[tommytwotone]

Cheers. I was rather hoping it would give me immunity to festive hangovers as well as COVID, but that experiment has sadly failed!

[Paul B]

He's got a new haircut and a new tie and there's apparently a press conference at 5PM today.

[slab_happy]

There are rock-type jokes to be made here but I'm too tired and brain-dead this morning so I'm just going to drop the links and let you fill them in:

https://inews.co.uk/news/health/new-covid-booster-jab-manchester-gritstone-tackle-variants-1382138
https://ir.gritstonebio.com/news-releases/news-release-details/gritstone-announces-positive-clinical-results-first-cohort-phase

(Only Phase I, but looks promising, woohoo!)

[Dexter]

There are rock-type jokes to be made here but I'm too tired and brain-dead this morning so I'm just going to drop the links and let you fill them in:

https://inews.co.uk/news/health/new-covid-booster-jab-manchester-gritstone-tackle-variants-1382138
https://ir.gritstonebio.com/news-releases/news-release-details/gritstone-announces-positive-clinical-results-first-cohort-phase

(Only Phase I, but looks promising, woohoo!)

But what have they ever done for the grit?

I'll see myself out

[Fiend]

Well all those doom-and-gloom aspiring-zero-covider eeyores better pull something spectacular out of the bag if they want us all to suffer the tedium of another lockdown because we're now two weeks past the festive period superspreader and the stats are starting to look more promising....



(obviously even if the numbers did "support" it, no-one's going to heed the #partygate party anyway)

[Oldmanmatt]

Yup.
But you know what really impresses me is the ~100k people having their first jab, every week. A good number of those must be hesitants finally defying the antivacc screaming.

[Fiend]

Yup.
But you know what really impresses me is the ~100k people having their first jab, every week. A good number of those must be hesitants finally defying the antivacc screaming.

Yes I've noticed that too, a good thing, including for the reason you state. Not sure why the boosterage has slowed so much, aren't they heeding jab_happy's sexy sexy vaccine research article links??

[Oldmanmatt]

Yup.
But you know what really impresses me is the ~100k people having their first jab, every week. A good number of those must be hesitants finally defying the antivacc screaming.

Yes I've noticed that too, a good thing, including for the reason you state. Not sure why the boosterage has slowed so much, aren't they heeding jab_happy's sexy sexy vaccine research article links??

Well, not sure, but I know the category includes the likes of my three youngest, who aren’t able to get boosted for another two weeks, yet.
Basically, you had a huge pool of potential candidates, who were several months passed their second, who could pile in immediately and I guess there are now more people having to wait the required interval after second jab?

[Fultonius]

And maybe a lot of people who've just recovered and cannot or chose not to get boosted right away?

[SA Chris]

Yup.
But you know what really impresses me is the ~100k people having their first jab, every week. A good number of those must be hesitants finally defying the antivacc screaming.

Be nice if it was, but it could be just kids who are now 12?

[Oldmanmatt]

Yup.
But you know what really impresses me is the ~100k people having their first jab, every week. A good number of those must be hesitants finally defying the antivacc screaming.

Be nice if it was, but it could be just kids who are now 12?

Some will be, but I think 100k kids turning twelve every week, might mean we have a serious resource crisis looming…


Edit.
Yeah ~800k live births in the UK in 2010, so ~15k/week. Less than one days vacc uptake.

[petejh]

 

That would mean 5.2 million babies were being born every year - or the current population of the UK increasing by around 4.5m or 6.7% in one year after factoring deaths.
Plantation would be busy.

[petejh]

Anyone knowledgeable on the subject care to analyse and give their view on the below Nature study on the relative risks of myocarditis, pericarditis, and cardiac arrhythmias specifically among males under 40s associated with Covid versus the risks of same associated with a 2nd dose of mnra vaccines? 

No angle other than understanding - I'm not interested in proving a point as I'm not trying to make an argument, I'm interested in understanding the subject better. I occasionally have discussions with relatively intelligent people under 40 who refuse the vaccine altogether and this is their most common reason given. In case it matters I'm mid 40s, double jabbed.

For me the crucial takeaway from the lengthy discussion chapter is this:
The risks are more evenly balanced in younger persons aged up to 40 years, where we estimated the excess in myocarditis events following SARS-CoV-2 infection to be 10 per million with the excess following a second dose of mRNA-1273 vaccine being15 per million. Further research is required to understand why the risk of myocarditis seems to be higher following mRNA-1273 vaccine. Although the wider societal benefits of controlling the spread of virus to those who are more vulnerable are substantial, these data may help inform public health policy and the choice of vaccine offered to younger adults.
This study has several strengths. First, the United Kingdom offered an ideal place to carry out this study given that three vaccinations have been rolled out at speed and scale. Second, this was a population-based study of data recorded prospectively and avoided recall and selection biases linked to case reports. Third, the large sample size provided sufficient power to investigate these rare outcomes, which could not be assessed through clinical trials. Fourth, the SCCS study design removes potential confounding from fixed characteristics, and the breakdown of our study period into weekly blocks accounted for temporal confounding.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01630-0.pdf


Further to that, the points made by the guy below* seem valid to me - a layman with no deep understanding of this subject.
1. The size of the covid infected group would in reality be far higher than the size of the group the study uses as it's only using 'reported cases'. In reality we all know reported cases of Covid is not all covid cases. Therefore the denominator would be a far greater number, meaning risk of myocarditis from covid infection would be lower and making the difference in risk for under 40s between 'mnra 2nd jab' versus 'covid infection' more pronounced than it already is.
2. Effects in males under 30 or under 25 would be higher again than in the overall group of 'under 40s', due to stratification. Again this could potentially make the difference in risk between covid infection/mnra 2nd dose greater again.
3. Over 40s are mostly given non-mnra vaccines, so wouldn't show up in the data.

*This guy: https://twitter.com/VPrasadMDMPH/status/1482076197253169158?s=20



Can someone point out why the above is wrong.

[mrjonathanr]

If the only risk from Covid infection were myocarditis it would appear to be a no brainer for that demographic. However, you’d need to consider the incidence of long Covid, organ/ lung damage and death amongst that age group to have a fair picture of relative risk.

[Oldmanmatt]

If the only risk from Covid infection were myocarditis it would appear to be a no brainer for that demographic. However, you’d need to consider the incidence of long Covid, organ/ lung damage and death amongst that age group to have a fair picture of relative risk.

0.001% vs 0.0015% risk of myocarditis. Is that right? Any idea of what the background risk is?
Around 0.2% of covid cases, of 40 year olds, without underlying conditions, result in death ( https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/covid-pandemic-mortality-risk-estimator
It doesn’t seem like a convincing argument against vaccination. I get that 15 sounds much bigger than 10, but on a scale of millions it’s minuscule, surely?

Edit:
I had a couple of pints with dinner, so not feeling hugely certain I haven’t misunderstood something; but even if we’re underestimating cases by a factor of 10, isn’t that still 0.02% risk of death from the disease vs 0.0015% risk of myocarditis (not necessarily death, either)?

[Fiend]

It's a more convincing argument than nano-routers spawning pico-tentacles inside your bloodstream though. By at least a  factor of about 1 to 0.0015.

[Oldmanmatt]

It's a more convincing argument than nano-routers spawning pico-tentacles inside your bloodstream though. By at least a  factor of about 1 to 0.0015.

Point conceded.

Edit:

Ok, after reading, I’m unclear how the study separates those who:

Had Covid, but were unaware they had had it.
Were vaccinated and never had Covid.
Were vaccinated, but also had had Covid.
Fit into any combination of the above statuses.
Had a Cardiac event in the categories listed, but also fitted into one of the above categories or any possible combination of vaccine or infection status etc etc etc.

So. I quit at this point.
 Surely you would need a massive control group, without any possibility of exposure to Covid in their history, vaccinate them (possibly even several large groups, vaccinated in all the various possible combinations) before such rare responses become reliably significant at such small numbers?

[petejh]

Matt the study only includes myocarditis events that occur within 28 days directly following either,
1. Vaccination.
2. Positive result from covid test.


Still waiting for comment on these points, which seem worth thinking about:
That there would be massively more people who've had covid (as OMM says) who haven't reported a myocarditis event. The incidence of myocaditis among covid infections may be lower than 10 per 1 million; for the study it's 10 events within 28 days per 1 million people who had a covid test which came back positive. Wouldn't the real figure for myocarditis events likely be lower than 10 per million? It's estimated around 30 - 40% of people have been infected with covid without either reporting it, testing for it, or even knowing about it.

And the age bands are only split into either 'over 40' or 'under 40', yet even within this very imprecise grouping a significant difference is seen between under 40 and over 40, and between Mrna vaccine and covid infection. It seems reasonable to think that if you band the 'under 40' group into more precise age bands, you may find higher association again among a younger age group with the Moderna vaccine.

And it's only the Moderna vaccine showing the much higher association, not the Pfizer.

[Oldmanmatt]

Obviously I’m not massively clued up on this, but isn’t the prevalence of Myocarditis, along the lines of 10-20 cases per 100k of the general population (from non covid viral infections).* So this excess is in the order of either an extra 1 or 1.5 people per 100k, over and above the expected occurrence, with or without Covid infection or Vaccination?
If I was looking at this, in engineering terms, of say, particular component failure vs operating conditions; I’d query the use of a “10/15 in 1M” metric for something that happens to “10-20 in 100k” people. They could have said 1 in 100k excess or 1.5 in 100k excess, but it seems, simply, more dramatic, to bump it up by a factor of ten from the customary numbers (pretty sure the x in 100k is typical in such reporting).

I know it seems like I’m just arguing with you for the sake of it, but the stated categorisations do not preclude or control for, any of the possible combinations I mentioned.

The thing is, myocarditis is a rare event and 10 or 20 people in every 100k, is a small number of unlucky people.
11 or 11.5, to  21 or 21.5, per 100k, isn’t really a very different number and, nothing confirms the link between vaccination date, or positive test and cardiac event.
Oh, and 10-20? That’s quite a range. Bit bigger than 1-1.5, for instance.






* https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK459259/

[petejh]

You're not arguing with me* (or at least if you are then I'm not arguing back..). I'm not interested in an argument I'm interested in what people make of the study and what it means.



'yes I am' / no you're not / yes I am etc. etc.

[Oldmanmatt]

You're not arguing with me* (or at least if you are then I'm not arguing back..). I'm not interested in an argument I'm interested in what people make of the study and what it means.



'yes I am' / no you're not / yes I am etc. etc.

Good. I was hoping so.

[slab_happy]

Anyone wanna help Moderna test their new booster that's been tweaked to be better against Omicron?

https://connect.trialscope.com/studies/7dff1448-9e85-4beb-81a4-ec4f9170c769

You need to have had 2 or 3 doses of a vaccine already; you'll either get a dose of the Omicron-specific booster or of the standard Moderna booster, so it's a good deal. Looks like one of the trial sites is in Sheffield.

I continue to rec being in a vaccine trial as a fun and good experience.

[galpinos]

Fascinating, if tragic, thread on what happens to a relatively infection naïve/unvaccinated population when exposed to Omicron.

https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1503420660869214213?s=21

[slab_happy]

Oh hell -- I saw a thread a week or two ago where the HK mortality rates were already looking horrific:

https://twitter.com/VictimOfMaths/status/1499412424016994305

But the 7-day average has basically doubled since then.

In the last fortnight, both my parents have had Covid, and even with them being vaccinated and boosted, it was scary; my (80-year-old) Dad's oxygen saturation spent a while one point away from the "go to A&E NOW" number, and I was mentally preparing for him to have to go to hospital. If they weren't vaccinated ...

Meanwhile, UK government policy seems to be "If we shut our eyes, the virus can't see us":

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/13/pandemic-is-not-over-ministers-criticised-after-scrapping-uk-covid-surveillance