OT: COVID Science - Pfizer/Moderna vaccines >90% effective; Regeneron antibody cocktail looks very promising in phase II/III trial and more
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Numbers, what do you make of the earlier concern about fleeting immunity to those that had the virus? Some have gotten the virus twice and sick as well. Thx
Hey Numb3rs,
Sorry in advance if you have already explained this, but what does 95% effective mean, and how is it assessed? First thought is that 95% of the people who get the vaccine don't get COVID, but that sort of doesn't make sense as you don't know if they were exposed to it. Is it that the vaccine group gets 5% as many cases as the placebo group?
As a numbers guy, I feel I should already know this, but it occurred to me today that I don't.
Thanks.
I am not an expert on this but isn't that a 16.7% reduction if you wear a mask? Is that not considered significant? I don't mind the mask if I reduce my risk by close to 17%
Am I looking at those numbers the wrong way?
Should be self explanatory for a "stats" guy. :)
The final analysis evaluated 170 confirmed Covid infections among the late-stage trial’s more than 43,000 participants. The companies said 162 cases of Covid were observed in the placebo group versus eight cases observed in the group that received its two-dose vaccine. That resulted in an estimated vaccine efficacy of 95%, they said.
When I don't know, I find out.
But in your example, if I divide 8 by 170, or 8 by 162, I get 5% rounded either way. One could make an argument for either approach (matter of definition). Do you know which it is? I'm guessing 8/170, but not sure.
Tom1944, this is NOT the guy you want to listen to as your expert.
Back in February he was loudly proclaiming that Covid was no more lethal than the flu. He suggested we should just do nothing, not blink an eye at what he predicted would be 35000 deaths, and everything would be fine in the long run.
Fortunately Trump took it seriously for about a month and a half, so we are just reaching the quarter of a million mark in death. If we had completely listened to this guy, we would be heading for the millions.
This poster is still singing the same old song as we pass the 250,000- mark in deaths. "The less we do, the better."
Back in February he was loudly proclaiming that Covid was no more lethal than the flu. He suggested we should just do nothing, not blink an eye at what he predicted would be 35000 deaths, and everything would be fine in the long run.
Fortunately Trump took it seriously for about a month and a half, so we are just reaching the quarter of a million mark in death. If we had completely listened to this guy, we would be heading for the millions.
This poster is still singing the same old song as we pass the 250,000- mark in deaths. "The less we do, the better."
8 by 162. 162 is the # of events of the control/placebo group. So that is the denominator.
Also FYI, summary of side effects:
Most Common Adverse Events
Reported (>2%)
Pfizer:
Fatigue (3.8%)
Headache (2.0%)
Moderna:
Fatigue (9.7%)
Myalgia (8.9%)
Arthralgia (5.2%)
Headache (4.5%)
Pain (4.1%)
This looks like a meaningful difference, but it may be just due to AE reporting protocols. Not sure yet.
Well, 8 out of 170 people getting infected is 4.7% of vaccinated people getting the virus in equal sized groups of similar people, so the efficacy is 95.3%. At least that's how I believe they calculate it. It's also possible they do it by ratio, i.e., 8/162 = 4.9% for an efficacy of 95.1% (just about the same either way). The actual calcs would be i the clinical protocol. It's not 8 of 21,500 total people vaccinated (0.04%), for sure, since one has to factor in the rate of infection in the placebo group.
With regard to vaccines, immunity, and questions on the path forward from here, if people could just read one article, it should be today's blog by Derek Lowe (In The Pipeline). It's fantastic. He highlights the same paper I did last night from the La Jolla/Mt. Sinai group (Crotty et al) with regard to the very promising immune markers data from recovered patients implying possibly years of immunity for most and for those who get the vaccine and then he goes on to ponder and address a host of important questions as we move forward. I rarely copy whole articles, but will in this case. I even thought of starting a new thread, lol.
https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/11/18/vaccine-possibilities
Vaccine Possibilities
Now that we’re seeing that coronavirus vaccines are indeed possible (and are on their way), let’s talk about the remaining unanswered questions and the things that we will be getting more data on. Here are some of the big issues – it’ll be good to see this stuff coming into focus. I’ll put these into the form of questions (think of it as a tribute to the late Alex Trebek, whom I was glad to help remember in this article). Each one will have a summary answer at the end of the section, if you just want to skip to that part.
How long will the vaccine protection last?
This one can’t be answered with total confidence by any other way than just waiting and watching. But we will be able to give a meaningful answer well before that, fortunately. Here, just out in the last couple of days, is the most long-term and comprehensive look at the duration of immunity in recovered coronavirus patients. In fact, it appears to be the largest and most detailed study of post-viral-infection immunity in the entire medical literature (!) It’s from a multi-center team at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology, UCSD, and Mt. Sinai, and it looks at 185 patients who had a range of infection experiences, from asymptomatic to severe. 38 of the subjects provided longitudinal blood samples across six months.
We’ve already seen from the convalescent plasma comparison samples in the various vaccine Phase I trials that the antibody response to coronavirus infection can be quite variable, and that was the case in this study as well. That gives you wide error bars when you try. to calculate half-lives, and it’s not even clear what kind of decay curve the antibody levels will best fit to (it might well be different in different patients). But one figure to take home is that 90% of the subjects were still seropositive for neutralizing antibodies at the 6 to 8 month time points. The authors point out that in primate studies, even low titers (>1:20) of such neutralizing antibodies were still largely protective, so if humans work similarly, that’s a good sign. An even better sign, though, are the numbers for memory B cells, which are the long-term antibody producers that help to provide immunological memory. B-cells specific to the Spike and to the nucleocapsid coronavirus proteins actually increased over a five-month period post-symptom-onset, thus with no apparent half-life at all. These had interesting variations in antibody type (by the end of the period, they were strongly IgG, the others having dropped off), but as the paper notes, we really don’t have many viral infection profiles in humans to compare these results to. B-cell memory overall, though, looks to be long-lasting, and is expected by these results to stretch into years. For what it’s worth, there are patients who survived the 1918 influenza pandemic who had B cells that still responded with fresh neutralizing antibodies after over 90 years, so they can be rather hardy.
What about the other immune (and immune memory) component, T cells? The news there is good as well. CD4+ and CD8+ memory T cells appear to have half-lives of at least five or six months in these patients, and helper T cells (crucial for those memory B cells to respond later on) were completely stable over the entire period studied. Again, there are very few viral infection studies to compare this one to, but these numbers look consistent with long-term protection via reactivated immune memory.
Looking over the whole set of patients, it was clear that the immune system’s famously individual character was on full display here. That heterogeneity could well be the reason that there are real cases of re-infection, although it still seems to be rare. Different components of the immune response (both in antibodies and T cells) varied widely among patients, and these differences only became more pronounced over time. Nevertheless, at the five-month time point in a measure of five components of immune response and memory, 96% of patients were still positive on at least three of them (the categories were IgG antibodies against the Spike receptor-binding domain (RBD), IgA antibodies against the same Spike RBD, memory B cells aimed at the RBD, total SARS-CoV-2-specific CD8+ T cells, and total SARS-CoV-2-specific CD4+ T cells).
Bottom line: Taken together, this study, several others over the past few months, and this recent work all paint a consistent picture of a strong, normal, lasting immune response in the great majority of patients. Add in the results we’re seeing from the two vaccines that have reported interim data so far, and I think that the prospects for lasting immunity from vaccination are also very good. Remember, the early vaccine data suggested antibody responses at least as strong as those found in naturally infected cases. There seems (so far) every reason to think that vaccine-based immunity will be as good or better than that conferred by actual coronavirus infection. I very much look forward to more data to shore up this conclusion, but that’s how it looks to me at the moment.
How effective are these vaccines? Will they provide total protection or not?
We’re just starting to get numbers on this, and we are definitely going to know more as the various trials read out interim data and then reach their conclusions. So far, though, the efficacies we’re seeing have been more than I had really hoped for. I thought that they would work, and I didn’t think that meant just the FDA’s floor of 50% efficacy, but I sure didn’t have the nerve to predict that the first two readouts would be 95% (Pfizer just reported their final readout this morning). I can’t overemphasize how good that news is, especially when you compare it to some earlier worries that a useful coronavirus vaccine might not even be possible at all. Cross that one off the list!
Those efficacy numbers, though, are measured for symptomatic coronavirus cases. The vaccine trial participants are not being pulled in at regular intervals for testing to see if they’ve gone positive-though-asymptomatic. We may get controlled data of that sort eventually, but for now, we know from the Moderna trial that the few people who came down with symptoms at all had very mild cases. The antibody levels that we’re seeing would argue for a low probability of having a significant number of vaccinated people walking around asymptomatically shedding coronavirus, and for anyone who does to be shedding a lot less of it for a shorter period of time.
From a public health standpoint, that’s what you need. Epidemics are a matter of probabilities, and you can lower the chances of spread for a virus like this in any number of ways. They surely vary in efficacy, but include keeping distant from other people and avoiding any crowding in general, wearing masks, avoiding indoor situations with people that you haven’t been exposed to (such as going to the grocery store when it’s not so crowded), minimizing the time you spend in any higher-risk situation in general (getting those groceries in an organized fashion and getting back outside), and more. The fewer people there are around shedding infectious particles, the better (obviously), but the worst case for a weakly effective vaccine might be that it could actually raise that number for a while by creating more asymptomatic cases rather than having the infection make people aware that they need to stay the hell inside. But I don’t think we’re going to see that. I think that the efficacy levels we’re seeing are indeed going to be epidemic-breaking if we can get sufficient numbers of people vaccinated. Right now we’re up around the efficacy of the measles vaccine, which is very effective against a virus that is far more infectious than SARS-Cov-2. . .if enough people take it. (Believe it, if the current coronavirus were as infectious as measles is, we would be hosed).
Bottom line: the results we have so far indicate that these vaccines will indeed provide strong protection in the great majority of patients. The number of asymptomatic cases among the vaccinated population will be a harder number to pin down, but I believe that we should be in good enough shape there as well, based on antibody levels in the primate studies and what we’re seeing in humans.
What about coronavirus mutations? Will the virus move out from under the vaccine’s targeting?
The SARS-Cov-2 virus has indeed been throwing off mutations, but all viruses do. They replicate quickly, and errors pile up. Fortunately, though, none of these have proven to be a problem so far. There’s been a lot of talk about the D614G mutation being more infectious, but the difficulty of proving that shows that it’s certainly not way more infectious, if it is at all. And it doesn’t seem to have a noticeable effect on disease severity – so far, no mutation has.
The recent news from Denmark about a multi-residue mutant (“Cluster 5”) that might be less susceptible to the antibodies raised by the current vaccines is a real concern, but the news there, thus far, is also reassuring. The vaccine efficacy warning might be true, but it was also based on a small amount of preliminary data. And the Cluster-5 variant has not been detected since September, which suggests that (if anything) this combination of mutations actually might make the virus less likely to spread. From what we’ve been seeing with the Spike protein, evading the current antibodies looks like it’s going to be difficult to do while retaining infectiousness at the same time. We already know from a Pfizer analysis that many of the common mutations are just as susceptible to neutralizing antibodies raised by their vaccine.
I know that many people are wondering about the similarity to influenza, and to the yearly (and not always incredibly effective) flu vaccines. Flu viruses, though, change their proteins far more easily and thoroughly than the coronavirus does, which is why we need a new vaccine every year to start with. SARS-Cov-2 doesn’t have anything like that mix-and-match mechanism, and it’s a damn good thing.
Bottom line: the coronavirus can’t undergo the wholesale changes that we see with the influenza viruses. And the mutations we’re seeing so far appear to still be under the umbrella of the antibody protection we’ll be raising with vaccination, which argues that it’s difficult to escape it.
What about efficacy in different groups of people? Where will the vaccines work the best, and where might there be gaps?
This is another area that is definitely going to come into better focus as the current trials go on. For the moment, we know that the results we have seen so far come from participants in a range of ages and ethnic backgrounds. There’s not much expectation that things will vary much (if any at all) across the latter, although it’s always good to know that for sure, and not least so you can point to hard evidence that it’s so. Age, though, can definitely be a factor. Older people are quite likely more susceptible to coronavirus infection in the first place, and are absolutely, positively at higher risk of severe disease or death if they do get infected. The immune response changes with aging, and it is very reasonable to wonder if the response to vaccination changes in a meaningful way, too.
But as mentioned above, we have more data from the Pfizer vaccine effort just this morning. The overall efficacy was 95%, and the efficacy in patients 65 and older was all the way down to 94%. This is excellent news. No numbers yet for people with pre-exisiting conditions and risk factors, but I’m definitely encouraged by what we’re seeing so far.
Bottom line: our first look at efficacy in older patients is very good indeed, and that’s the most significant high-risk patient subgroup taken care of right off the top.
How safe are these vaccines? What do we know about side effects?
As mentioned in the Moderna write-up here the other day, that team saw around 10% of their vaccinated cohort come down with noticeable side effects such as muscle and joint pain, fatigue, pain at the injection site, etc. These were Grade 3 events – basically, enough to send you to bed, but definitely not enough to send you to the hospital – but they were short-lived. For reference, those numbers seem to be very close to those for the current Shingrix vaccine against shingles, from GSK (thanks to their butt-kicking adjuvant mixture of a Salmonella lipopolysaccharide and a natural product from a South American tree). It’s a reasonable trade for coronavirus protection, as far as I’m concerned. And my reading of the Pfizer announcement today makes me think that their side effect profile is even a bit milder. They have fatigue in 3.8% of their patients, and all the other side effects come in lower.
What about lower-incidence side effects? Well, 30,000 patients is a pretty big sample, but on the other hand, the immune system is as idiosyncratic as it can be. There may well be people out there who will have much worse reactions to these vaccines. If you have a literal one in a million, you’re simply not going to see that in a trial this size, or actually in any trial at all. These are about as big as clinical trial numbers ever get. At that point, you’d be looking at such a hypothetical bad outcome in about two or three hundred people if we gave the shot to every single person in the US. And the public health calculation that’ss made every time a vaccine is approved is that this is a worthwhile tradeoff. Let’s be honest: if we could instantly vaccinate every person in the country and in doing so killed 200 people on the spot, that is an excellent trade against a disease that has killed off far more Americans than that every single day since the last week of March. Yesterday’s death toll was over 1500 people, and the numbers are climbing.
How about long-term problems, then? These are possible with vaccines, but rare. And unfortunately, there is truly no way to know about them without actually experiencing that long term. We simply don’t know enough immunology to do it any other way. Given the track record over the last century of vaccination, though, this seems to be another deal worth making.
Bottom line: immediate safety looks good so far. Rare side effects and long-term ones are still possible, but based on what we’ve seen with other vaccines, they do not look to be anywhere at all significant compared to the pandemic we have in front of us.
OK, what about the rollout? Who’s getting these things first? When does everyone else get a chance to line up?
Harder questions to answer – there are a lot of variables. Pfizer and Moderna both say that they can make in the range of 20 million doses by the end of the year, but what we don’t know is (1) when the FDA will grant Emergency Use Authorization, (2) how many of these doses can be distributed and how that’s going to happen, (3) what the number of doses available right now might be, (4) how the ramp-up of both production and distribution are going to be coupled in the coming months, (5) what’s going to show up with the other vaccine candidates in testing, and so on.
The person in charge of the “Operation Warp Speed” logistics is Gen. Gustave Perna, who has been in charge of the Army’s Materiel Command (just the sort of background you’d want for an effort this size, I think). We know that manufacturing has already been underway on at “at risk” basis, and it looks like those bets are paying off, given the clinical results. Here’s the rollout strategy that has been announced so far, and it certainly seems sound from what I know about these things. It does leave some questions open, such as what groups are in the initial queue. You would have to think that health care workers would be at the top of the list – these people are risking their health and their lives as they deal with a constant stream of infectious patients, and losing them to illness or death has a severe impact on our ability to deal with the situation.
That situation, it has to be said, is going to be getting worse. It’s been getting worse for weeks, and it looks like it’s going to keep doing that for several weeks more even if we do everything right. And let’s be honest: as a country, as a population, we’re not doing everything right. There are a lot of people taking sensible precautions, but others are letting their guard down when they shouldn’t, and there are of course other people who never put their guards up in the first place and seem to have little intention of doing so. The map says “uncontrolled spread” across most of the US, and they ain’t lying. These vaccines are coming at extraordinary, record-breaking speed, but not fast enough for us to avoid what looks sure to be a 2,000-deaths-a-day situation. Take the worst air crashes in aviation history, and imagine three, four, five, six of them a day. All day Monday. All day Tuesday. No letup. Every single day of the week and all weekend long, a hideous no-survivors crash every few hours. That’s what we’re experiencing right now in terms of the sheer number of deaths.
Bottom line: the very first people to get these new vaccines will almost surely be health care workers, and starting some time on in December. The rollout after that has too many variables to usefully predict, but it’s going to be the biggest thing of its type ever attempted, in people-per-unit-time. And yes, I think it’s going to work, and not a minute too soon.
you are lying, never said it was the flu...and I always have said the virus is real, the hysteria is not.
Do they even work? Why would this be on the mask boxes that are required in so many places if they worked? Will not provide ANY protection against covid it says. On the jobs I've been working on I would say about 80% of the people wear them down below the nose with no social distancing. Everyone has been fine. I do notice people wearing them properly in stores and such. Even the states that have mask mandates the numbers still go up in.
They work if you are still 6 feet away and wash your hands. They also work at Holiday gatherings of less than 10 people.Do they even work? Why would this be on the mask boxes that are required in so many places if they worked? Will not provide ANY protection against covid it says. On the jobs I've been working on I would say about 80% of the people wear them down below the nose with no social distancing. Everyone has been fine. I do notice people wearing them properly in stores and such. Even the states that have mask mandates the numbers still go up in.
Do they even work? Why would this be on the mask boxes that are required in so many places if they worked? Will not provide ANY protection against covid it says. On the jobs I've been working on I would say about 80% of the people wear them down below the nose with no social distancing. Everyone has been fine. I do notice people wearing them properly in stores and such. Even the states that have mask mandates the numbers still go up in.
Because unless they're N95 or higher, they're not meant to protect the wearer. Masks are designed to different standards depending on what it is you need to filter out of the air. The non-N95 surgical or fabric masks aren't fine enough to filter out tiny viruses.
Much like a Brita filter, or even an outdoor water filter built for cysts and bacteria, does not work against viruses.
The surgical/fabric masks prevent the wearer from spewing coronavirus out when coughing, sneezing, wheezing, etc. They are not a controversial topic given that surgeons wear them every day for the same reason of keeping their germs in and some Drs offices (mine) encourage people to wear them when they come in during flu season.
The "numbers are still going up" is just an anecdotal talking point. Masks were never claimed to stop the virus, and numbers are going up for many reasons.
actually that's not exactly how the physics of face masks works... more complicated than a water filter.
the same physics that applies to n95 also applies to non n95 masks of reasonable quality as explained below:
Virus particles don’t exist alone
The science of mask functionality gets really small, really fast. The unit of measurement here is microns — 1/1000th of a millimeter.
The size-based argument against N95 laid out in this claim assumes mask filtering works something like water flowing through a net — particles in the water smaller than the net opening pass through, while larger items don’t.
But the physics involved don’t work like that at all.
The COVID-19 particle is indeed around 0.1 microns in size, but it is always bonded to something larger.
“There is never a naked virus floating in the air or released by people,” said Linsey Marr, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Virginia Tech who specializes in airborne transmission of viruses.
N95 mask on table in front of medical worker
N95 mask on table in front of medical worker
GETTY IMAGES
The virus attaches to water droplets or aerosols (i.e. really small droplets) that are generated by breathing, talking, coughing, etc. These consist of water, mucus protein and other biological material and are all larger than 1 micron.
“Breathing and talking generate particles around 1 micron in size, which will be collected by N95 respirator filters with very high efficiency,” said Lisa Brosseau, a retired professor of environmental and occupational health sciences who spent her career researching respiratory protection.
Health care precautions for COVID-19 are built around stopping the droplets, since “there’s not a lot of evidence for aerosol spread of COVID-19,” said Patrick Remington, a former CDC epidemiologist and director of the Preventive Medicine Residency Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Fact check: What's true and what's false about coronavirus?
Size matters, but not how you think
But that’s not the only logical flaw in this claim.
The N95 filter indeed is physically around the 0.3 micron size. But that doesn’t mean it can only stop particles larger than that. The masks are actually best for particles either larger or smaller than that 0.3 micron threshold.
“N95 have the worst filtration efficiency for particles around 0.3,” Marr said. “If you’re smaller than that those are actually collected even better. It’s counterintuitive because masks do not work like sieving out larger particles. It’s not like pasta in a colander, and small ones don’t get through.”
N95 masks actually have that name because they are 95% efficient at stopping particles in their least efficient particle size range — in this case those around 0.3 microns.
Why do they work better for smaller ones? There are a number of factors at play, but here are two main ones noted by experts:
The first is something called “Brownian motion,” the name given to a physical phenomenon in which particles smaller than 0.3 microns move in an erratic, zig-zagging kind of motion. This motion greatly increases the chance they will be snared by the mask fibers.
Secondly, the N95 mask itself uses electrostatic absorption, meaning particles are drawn to the fiber and trapped, instead of just passing through.
“Although these particles are smaller than the pores, they can be pulled over by the charged fibers and get stuck,” said Professor Jiaxing Huang, a materials scientist at Northwestern University working to develop a new type of medical face mask. “When the charges are dissipated during usage or storage, the capability of stopping virus-sized particles diminishes. This is the main reason of not recommending the reuse of N95 masks.”
The COVID-19 virus itself is indeed smaller than the N95 filter size, but the virus always travels attached to larger particles that are consistently snared by the filter. And even if the particles were smaller than the N95 filter size, the erratic motion of particles that size and the electrostatic attraction generated by the mask means they would be consistently caught as well
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Do they even work? Why would this be on the mask boxes that are required in so many places if they worked? Will not provide ANY protection against covid it says. On the jobs I've been working on I would say about 80% of the people wear them down below the nose with no social distancing. Everyone has been fine. I do notice people wearing them properly in stores and such. Even the states that have mask mandates the numbers still go up in.
cheaper non-surgical Masks all have this disclaimer. OSHA, legal stuff. it's like the inside of a football helmet having a disclaimer that they won't protect from CTE but using your common sense you may be would think you're better off with one on.
So, I looked it up. Turns out it's the risk (proportion infected) in the placebo group minus the risk in the vaccinated group divided by the risk in the placebo group.
But, in an efficacy study with randomization, if the placebo group and the vaccinated group are exactly the same size, then the counts and the proportions are proportionally equal, so the equation reduces to:
1 - count in vaccinated group/count in placebo group. Which is basically what t said!
Correct. There is serious science behind why masks work. As I said the other night, I've actually written internal research reports on filtration of particulates (including pathogens) via various filters and filtration does not work by only size exclusion, as any chemical engineer should know. There are multiple factors involved, from size exclusion to tortuosity of the path to impact/capture on fibers to electrostatic attraction/capture of particles to particle-particle collisions leading to coalescence (larger particles that can them be more easily filtered) and more.
Below is a really cool animation showing some of these filtration/capture phenomena in masks that was in the Times recently. And below that is the link to the Politifact article that @RUfubar quoted above.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/10/30/science/wear-mask-covid-particles-ul.html
https://www.tampabay.com/news/healt...p-covid-19-particles-due-to-size-is-nonsense/
Also, below is a link to my post from 5/21 on the mask/material virus filtration study and the graphic from that post, which is worth a look. And the 2nd link below is to my post on the very elegant study done with hamsters and cloth mask material partitioins, showing these materials provide modest protection for hamsters, which are a good model for respiratory viruses. The first post and graphic are all about the effectiveness of various mask materials as measured with actual virus particles (not COVID, but that shouldn't matter much). N95s are the best, of course, but surgical masks are pretty good and then there are the various cloth type masks, which are maybe 50% effective, but that's still a big improvement over nothing and, coupled with an infected person wearing a mask, can keep the uninfected person from becoming another statistic. They're certainly not perfect though, but way better than nothing.
https://rutgers.forums.rivals.com/t...es-interventions-and-more.191275/post-4571736
https://rutgers.forums.rivals.com/t...es-interventions-and-more.191275/post-4570840
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Interesting article by with views from top pathologist Dr Roger Hodkins
Conntext matters..who is dying matters
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Those type things are panned over by the controllers of what statistics impact the entire picture on covid19.
Interesting article by with views from top pathologist Dr Roger Hodkins
So do you believe one or many? Atlas says one thing but is disowned by the Stanford community. Do you take his word for it?
The CDC and knowledgeable folks on this board who are showing you data? Commons sense also is a guide. Does more or less stuff projected out of your pie hole when you wear a mask?
We can always find a couple people who have a different view.
yeah common sense and board folk over an expert...okay
in fact common sense says the opposite of what you are arguing. Common sense says look at the data and who is dying and we should be vigorously protecting those people and those with health problems not locking down economies and cancelling thanskgiving and christmas
in fact common sense says the opposite of what you are arguing. Common sense says look at the data and who is dying and we should be vigorously protecting those people and those with health problems not locking down economies and cancelling thanskgiving and christmas
Correct. There is serious science behind why masks work. As I said the other night, I've actually written internal research reports on filtration of particulates (including pathogens) via various filters and filtration does not work by only size exclusion, as any chemical engineer should know. There are multiple factors involved, from size exclusion to tortuosity of the path to impact/capture on fibers to electrostatic attraction/capture of particles to particle-particle collisions leading to coalescence (larger particles that can them be more easily filtered) and more.
Below is a really cool animation showing some of these filtration/capture phenomena in masks that was in the Times recently. And below that is the link to the Politifact article that @RUfubar quoted above.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/10/30/science/wear-mask-covid-particles-ul.html
https://www.tampabay.com/news/healt...p-covid-19-particles-due-to-size-is-nonsense/
Also, below is a link to my post from 5/21 on the mask/material virus filtration study and the graphic from that post, which is worth a look. And the 2nd link below is to my post on the very elegant study done with hamsters and cloth mask material partitioins, showing these materials provide modest protection for hamsters, which are a good model for respiratory viruses. The first post and graphic are all about the effectiveness of various mask materials as measured with actual virus particles (not COVID, but that shouldn't matter much). N95s are the best, of course, but surgical masks are pretty good and then there are the various cloth type masks, which are maybe 50% effective, but that's still a big improvement over nothing and, coupled with an infected person wearing a mask, can keep the uninfected person from becoming another statistic. They're certainly not perfect though, but way better than nothing.
https://rutgers.forums.rivals.com/t...es-interventions-and-more.191275/post-4571736
https://rutgers.forums.rivals.com/t...es-interventions-and-more.191275/post-4570840
So you are saying masks work? And it’s kind of silly to suggest otherwise?
Those type things are panned over by the controllers of what statistics impact the entire picture on covid19.
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tell that to the Danish mask study, tell that to all the other studies before Covid, tell that to Dr Fauci in March
For all the astute , supremely educated science folks on this board. Masks only protect the wearer from exposing others not wearing a mask. I believe those wearing a mask can contract the virus if in an area ( not just around) where it is still airborne. One other fact of interest for me on deaths reported from Covid19. We know 2 people one who died from a heart attack and one from cancer, both recently. The supposed cause of death listed by the hospital ....Covid19.... maybe that was an anomaly? Still 99.9% of young don’t die...99.9% of elderly survive... may have some longer recovering times but they survive. To not equate the findings to what we are being told is a bad thing.
No way I would believe one. I try to look at both sides. It seems a lot on here do not. Look at the Great Barrington Declaration. There are over 10,000 medical and health scientists (I know SCIENCE has become such a trending word in this thing but is ignored in other things that suit certain agendas) that have signed this. Im not gonna live my life in fear.
I was wrong about Sweden. Last week I said they would drop to #22 in deaths per capita but they dropped to #23. That is why I don’t believe ANYONE who posts on this board. We are all guessing and spewing data that contradicts other spewed data.
This virus is real. It sucks. But it was absolutely made political Day 1. The media and politicians are in over their heads and cannot go back on the hysteria they have caused. Meanwhile, the virus is going the wrong direction again. So they will double down on the hysteria. Looking forward to better days which are close but coming too slow for the frantic masses. It’s coming to slow for me too. I want it done as bad as anyone.
This virus is real. It sucks. But it was absolutely made political Day 1. The media and politicians are in over their heads and cannot go back on the hysteria they have caused. Meanwhile, the virus is going the wrong direction again. So they will double down on the hysteria. Looking forward to better days which are close but coming too slow for the frantic masses. It’s coming to slow for me too. I want it done as bad as anyone.
Are you still harping on about Fauci in March? Doctors used to give patients cigarettes when they were sick ... Things change, we (not you obviously) have learned a lot since March. But keep looking on twitter for reasons to not wear a mask. I could look on twitter and find a whole movement of people who think the earth is flat...
You are either trolling or an idiot or both.
As head of a household of 10 people, I'm taxed with educating myself as much as possible regarding covid 19.
This is the most detailed, comprehensive and informative article I have read about the virus. I'm sharing it in case anyone is interested:
www.stockgumshoe.com
This is the most detailed, comprehensive and informative article I have read about the virus. I'm sharing it in case anyone is interested:
More About COVID-19: Where Are We Now and Where Are We Headed? | Stock Gumshoe
I see the covid panic as similar to the early panic about aids. People were unsure about how you got it and the horrors you heard about with people who did scared everyone
I lived with a group of MSK nurses back in the 80’s and there was a real concern. I now know several nurses that work at some hospitals that have had a significant number of covid patients and especially early on what they saw really concerned them.
Both times the feeling I got from those front line people was this is no joke and do what you need to to avoid it
As the news hypes the increase for our daily number of positives ...lol .... it is only because our testing back in the Spring March and April was lacking ...Very possible our number of daily positive cases were the same if not more...We really don’t have proof...
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