How Is Covid-19 Impacting Life in Your City?

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

Thank you LA, for finally doing something reasonable.

Now if only the rest of the "lock down first, fuck everyone's feelings, think about it later" States will follow

Masking and shots should literally be the only thing we are doing now. No other policies are necessary. All COVID measures should immediately be halted as being burdensome and damaging.

This isn't so much something LA is doing on its own.

It's actually very complicated. CA has a fairly complex and regulated statewide system of policies on when counties can open to what degree based on criteria too complex to explain. As the article sopas ej posted states, the state is allowing LA to do what it is doing as it is allowing other counties to do similar things.

But it is even more Byzantine than that. Gov. Gavin Newsom is fighting a recall election. A part of the criticism of him has been the complexity and rigidity of the lockdown policies he imposed. As is happening all over the country, COVID fatigue has got people angry at governments that are too restrictive and California has been one of the most restrictive. So the current relaxation and even abandonment of previous policies is something Newsom is being forced into to stay in office. He will probably succeed--unlike when Gov. Davis was recalled and replaced by Arnold Schwarzenegger, there's no big name, popular candidate selling Newsom's job. But still he seems to be running a little scared and loosening COVID restrictions is part of his strategy.

[Pedestrian]

Interesting idea:

Breed challenges San Franciscans to only patronize city's pandemic-battered small businesses
Heather Knight
April 14, 2021
Updated: April 14, 2021 8:51 a.m.

Could you go an entire month without ordering anything from Amazon? Could you ditch Safeway in favor of your corner market? Could you skip ordering food from McDonald’s and bypass Target, Costco and Walgreens?

Mayor London Breed wants you to try. On Wednesday, she’ll announce San Francisco’s Small Business 30-Day Challenge. Starting May 1, she’ll encourage city residents to patronize only small businesses and restaurants and to avoid big chains and corporations.

Get your quarter-pounder at Beep’s instead of Burger King. Buy your pie from Pizzeria Delfina instead of Pizza Hut. Pay Bookshop West Portal, not Jeff Bezos, when you want to tear through the latest bestseller.

The challenge is geared toward making city residents think twice when spending their money, and to spotlight our beloved, character-filled local shops and restaurants. These businesses have suffered greatly during the COVID-19 pandemic and need all the customers they can get if they’re going to survive.

The Opportunity Insights Economic Tracker, a project of Harvard and Brown universities and the Gates Foundation, found that small businesses nationwide have seen their revenue drop 32.5% since January 2020. By comparison, San Francisco small businesses lost 56% of revenue, with only small businesses in a few cities, including Boston and New York, losing more. It is likely that San Francisco’s early shutdown and continued business restrictions saved many lives, but also harmed the local economy more than in cities without widespread restrictions.

The same tracker found there are 50.3% fewer small businesses in San Francisco open now compared to January 2020, though it’s unclear how many of those closures are permanent. That was also among the worst of American cities.

“We’ve done a lot, but of course it’s not nearly enough to keep everyone in business,” Breed said, noting she’s pledged $75 million in small business relief through grants, loans and fee waivers. She said she’s also ecstatic about the prospect of parklets outside businesses lasting permanently . . . .

https://www.sfchronicle.com/local/he...y-16098770.php

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

You really are getting confused.

I'm saying the same thing that you are.

Sorry, I know that being scared of COVID is becoming a rather fun pet project for you, but COVID is NOT EVOLVING into something that is more deadly for the young.

When you save the older people from dying, then the only people left to die are younger people. So even though younger people are still REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY unlikely to die, they are the only people left getting Covid, and when the virus is spreading to tens/hundreds of millions of them, they are like 90% of the deaths now. Simple common sense and grasping of statistics reveals this.

There seems to be a certain desperation setting in here over hearing what people don't want to hear and their only response is agism and ad hominem attacks.

The fact is that there is considerable speculation, and I admit it IS speculation so far, that certain of the newer virus variants do have more of predilection to infecting younger people and making them sicker.

The CDC says this COVID variant is now the most dominant. And it hits younger people.
BY
DAVID Z. MORRIS AND SY MUKHERJEE
April 7, 2021 3:55 PM MST

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) on Wednesday pointed to the so-called U.K. variant of the coronavirus as the leading cause of new COVID cases in the U.S. And it's hitting younger Americans, including those in their 30s and 40s, the hardest.

"The B.1.1.7 variant is now the most common lineage circulating in the United States," said CDC director Rochelle Walensky during a briefing this afternoon, referring to the scientific name for that particular strain of the coronavirus.

"Trends are increasing in both case numbers and hospitalizations," Walensky said, citing day care centers and youth sports as the progenitors of newly reported outbreaks.

. . . this variant of the coronavirus appears to be hitting people who may be too young to be eligible for a vaccine dose yet.

It's unclear exactly what the age breakdown is when it comes to this variant strain, since the situation is in flux and information is still trickling in. But there have been more than 16,000 confirmed cases of this particular variant, according to the CDC, which led Walensky to urge caution and distancing measures when it comes to youth sports and indoor gatherings . . . .

https://fortune.com/2021/04/07/the-c...ounger-people/

Covid-19: Brazil’s spiralling crisis is increasingly affecting young people
BMJ 2021; 373 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.n879 (Published 01 April 2021)

. . . experts have warned that covid-19 is now affecting young Brazilians worse than ever before. Doctors treating covid-19 patients have reported that more young people are being admitted to their hospitals in the current wave of cases. Their observations are being corroborated by a series of new studies looking at infection and mortality rates in Brazil.

Covid-19 cases among people in their 30s, 40s, and 50s are up by 565%, 626%, and 525% respectively since the beginning of January, says the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz),3 a research institute attached to Brazil’s Ministry of Health. The comparatively lower increase in the overall population “suggests a shift to younger age groups,” it concluded in a bulletin published on 26 March.

Raphael Guimarães, an epidemiologist at Fiocruz, has said that cases in the younger population have likely increased because they are less able to practice social distancing and thus run a higher risk of getting infected when the virus is prevalent.

More transmissible
Covid-19 cases have soared throughout Brazil in the past month and have been attributed to the spread of P.1, which is estimated to be 1.4-2.2 times more transmissible than previous variants.4

Growing evidence shows that young people are not only more likely to get infected with P.1 but also to die from it, some experts have warned. The Brazilian Association of Intensive Care Medicine said that the number of 18-45 year olds requiring intensive care for covid-19 in February to March this year was three times greater than in September to November 2020,5 and coronavirus related deaths in that age group have almost doubled.

Maragareth Portela, a senior researcher at Fiocruz, said that Brazil’s saturated hospitals could partly explain the higher mortality rates, as patients were less likely to survive if beds and equipment were short and staff were overwhelmed.

Yet the increase is higher in regions where P.1 is more prevalent, suggesting that it is not only more transmissible but also more lethal. “It is very likely that the P.1 variant is more severe among young adults,” said Portela.

The case of Manaus, the capital of Brazil’s Amazonas region where the P.1 variant first emerged in November 2020—causing hospitals to collapse and moralities to soar—also points to P.1 being more lethal.

A preliminary study, which compared case fatality rates in Manaus’s first wave of cases in April to May 2020 with the second wave in January 2021, found that deaths among people aged 20-39 were 2.7 times higher in the second wave than in the first. In the general population they were only 1.15 times higher.

“If overload was the reason for the increase in the case fatality rate, it would be reasonable to expect that the increase would be similar for different ages and genders,” said André Ricardo, epidemiologist at the Leopoldo Mandic School of Medicine in São Paulo and one of the study’s authors. “P.1 appears to be more lethal among young men and women than the original strain.”

https://www.bmj.com/content/373/bmj.n879

Now urban political and the rest who are in denial that this virus may be evolving in ways they aren't happy to see should probably start looking at research and facts rather than inside their own stubborn heads.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by 10023

I know you’re obsessed with the idea that it’s “not just us old folks” who are at risk from Covid, but statistically that is the case. Give it a rest.

When you stop pretending you are invulnerable and governments should let people like you do as you wish no matter whom it puts at risk.

What I posted just above doesn't compare Brazil to other countries so it's relatively young population is irrelevant. It compares what's happening now with the new virus variant with what happened previously in Brazil. And Brazil hasn't vaccinated enough residents old or young to explain the difference either. It's Brazilian scientists who are saying they believe the new variant is more dangerous to younger people but you and the rest of the COVID fatigue brigade seem in denial as much as ever.

[the urban politician]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

There seems to be a certain desperation setting in here over hearing what people don't want to hear and their only response is agism and ad hominem attacks.

The fact is that there is considerable speculation, and I admit it IS speculation so far, that certain of the newer virus variants do have more of predilection to infecting younger people and making them sicker.


https://fortune.com/2021/04/07/the-c...ounger-people/


https://www.bmj.com/content/373/bmj.n879

Now urban political and the rest who are in denial that this virus may be evolving in ways they aren't happy to see should probably start looking at research and facts rather than inside their own stubborn heads.

^ Nothing you are posting suggests anything that even remotely hints that new variants of the COVID are suddenly taking a "chill pill" on the 65 and older crowd and are now becoming more deadly for younger people.

It's not the case, and you will never find such evidence. In your own words, you are "speculating", and your speculation is way off.

What is happening is:

1. The elderly are isolating themselves more (here and in Brazil) and thus spreading and getting the virus less
2. The elderly are getting far more vaccine than younger people
3. Brazil's population skews young
4. The variants spread more rapidly, and because of #1-3 above, you are seeing a higher proportion of hospitalized and dying people being younger.

This is so easy to comprehend, give me a break, Pedestrian.... Nothing to see here, lets move on....

[the urban politician]

Data:

People over 65: Majority vaccinated
People under 65: Only a small proportion vaccinated

Therefore, deaths and hospitalizations from COVID are gradually skewing younger

How a silly person who isn't thinking interprets this:

Gosh, George....lookee here, it seems like dat dere virus is starting to kill us young folk, gosh it must be dem new variants!

How anybody with a noggin on their shoulders interprets this:

Hmmmm, the vaccine is working. The variants are spreading faster and through younger people, and killing some of them. Fewer old people getting ill and dying. Thank God for the vaccine! Lets get those young people vaccinated!

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

Data:

People over 65: Majority vaccinated
People under 65: Only a small proportion vaccinated

Therefore, deaths and hospitalizations from COVID are gradually skewing younger

How a silly person who isn't thinking interprets this:

Gosh, George....lookee here, it seems like dat dere virus is starting to kill us young folk, gosh it must be dem new variants!

How anybody with a noggin on their shoulders interprets this:

Hmmmm, the vaccine is working. The variants are spreading faster and through younger people, and killing some of them. Fewer old people getting ill and dying. Thank God for the vaccine! Lets get those young people vaccinated!

More young people dying obviously means the virus has run out of old people to infect, lol. Got it.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

^ Nothing you are posting suggests anything that even remotely hints that new variants of the COVID are suddenly taking a "chill pill" on the 65 and older crowd and are now becoming more deadly for younger people.

It's not the case, and you will never find such evidence. In your own words, you are "speculating", and your speculation is way off.
.

Tell it to the Brazilian scientists and the CDC who are saying just the opposite. It's you who lack evidence. I keep posting the opinions of others and you keep trying to refuse me with your own which are clearly just your own.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

Data:

People over 65: Majority vaccinated
People under 65: Only a small proportion vaccinated

Therefore, deaths and hospitalizations from COVID are gradually skewing younger

How a silly person who isn't thinking interprets this:

Gosh, George....lookee here, it seems like dat dere virus is starting to kill us young folk, gosh it must be dem new variants!

How anybody with a noggin on their shoulders interprets this:

Hmmmm, the vaccine is working. The variants are spreading faster and through younger people, and killing some of them. Fewer old people getting ill and dying. Thank God for the vaccine! Lets get those young people vaccinated!

The majority of the old are NOT vaccinated in other than the US and UK and a few other small countries like Israel. They are not in Brazil where I am citing research.

I think you've made your unwillingness to listen to anyone but yourself clear enough.

[the urban politician]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

More young people dying obviously means the virus has run out of old people to infect, lol. Got it.

I don't get what's funny about that. In a nutshell, it's evidence that the vaccine WORKS.

What we are observing is exactly what we would expect to happen if we targeted the over 65 crowd and vaccinated them first, all while a new and highly contagious variant is spreading through the population.

The elderly are relatively spared, while the new variant is rapidly spreading though a relatively unvaccinated and younger population.

Cases will rise and death rates will skew younger.

Everything that you'd expect to happen with a working vaccine is exactly what we are observing. What about that do you have a problem with?

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

I don't get what's funny about that. In a nutshell, it's evidence that the vaccine WORKS.

What we are observing is exactly what we would expect to happen if we targeted the over 65 crowd and vaccinated them first, all while a new and highly contagious variant is spreading through the population.

The elderly are relatively spared, while the new variant is rapidly spreading though a relatively unvaccinated and younger population.

Cases will rise and death rates will skew younger.

Everything that you'd expect to happen with a working vaccine is exactly what we are observing. What about that do you have a problem with?

Good thing you don't call yourself The Urban Mathematician, lol.

[the urban politician]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

The majority of the old are NOT vaccinated in other than the US and UK and a few other small countries like Israel. They are not in Brazil where I am citing research.

I think you've made your unwillingness to listen to anyone but yourself clear enough.

I accounted for that.

Did it never occur to you that people have adjusted their lives, and the elderly in other countries are probably staying home more? I'm pretty sure that the working young in Brazil have been out and about FAR more than the elderly have in recent months.

Sorry, but if there is any wild speculation going on, it's coming from you, not from me.

You are laughably suggesting that the new variants of COVID have decided to kill more young people than old people (good luck proving that nonsense)

I will wager you $500 that what I"m describing is a far better explanation for what we are observing

[the urban politician]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Good thing you don't call yourself The Urban Mathematician, lol.

Ok, so you've got nothing

[the urban politician]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

Tell it to the Brazilian scientists and the CDC who are saying just the opposite. It's you who lack evidence. I keep posting the opinions of others and you keep trying to refuse me with your own which are clearly just your own.

In your own words:

The fact is that there is considerable speculation, and I admit it IS speculation so far,

For the last time:

Everything we are seeing is EXACTLY what you would expect to happen if you vaccinate the elderly first, as well as if you have a younger population that is out and about and the elderly are mostly isolating themselves more

Occam's Razor

[the urban politician]

For the 'pandemic forever' porn consumers here:

U.K. variant isn't linked to more severe disease or death, study finds
The variant known as B.1.1.7 is now the dominant coronavirus strain in Europe and the U.S. Scientists say there is still much to learn about the more contagious virus.

April 12, 2021, 5:35 PM CDT
By Denise Chow
People infected with the more contagious coronavirus variant first identified in the United Kingdom did not experience more severe symptoms and were not at higher risk of death, according to a new study published Monday.

Scientists are struggling to pin down the nature of the U.K. variant, which has become the dominant strain across Europe and, as of last week, in the United States. Chief among the questions: Is the variant more deadly?

The study, published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, looked at data from last fall in the U.K., shortly after the variant was first detected. It soon spread rapidly, eventually becoming the dominant strain circulating in the country.

The new findings add to scientists' ever-evolving understanding of the U.K. variant, known as B.1.1.7, at a crucial time in the pandemic, as it and other variants are circulating widely in other countries.

Researchers looked at Covid-19 patients who were admitted to University College London Hospital and North Middlesex University Hospital from Nov. 9 to Dec. 20. The scientists sequenced virus samples from 341 patients, finding that 58 percent were positive for the U.K. variant and that 42 percent had been infected with a different strain.

The researchers then compared the severity of symptoms between the two groups and found that patients infected with the B.1.1.7 variant were not at increased risk of becoming severely ill or dying. The study zeroed in on a time when the U.K. variant was just gaining a foothold in London — and as the U.K.'s vaccination program was getting underway.

"We were able to do this real-time analysis because we were in the eye of the storm," said a lead author of the study, Dan Frampton, a bioinformatician at University College London.

The study found that samples from patients with the B.1.1.7 variant had greater quantities of virus, or higher "viral loads," but it is not yet clear why.

"One idea for why this variant is more transmissible could be that patients are making more virus," Frampton said.

He said that while the researchers did not find an association between the U.K. variant and the severity of illness, patients hospitalized with the B.1.1.7 variant at the time were more likely to be under age 60 and from ethnic minority backgrounds.

Patients with B.1.1.7 were also more likely to be given oxygen. Frampton said that was not necessarily an indication of more severe disease and that more research is needed.

"There's clearly a lot of interesting stuff to look into," he said. "We're in a much better position now to start studying what appear to be small results and go into more detail to flesh the picture out more."

There has been no consensus about the strain's virulence and lethality or whether it causes more severe illness and death.

A paper published last month in the journal Nature found that the B.1.1.7 variant may be associated with a 61 percent higher risk of death than pre-existing variants. Earlier in March, research published in The BMJ found that people over age 30 had a 64 percent higher risk of death from the U.K. variant than from earlier strains. In that study, however, the scientists said the "absolute risk of death in this largely unvaccinated population remains low."

Dr. Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in California, who was not involved with the new study, said the conflicting results show how much there is still to learn about the B.1.1.7 variant.

"The new findings don't nullify the other papers — they just make you think," he said. "Maybe the truth is somewhere in the middle. This study says there's no higher death rate, but they did find more need for oxygen, so there's something going on there with respect to this variant."

Although there have been some indications that the B.1.1.7 variant is affecting young people more than previous strains, there is not enough data to know for sure, Topol said. And it can be difficult to separate out other factors that may account for the trend.

"That's one of the tricky things about this variant epidemiology," he said. "There are a lot of moving parts — age, resources, co-existing conditions — and you can't always adjust for all of that stuff."

A variant that is more contagious is likely to mean there will be more cases among children and young people, who previously were not thought to be most vulnerable to Covid-19.

"It doesn't mean the virus is preferentially finding them. It just means we would expect to see more in younger people because, across the board, it causes higher viral loads and more spread," Topol said.

Another area that will require more research is the effect of the U.K. variant on immunity. A separate study published Monday in The Lancet Public Health examined self-reported data from nearly 37,000 people in the U.K. and found that reinfection rates were low. The findings were based on app-submitted surveillance data over 13 weeks from September to December, when the number of cases of the U.K. variant exploded in London and southeastern England.

The researchers found that only 249 out of 36,509 people of those who reported positive tests before Oct. 1, or 0.7 percent, tested positive again more than 90 days later. In other words, people who had been infected with a pre-existing variant were not at higher risk of being reinfected with the B.1.1.7 variant.

"This suggests that B.1.1.7 does not evade immunity that people develop from infection from prior strains of the disease," said a lead author of the paper, Mark Graham, a research fellow at King's College London.

Graham and his colleagues are monitoring for reinfections, particularly as bigger slices of the population in the U.K. and elsewhere become fully vaccinated. Studies have shown that the vaccines currently available offer strong protection against the U.K. variant, and Graham said long-term studies of immunity will offer more clarity about not only the B.1.1.7 strain but also other potentially worrisome variants that could arise.

"Vaccine rollout is going remarkably well in the U.K., and it's making a huge difference, but the one unknown factor that could derail this progress is new variants," he said. "Understanding how that could affect us will be hugely important."

https://www.nbcnews.com/science/scie...-finds-rcna658

[homebucket]

Most of the new variants are not more deadly, just more contagious. Now, it is possible that other new ones not fully studied yet could be more deadly but that is still unknown.

Why we're seeing younger people get infected proportionally more than older people now is because of vaccinations. I believe close to 75% of 65+ here have been vaccinated, and we know that one dose alone already achieves pretty optimal efficacy. Obviously two doses is better, but one dose is already enough to slow down the spread. Younger people who still aren't vaccinated are working, congregating, hanging out, doing what young people do, and for children, going back to school for in person learning, so that's why we're seeing more cases, proportionally to older people. Not more cases overall. Michigan is probably the exception.

[the urban politician]

^ Yep, and more infective variants tend to spread more through younger people, not older people.

The 'vaccine factor' in all of this is being ignored. When you have enough of a demographic vaccinated, it begins to impact the epidemiology of disease:

Don't worry about coronavirus variants overpowering vaccines, experts say
Alexander Nazaryan
Alexander Nazaryan·National Correspondent
Mon, April 12, 2021, 3:12 PM·5 min read


Coronavirus

Paul Offit

WASHINGTON — Over the weekend, seemingly troubling news emerged from Israel, with a study suggesting that the coronavirus vaccine manufactured by Pfizer and BioNTech was less effective against B.1.351, a variant first encountered in South Africa. One headline called the study “alarming.”

Meanwhile, two of the New York Post’s most-read stories as of Monday morning were about a 31-year-old woman in New York City who tested positive for the coronavirus three weeks after receiving the vaccine and a 52-year-old man who ended up in the hospital with COVID-19, despite having also been vaccinated.

Together, such reports in the mainstream media of “breakthrough” infections of the vaccinated can foster the inaccurate narrative that COVID-19 vaccines are not effective, especially against new strains of the coronavirus, some of which had not yet emerged when those vaccines were being developed.

“The mainstream media want to scare people,” Dr. Paul Offit of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, a pioneer of vaccine science, told Yahoo News. That criticism appears to be bolstered by a recent paper by Dartmouth economist Bruce Sacerdote and his colleagues, which found that 91 percent of media reporting in the U.S. is “negative in tone,” even when news about the pandemic is actually encouraging.

Offit believes that “we need a word different than ‘breakthrough’” because the image of broadly breached defenses is simply not an accurate one. “Those vaccines are doing what they need to do” by keeping people out of the hospital, he said.

“The breakthrough cases will become vanishingly small,” predicted Dr. Peter Jay Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor, especially as spread of the more transmissible B.1.1.7 variant — now dominant in the U.S. — is attenuated in the coming weeks.

“Until then, that’s why we recommend masks,” Hotez said, along with other non-pharmaceutical interventions, like social distancing.

For all the publicity its findings have engendered about breakthrough infections, the Israeli study makes clear that non-pharmaceutical measures like the ones Hotez and others have been advocating for months are effective, especially when combined with widespread vaccination. The study says vaccines are “the safest and most effective means of preventing the onwards spread” of the coronavirus — including of the South African and any other strain.

The Biden administration is desperate to ramp up vaccinations so the country can return to a semblance of normalcy come summer (the president has touted a close-to-ordinary Fourth of July holiday). But reports about breakthrough infections could lead people to conclude that vaccination is futile to begin with. Widespread vaccine hesitancy is far more likely to prolong the pandemic than a plague of breakthrough infections.

“We see this with all vaccines in clinical trials and in the real world,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, a top adviser on the pandemic to the Biden administration, said during a Monday briefing of the White House COVID-19 response team. “No vaccine is 100 percent efficacious or effective, which means that you will always see breakthrough infections, regardless of the efficacy of your vaccine.”

Breakthroughs have a “remarkably low incidence,” Dr. Eric Topol, founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, told Yahoo News in an email, “perhaps as low as 0.1 percent.” Echoing what Offit and others have argued, Topol said that despite the imagery the word “breakthrough” might evoke, such infections are “also remarkably benign, i.e., few are associated with pneumonia or serious illness.”

The vaccines being used in the United States are all about 90 percent effective at preventing infection; even more important, they are nearly 100 percent effective at stopping serious illness and death. But they are not perfect, and with more than 3 million people getting jabs across the United States per day, there are bound to be anomalies.

“A proportion of breakthrough infections are expected. Otherwise, vaccine trials would all have reported 100% efficacy,” wrote University College London geneticist Francois Balloux on Twitter, in a long thread criticizing “lurid and alarmist” studies, an obvious reference to the Israeli report, which has not yet been subject to peer review.

“Breakthrough infections are a trivial concern as long as they don’t lead to serious disease in the infected, and onward transmission of the virus remains limited,” Balloux added.

During the 2019-20 flu season, the flu vaccine was only 39 percent effective, but nevertheless managed to prevent 7.5 million cases of the flu, 6,300 of which, scientists estimate, would have resulted in death. The point was obvious: Even a vaccine much less effective than those now available for the coronavirus will stop a virus from spreading.

That is, if people get the vaccine. According to the data presented by Fauci, the flu vaccination rate for the relevant time period was 51.8 percent for all American adults and children older than 6 months. About 19.9 percent of Americans have been fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (some share of the population also has antibodies from having been sickened with COVID-19).

“Even if a vaccine fails to protect against infection, it often protects against serious disease,” Fauci added. The 31-year-old woman in the New York Post article, for example, apparently had only minor symptoms.

Fauci also criticized the Israeli study on the South African variant, calling it “about as confusing as you could possibly be” and criticizing the way its findings were reported. “There were essentially no deaths or hospitalizations in the individuals who were vaccinated,” he said at another point during the briefing, seeming to reference the Israeli study but not mentioning it explicitly.

The South African variant accounts for only 1 percent of all infections in Israel. In fact, the study’s authors urge “caution” against “over-interperting” their results, noting that, at least as far as Israel has been concerned, “selection does not strongly favour the B.1.351 variant.”

The much more common variant was B.1.1.7, sometimes also known as the British variant. It is also now the dominant strain in the United States. Vaccines are highly effective against it.

https://news.yahoo.com/dont-worry-ab...abbT4WP0RuOmJJ

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by homebucket

Most of the new variants are not more deadly, just more contagious. Now, it is possible that other new ones not fully studied yet could be more deadly but that is still unknown.

Why we're seeing younger people get infected proportionally more than older people now is because of vaccinations. I believe close to 75% of 65+ here have been vaccinated, and we know that one dose alone already achieves pretty optimal efficacy. Obviously two doses is better, but one dose is already enough to slow down the spread. Younger people who still aren't vaccinated are working, congregating, hanging out, doing what young people do, and for children, going back to school for in person learning, so that's why we're seeing more cases, proportionally to older people. Not more cases overall. Michigan is probably the exception.

It was pointed out above that the infections are skewing younger in other parts of the world too, in places with lower vaccination rates. So, behavior is probably the overriding factor.

I also don't think we fully understand why infections in the early pandemic skewed older. That could've also been driven by situation, since nursing homes seem to be very effective super spreader situations. And healthy elderly people were probably visiting nursing homes often to see other elderly people, and then they'd probably go socialize with other large groups of healthy elderly. OTOH, places where young people congregate were shutdown pretty early (schools, dormitories, offices, bars, restaurants, etc).

Yes, the above is a lot of speculation, but a lot of the recent talk in this thread is operating under an assumption that everyone has been equally exposed to the virus, and I don't think there's enough evidence to say that with certainty.

[sopas ej]

I didn't even think of this, but it's an interesting correlation; bad air quality contributes to bad health and hence underlying health conditions...



From stateofreform.com:

COVID-19 Mortality Rates in Los Angeles County Higher in Communities with Poor Air Quality

UCLA Fielding School of Public Health | Apr 14, 2021

A research project led by the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health has found that Los Angeles County neighborhoods with poor air quality had the highest death rates from the pandemic.

“Our findings imply a potentially large association between exposure to air pollution and population-level rates of COVID-19 cases and deaths,” said Dr. Michael Jerrett, Fielding School professor of environmental health sciences and the project’s leader. “These findings are especially important for targeting interventions aimed at limiting the impact of COVID-19 in polluted communities.”

The research – “Spatial Analysis of COVID-19 and Traffic-related Air Pollution in Los Angeles” – is being published in the upcoming August, 2021 edition of the peer-reviewed journal Environment International, and is now available on-line. One example of the findings: Los Angeles County neighborhoods with the worst air quality saw a 60% increase in COVID-19 fatalities, compared with communities with the best air quality.

“In the U.S., more polluted communities often have lower incomes and higher proportions of Black and Latinx people. In addition, Black and Latinx people have higher rates of pre-existing conditions, potentially further exacerbating the risk of COVID-19 transmission and death,” said co-author Jonah M. Lipsitt, a PhD candidate and researcher with the Fielding School’s UCLA Center for Healthy Climate Solutions. “The elevated risk of case incidence and mortality observed in these populations may result, in part, from higher exposure to air pollution.”

The research team, from UCLA’s Fielding School (FSPH), the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of California, Merced, analyzed the relationship of air pollution and COVID-19 case incidence, mortality, and case-fatality rates in neighborhoods of Los Angeles County. They focused on nitrogen dioxide (NO2) because the pollutant serves as a marker for traffic-related air pollution, or TRAP, generally.

“We know that TRAP is associated with many respiratory morbidities, including asthma, chronic pulmonary disease, lung cancer, and respiratory tract infections, as well as hospitalizations, mortality, and an increased risk of respiratory viral infection,” said Dr. Yifang Zhu, FSPH professor of environmental health sciences and senior associate dean for academic programs. “Nitrogen dioxide, for example, has been found to impair the function of alveolar macrophages and epithelial cells, thereby increasing the risk of lung infections.”

The work reaches down to the city- and neighborhood-level in Los Angeles County, home to more than 10 million people, a population larger than 40 U.S. states.

“Los Angeles is one of the only metropolitan cities globally to publicly report neighborhood-level COVID-19 cases and mortality,” said co-author Dr. Alec M. Chan-Golston, an assistant professor at UC Merced. “These data gave us the opportunity to study a large population, but at a “neighborhood-level, which allows for more accurate pollution exposure estimates.”

The researchers have benefitted from exhaustive records related to the pandemic made public by the city of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health (LACDPH). The local focus, however, does not mean the findings are of interest only to Angelenos, Lipsett said.

“Los Angeles is a global epicenter for the pandemic with more than 1.1 million cases to date, but our key conclusion?” he said. “Long-term air pollution exposure, anywhere, is likely to increase the risk of COVID-19 infection and death.”

Methods: Researchers used data from the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health (LACDPH) and the American Community Survey (ACS), produced by the U.S. Census Bureau. This data was compared with statewide air quality data from 2016.

The original study period captured approximately the first six months of the pandemic (March 16th to September 8th, 2020); it was expanded to the subsequent six months (September 8th, 2020 to February 23rd, 2021). This replicated analysis for the subsequent 6-month period had nearly four times the incident cases (875,368 cases) as the first period (230,621 cases).

In comparing the two time periods, before and after September 8th, 2020, researchers found that the results were largely consistent, despite very different case numbers, testing regimes, and improvements in classifying deaths. While some differences exist in the size of the effects, overall the conclusions remain the same.

This press release was provided by the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health.

Link: https://stateofreform.com/featured/2...r-air-quality/

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

Don't worry about coronavirus variants overpowering vaccines, experts say

Evidence for increased breakthrough rates of SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern in BNT162b2 mRNA [Pfizer] vaccinated individuals
Talia Kustin, Noam Harel, Uriah Finkel, Shay Perchik, Sheri Harari, Maayan Tahor, Itamar Caspi, Rachel Levy, Michael Leschinsky, Shifra Ken Dror, Galit Bergerzon, Hala Gadban, Faten Gadban, Eti Eliassian, Orit Shimron, Loulou Saleh, Haim Ben-Zvi, Doron Amichay, Anat Ben-Dor, Dana Sagas, Merav Strauss, Yonat Shemer Avni, Amit Huppert, Eldad Kepten, Ran D. Balicer, Doron Nezer, Shay Ben-Shachar, View ORCID ProfileAdi Stern
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.04.06.21254882

Summary

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has been raging for over a year, creating global detrimental impact. The BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine has demonstrated high protection levels, yet apprehension exists that several variants of concerns (VOCs) can surmount the immune defenses generated by the vaccines. Neutralization assays have revealed some reduction in neutralization of VOCs B.1.1.7 and B.1.351, but the relevance of these assays in real life remains unclear. Here, we performed a case-control study that examined whether BNT162b2 vaccinees with documented SARS-CoV-2 infection were more likely to become infected with B.1.1.7 or B.1.351 compared with unvaccinated individuals. Vaccinees infected at least a week after the second dose were disproportionally infected with B.1.351 (South African--odds ratio of 8:1). Those infected between two weeks after the first dose and one week after the second dose, were disproportionally infected by B.1.1.7 (UK--odds ratio of 26:10), suggesting reduced vaccine effectiveness against both VOCs under different dosage/timing conditions. Nevertheless, the B.1.351 incidence in Israel to-date remains low and vaccine effectiveness remains high against B.1.1.7, among those fully vaccinated. These results overall suggest that vaccine breakthrough infection is more frequent with both VOCs, yet a combination of mass-vaccination with two doses coupled with non-pharmaceutical interventions control and contain their spread.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1....06.21254882v1