Coronavirus, Late August Edition, 2022
The Numbers:
Nationwide,
the estimated number of cases, using official numbers, has dropped about 25% in the last 2 weeks. The official numbers continue be under-counted by a factor of 3-10, depending on the source of the estimate. One caveat, there seems to be a rising trend of 2% (averaged) for each of the last 5 days I cannot account for. It could be accounted for by vacation mixing of the population, or a rise in reinfections, or an aging of older vaccines? I don't know.
More in keeping with reality, the number of people hospitalized with Covid for this wave is also dropping, from a peak of 39,400 on July 31 to 36,000 this yesterday.
I did publish a report earlier in August, but as it had little relevant content, I did not promote it. If you are interested, it is here...
New Vaccines Available Soon:
A vaccine tuned for both the original variant of Covid, "Alpha", and for the baseline Omicron, is now available in the UK. They claim it provides good immune response for the BA4 and BA5 variants as well.
Being tuned for two variants is referred to as "bivalent". Its a common practice to have multiple strains in a single shot when there is uncertainty as to what the population will encounter. Most often you will see this with flu shots.
It is expected in the US to have a release of a booster tuned specifically for BA4 and BA5 will be released in September.
There is a bit of controversy over these new vaccines. Allow me to summarize it.
The BA4/5 vaccine has only been tested in mice and not humans. The counterpoint is if we wait for human trials, the need for BA4/5 will dwindle by the time those trials are completed. See "The Numbers", above.
The overall vaccine being produced by Moderna and Pfiser has proven safe and has efficacy. The new vaccine in mice trials have shown efficacy against the latest Omicron variants.
My opinion is that a booster was already inevitable for the fall, so why not the get one tuned for what is out there? The previous boosters were all set to the first variant, "Alpha".
To be clear though. This release of the the BA4/5 booster is a political decision. They are following a pattern of "Least Harm". Normally with vaccines, the doctrine is to take the totally safe path by performing a couple levels of human trials. But meanwhile, 200-300 people are dying of Covid per day. Hence the argument on what the actual, safest, course is. But then, most of the deaths with Covid are still among the unvaccinated.
Deaths With Covid, Ratios:
Per World Data, the Covid deaths by Vaccination status at the end of May for the US is:
Per 100,000
Unvaccinated 5.5
Primary Vaccination (2 shots) .92
PV + 1 booster .72
PV + 2 boosters .23
This puts the ratio of dying of Covid, unvaccinated to vaccinated at 23.9 -1.
I have done the math on Pennsylvania specific hospitalizations and deaths and ratios are almost an exact match.
Google "covid deaths unvaccinated" and your state, and the numbers are probably there as well.
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