizing it quicker than other diseases.
The part where I thought I understood, but apparently I didn’t, has me hesitant to look into it on my own, because I don’t know if I’ll understand it any better this time.
Tl;dr - Your understanding is correct. 😂
Flu does mutate rapidly (it's an RNA virus, and they often don't have a "proofreading" function, so mutations build up and aren't corrected. Other viruses have higher fidelity). But influenza A viruses can also swap their major proteins (H and N) if an animal gets infected by two different flu viruses (so an animal co-infected with H3N2 and H5N1 could end up producing H5N2). So there are different types (influenza A, B, etc), different subtypes of influenza A (different Ns and Hs), and different strains (viruses that have mutated enough that they are distinctly different from their parent virus, but are still the same type/subtype). They have to redesign flu vaccines twice a year (once for each hemisphere) and pick the most prevalent circulating strains and hope they continue to be the most prevalent and don't mutate so much that our vaccinated immune systems won't recognize them). On the other hand, the viral proteins targeted by the measles vaccine don't work correctly if they mutate, so your immunity lasts a long time.
Covid is an RNA virus, but it does have a proofreading function, so it mutates more slowly than flu and doesn't have the problem of multiple subtypes like influenza A. Variants still arise, but slowly and without as much diversity. So boosters might be needed if new variants arise that can evade the vaccine-primed immune system. We also don't know how long immunity lasts (which is why they are still collecting data from the trials and testing boosters).
Whooping cough is a different beast because for unclear reasons, neither infections or vaccines induce super long duration of immunity. Also, the current vaccine (acellular pertussis (aP), just components, not the whole cell) doesn't produce a response as strong as the original whole-cell vaccine (but there are fewer side effects). Finally, the pertussis bacterium is slowly mutating and the targets of the vaccine are changing. The immune response to the vaccine doesn't match the circulating pathogen as well as it once did.
Sununu just lifted our mask mandate. Fuck. So many people who WANT vaccines are still waiting to get them, get a second dose, or for the two weeks post-second. He should have waited to lift it until all those who want to be vaccinated are. I hate him and his “casual conservative” attitude and his smugness. Ugh. So much for “following the science.”
I had someone tell me today that they won’t get the vaccine because when you get the vaccine you only have a life expectancy of another 10 years. I talk up the vaccine as much as possible but I didn’t even know how to respond to that.
Well, this was probably true at some point in there when we were pretty much only vaccinating old people whose life expectancy was already only another 10 years. But, um, causation... context... relevance...
I mean, life expectancy of retirees is really short too, but that's not going to stop me from retiring...
Post by Velar Fricative on Apr 16, 2021 11:29:50 GMT -5
goldengirlz, we might both be right. @@@because among the millions of unvaccinated people that will remain will be those who have been more likely to present with very mild symptoms or no symptoms at all (so, children). Cases might be high, but children are also less likely to be tested for those reasons. And if they live with fully vaccinated adults, entire households could have completely missed that at least one person had covid. In a nutshell, cases might stay high but we may never know how high because we're already seeing less testing and that won't change.
Thank you raleighnc! The last time I learned about vaccines was 8th grade science and it was all the cow pox history lesson and now we use dead viruses to make you immune, end of unit. Then we switched over to the dude with a hole in his stomach they shoved food into to watch the gastric juices work. After that I didn’t pay all that much attention because “doesn’t give you autism, makes you not die from shit (sometimes literally)” seemed like a pretty sweet deal to me.
Now it’s like “vaccines don’t work by making you immune, and also disease isn’t the thing making you sick, it’s the sickness itself, so everything we’re talking about has at least two names” and I feel like maybe we could do a better job educating on this subject. It might even be more interesting (no offense to gastric juices dude).
The two week wait has taken on a new meaning post JJ vax. Now I’m getting texts from Costco warning me about blood clot symptoms. A friend of a friend was immediately sent to the hospital yesterday after complaining of a bad headache since she recently had J&J so at least they are being super cautious.
I feel like everything I thought I understood about vaccines was
Tl;dr - Your understanding is correct. 😂
Flu does mutate rapidly (it's an RNA virus, and they often don't have a "proofreading" function, so mutations build up and aren't corrected. Other viruses have higher fidelity). But influenza A viruses can also swap their major proteins (H and N) if an animal gets infected by two different flu viruses (so an animal co-infected with H3N2 and H5N1 could end up producing H5N2). So there are different types (influenza A, B, etc), different subtypes of influenza A (different Ns and Hs), and different strains (viruses that have mutated enough that they are distinctly different from their parent virus, but are still the same type/subtype). They have to redesign flu vaccines twice a year (once for each hemisphere) and pick the most prevalent circulating strains and hope they continue to be the most prevalent and don't mutate so much that our vaccinated immune systems won't recognize them). On the other hand, the viral proteins targeted by the measles vaccine don't work correctly if they mutate, so your immunity lasts a long time.
Covid is an RNA virus, but it does have a proofreading function, so it mutates more slowly than flu and doesn't have the problem of multiple subtypes like influenza A. Variants still arise, but slowly and without as much diversity. So boosters might be needed if new variants arise that can evade the vaccine-primed immune system. We also don't know how long immunity lasts (which is why they are still collecting data from the trials and testing boosters).
Whooping cough is a different beast because for unclear reasons, neither infections or vaccines induce super long duration of immunity. Also, the current vaccine (acellular pertussis (aP), just components, not the whole cell) doesn't produce a response as strong as the original whole-cell vaccine (but there are fewer side effects). Finally, the pertussis bacterium is slowly mutating and the targets of the vaccine are changing. The immune response to the vaccine doesn't match the circulating pathogen as well as it once did.
So I’ve been hang wringing about vaccine efficacy bc I had lymphoma two years ago. The stats aren’t showing great that the vaccine works for immune compromised, specifically blood cancer survivors. Well, I just found the leukemia and lymphoma society is sponsoring a registry to check vaccine efficacy. I signed up and within 15 minutes was enrolled in the study and got my lab orders to get blood work to check my antibodies!! This is so wonderful! And helping science!!!
I know there is at least one other Hodgkins person here, sadly, I am a horrible online friend and forgot who. But PM me if you want the link.
Ontario is now going into a full lockdown for 6 weeks. Schools closed, limited playgrounds access, the works. Just like last spring. I’m crushed. I’m so mad that they didn’t start bringing in more restrictions in February and March when the numbers were trending up. Closing the playgrounds is just horrific. Like, they were open all winter when no one went there but now they are closed because people needed to eat in restaurants and go to gyms while the variants were obviously flourishing and now they are out of control.
All of my parents are getting vaccinated in the next two weeks so I am grateful for that, but this current situation is going to be disastrous to my mental health. The conservative government’s game plan is 100% pro business above other considerations now.
Post by mrsukyankee on Apr 18, 2021 11:20:10 GMT -5
That stinks aprilsails. While our 5 month winter lockdown really was tough here, I'm grateful that our numbers have come down so we can now open up a bit more.