Maps, science, data & statistics tracking of COVID-19

[Space Lynx]

Situation in India is bad. We are waiting for India colleagues to upload their sampled covid genome. This sucks.

yep.. I'm waiting to see if the vaccines are effective against this variant at all or if the virus has finally found a way around the mrna tech... a new kind of spike perhaps...

let's just say... im glad my job is remote...

 

[xkm1948]

Spike protein itself don’t change too much, it is half of the key to enter human cell. Human are not evolving the receptor protein overnight so virus will stick to the same human receptor. mRNA vaccine can quickly be tweaked to reflect changes in spike protein sequences. Problem is not every country is fortunate enough to afford mRNA vaccine.

 

[R-T-B]

Problem is not every country is fortunate enough to afford mRNA vaccine.

That, and I feel where we are fortunate enough to have them, regulatory hurdles could slow the "cut and paste" approach down" by treating it as a new drug.

 

[xkm1948]

That, and I feel where we are fortunate enough to have them, regulatory hurdles could slow the "cut and paste" approach down" by treating it as a new drug.

Yes. There will be some speeding up, but all the animal models will have to repeated again to a certain degree.


The sequence design for the mRNA vaccine is very well optimized, factoring human cells gene expression regulation. I seriously doubt the pharma companies would willingly share those sequences and what modifications they did to the nucleotides.

 

[Space Lynx]

That, and I feel where we are fortunate enough to have them, regulatory hurdles could slow the "cut and paste" approach down" by treating it as a new drug.

there is still risk in this approach. in 2018 the mrna vaccine was first tried in humans for example. and the scientists for our own government stated below that long term data was still needed, but those same scientists changed their mind apparently when it came to covid mrna... science isn't supposed to be changed due to emotions/economics/desperation so I think there is still some wait and see with mrna... I mean our own government scientists said as much, as you can see below.

"Long term safety and immunogenicity data from this and other future trials are required to confidently judge the impact of RNA vaccines on the influenza virus vaccine field; thus the coming years will be critical for this new vaccine approach." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6027361/

 

[R-T-B]

Risk vs reward at play. The odds of something bad happening from the vaccine are far lower than covid killing you.

 

[xkm1948]

RNA as vesicle to deliver desired effect has been around for quite a while. Completely synthesized RNA molecules have been used in treating rare genetic disorders in human with great success. mRNA or RNA is nothing to be afraid of. We just need some of that spike protein in our body for immune system to do the work. Most efficient way to get it inside is mRNA. After all the core concept is super simple: mRNA to protein. That is it.

Getting off track. Happy to take this off thread via PM if needed.

 

[the54thvoid]

Situation in India is bad. We are waiting for India colleagues to upload their sampled covid genome. This sucks.

Yeah, it looked like they had it under control (as much as that means) but relaxed things and made two enormous mistakes. But then they had election rallies and there was at least one major religious gathering, and it was ginormous.

India: Hindu festival turns superspreader event – DW – 04/15/2021

India is recording huge jumps in daily coronavirus infections while facing vaccine and hospital bed shortages. Loosely enforced restrictions are being blamed for fueling the soaring infection rate.

www.dw.com

 

[Tatty_Two]

@lynx29 Pretty much every vaccine or drug ever made has a trial period, if it were a 10 year trial period there would be millions more deaths across all diseases, nobody can predict long term effects in terms of decades ahead so what do we do? Do people who choose to live in large busy cities mitigate their decision by placing financial security (work) over potential long term health effects such as respiratory disease from pollution, do millions of people with cancer refuse treatment because some treatments for some cancers can have horrendous side effects, I understand where your comments are coming from but in reality you are not really talking about a vaccine, you are talking about life and the choices we make.

 

[64K]

I keep hearing that the vaccines are helping in a major way to bring down the new cases of Covid 19 infections and I think there is some truth to it. New infections are now under 50 per day in my county of 370,000 people. At the height of the Pandemic there were well over 400 new infections per day. Very encouraging.

 

[Space Lynx]

I keep hearing that the vaccines are helping in a major way to bring down the new cases of Covid 19 infections and I think there is some truth to it. New infections are now under 50 per day in my county of 370,000 people. At the height of the Pandemic there were well over 400 new infections per day. Very encouraging.

Yep I do believe the vaccine has saved the day.

 

[R0H1T]

Yeah, it looked like they had it under control (as much as that means) but relaxed things and made two enormous mistakes. But then they had election rallies and there was at least one major religious gathering, and it was ginormous.

India: Hindu festival turns superspreader event – DW – 04/15/2021

India is recording huge jumps in daily coronavirus infections while facing vaccine and hospital bed shortages. Loosely enforced restrictions are being blamed for fueling the soaring infection rate.

www.dw.com

Pretty much every event in India is a super spreader event, at any point in time (say over 24 hours) normally there'd be 100 million people travelling across this state & yeah I'm being quite liberal by counting one person multiple times depending on their (round) trips.

Anyway the point is there's no evidence, as yet, this fueled the current wave but it was a major contributor especially election rallies. I'd argue the bigger contributor was general public taking it easy partying like usual, marriages, religious/family & other gatherings ~ this as far I'm concerned is the biggest reason for the recent upsurge. Lots of people stopped waring masks & thought hey YOLO

 

[HTC]

Since Portugal began having deaths from COVID back in March 2020, we had only ONE DAY with zero deaths, and that was August 3rd 2020. Until yesterday, that is: we had zero deaths yesterday too.

By having the most vulnerable vaccinated 1st (after medical personnel), we have made sure the worst outcome happens less and less often, as evidenced by the fact that the daily fatalities number fell so dramatically.

That said, it's not only the most vulnerable that get hospitalized with COVID so, if left unchecked, hospitals can STILL get overrun which is why it's way WAY too early to let our guards down: if hospitals get heavily stressed, there starts to be a shortage of medical personnel to attend to the sheer volume of people needing medical attention, and that's when the daily fatalities REALLY start to climb.

 

[Caring1]

I keep hearing that the vaccines are helping in a major way to bring down the new cases of Covid 19 infections and I think there is some truth to it. New infections are now under 50 per day in my county of 370,000 people. At the height of the Pandemic there were well over 400 new infections per day. Very encouraging.

That's a very small population and it's reasonable to assume the vaccination is the reason for the drop in daily new infections, or it could be that the more people that are infected, the less new cases will be recorded.
Eventually once everyone gets it, there will be no new cases.

 

[Space Lynx]

Eventually once everyone gets it, there will be no new cases.

that's fantasy land talk. herd immunity will never be achieved imo. I'm getting it for one reason only, it will prevent my death if i catch a variant. the original covid kicked my ass and I was scared to death. that's only reason I am doing it.

 

[dragontamer5788]

that's fantasy land talk. herd immunity will never be achieved imo. I'm getting it for one reason only, it will prevent my death if i catch a variant. the original covid kicked my ass and I was scared to death. that's only reason I am doing it.

We've wiped out other diseases like smallpox before. It would take an enormous amount of effort, but we can absolutely wipe out COVID19 if we put our minds to it and invest in the problem.

Its not an issue of "can we do it", its an issue of "should we do it?". I think the current consensus seems to be as you say: "just" vaccinate enough people to prevent our hospitals from overflowing. Which is a lot cheaper than fully wiping out the disease.

Still though: I want to remind people that wiping out diseases is entirely possible. Smallpox in particular had R0 of 3.5 to 6 by various estimates (far more than COVID19). So Smallpox was more virulent and spread much faster than COVID19. Smallpox was also more deadly (historically: 30% death rate), so the calculus on wiping out the disease was more obvious.

 

[Space Lynx]

I read earlier today that Moderna is the only that prevents severe hospitalization 100%, Pfizer has fallen down to second place, and JnJ a very far third.

Can anyone confirm this? I'm considering getting Moderna now...

 

[MentalAcetylide]

Here's my take on the whole Covid-19 thing:

If you did not get infected by Covid-19 and refuse to be vaccinated when you have the opportunity, you don't understand much about viruses/vaccines AND you're an idiot. By not getting vaccinated, you provide a breeding ground for the virus to multiply and spread. The more people that get infected, the more chances for mutations to occur. The more mutations that occur, the higher the possibility that current vaccines become less effective and we end up right back where we started way back when this shit-storm hit. Do you want a repeat of lockdowns and another year of economic hardship that could send economies tanking lower than whale shit?

If you don't need to go out traveling, don't go, period. Unless you're wearing a M.O.P.P. 4 mask or HAZMAT suit, you're not 100% protected. Those rinky dink masks we use are not 100% reliable(especially if in close proximity to others) and are just part of a mitigation standard being used to minimize/slow the spread so hospitals are able to handle the extra load of sick people requiring medical treatment until we can get everyone vaccinated.

Use your head or you may be dead?

I read earlier today that Moderna is the only that prevents severe hospitalization 100%, Pfizer has fallen down to second place, and JnJ a very far third.

Can anyone confirm this? I'm considering getting Moderna now...

Well I got my second shot of Pfizer a few weeks ago and I'm certainly not going to deliberately test it. I say take what you can get now and then see about what options are available if they recommend a booster shot later on. Its too early to tell, but I would lean more towards the 2-shot vaccines(Moderna, Pfizer) vs. the one-shot vaccines(Johnson & Johnson). You can't always go by their statistics... like they say, "There's lies, damn lies, and Statistics!"

 

[HTC]

Here are Portugal's updated numbers this week.



The pics are, in order, last day updated numbers and every day since then until yesterday's numbers (click for full picture), and the below numbers are current totals, week totals and daily averaged this week:

- 23579 active cases --- 1213 less --- 173 less per day
- 796721 recovered --- 4036 more --- 577 more per day
- 16977 fatalities --- 12 more --- 2 more per day
- 837277 confirmed infected --- 2835 more --- 405 more per day

- 10522254 tests taken --- 235174 more --- 47037 more per day but was last updated April 29th and it includes antigen tests as well
- 3324285 vaccinated --- 410390 more --- last updated today but that corresponds to 2451606 1st doses + 872679 2nd doses
- 311 hospitalized --- 37 less --- 5 less per day
- 85 in ICU --- 13 less --- 2 less per day

The main report wasn't published on several days, so i had to use the situation report instead.

Daily fatalities continue to drop, albeit slightly, the week average has dropped below 10 for the 5th consecutive week but we had TWO days with ZERO DEATHS: we only had 1 day with zero deaths prior to this week since we 1st started having fatalities to this virus in March 2020 . New cases dropped more noticeably and the R number dropped from 0.99 to 0.98 on average. Almost 1/4th of Portugal's population has received the vaccine's 1st dose and roughly 8.7% has received both doses.

 

[64K]

I'm going to take the Moderna vaccine. J&J has the worst stats.

 

[Space Lynx]

I'm going to take the Moderna vaccine. J&J has the worst stats.

Moderna and Pfizer seem to be about equal on all the stats really. I googled effective percentages that are up to date... and still can't find anything, for some reason only the old trial stats still seem to exist (specifically for the hospitalization rate of those with vaccine).

 

[R-T-B]

Moderna and Pfizer seem to be about equal on all the stats really. I googled effective percentages that are up to date... and still can't find anything, for some reason only the old trial stats still seem to exist (specifically for the hospitalization rate of those with vaccine).

I don't think a more recent study has been completed. But really, just get any of them Lynx. They are all better than not being vaccinated.

 

[Space Lynx]

World’s most vaccinated nation reintroduces curbs as cases surge

Seychelles, which has fully vaccinated more of its population against COVID-19 than any other country, has closed schools and canceled sporting activities for two weeks as infections surge.

www.japantimes.co.jp

So statistically speaking, it looks like the vaccine is not working...

It would be nice to know the percentages of which vaccines were used in the Seychelles... from the sounds of it, it seems like almost no mRNA vaccine was used... which is probably why it's closing down again and the lockdown being done again. Seems to me the non-mRNA vaccines simply don't work well enough.

Pfizer and Moderna need to save the world, the answer seems clear to me now.

 

[Tatty_Two]

World’s most vaccinated nation reintroduces curbs as cases surge

Seychelles, which has fully vaccinated more of its population against COVID-19 than any other country, has closed schools and canceled sporting activities for two weeks as infections surge.

www.japantimes.co.jp

So statistically speaking, it looks like the vaccine is not working...

It would be nice to know the percentages of which vaccines were used in the Seychelles... from the sounds of it, it seems like almost no mRNA vaccine was used... which is probably why it's closing down again and the lockdown being done again. Seems to me the non-mRNA vaccines simply don't work well enough.

Pfizer and Moderna need to save the world, the answer seems clear to me now.

As I understand it they vaccinated with a pretty high infection rate and few restrictions in place, if that is the case then it does not really matter what vaccines they were using, probably a load of already infected/Asymptomatic people got vaccinated and those that weren't possibly caught the virus in the proceeding couple of weeks, was it Chile or Venezuela that was similar? although they were in Lockdown at some point but opened up well before the majority of people had got the vaccine.

 

[dragontamer5788]

World’s most vaccinated nation reintroduces curbs as cases surge

Seychelles, which has fully vaccinated more of its population against COVID-19 than any other country, has closed schools and canceled sporting activities for two weeks as infections surge.

www.japantimes.co.jp

So statistically speaking, it looks like the vaccine is not working...

It would be nice to know the percentages of which vaccines were used in the Seychelles... from the sounds of it, it seems like almost no mRNA vaccine was used... which is probably why it's closing down again and the lockdown being done again. Seems to me the non-mRNA vaccines simply don't work well enough.

Pfizer and Moderna need to save the world, the answer seems clear to me now.

Sinopharm's vaccine is well known to only have a 50%ish efficacy rate. 50% efficacy with 60% vaccinated means its only effectively 30% herd immunity. So the USA (with a 95% effective vaccine: Moderna / Pfizer) who is 40% vaccinated is ahead (95% * 40% == 38% effective).

Remember the R0-values: we are only really safe once we reach 1 - (1/R0) effective immunity. That is 66% for R0 == 3 (initial estimates, but probably an underestimate now that mutations are around), or 75% for R0 == 4, or 80% for R0 == 5.

Sinopharm doesn't have enough efficacy for herd immunity. But its still a useful tool at preventing hospitalizations and death. Especially because the highly-effective vaccines are expensive (3x the cost) and currently supply-constrained. Having the poorer countries take Sinopharm is still a net-win for the world. At least while the Moderna / Pfizer vaccines ramp up in production. 30% effective herd immunity is better than 0% after all.

-----------

Sinopharm is far better than nothing however. Because those people have a much lower chance of dying and/or going to the hospital. COVID19 will continue to spread even in a Sinopharm-vaccinated country. But far, far fewer people will die. Once again, I bring up Smallpox as a historical example. Smallpox killed 30% of its victims, but only 1% of the vaccinated population. (Yes, you needed a vaccine to reach COVID19-levels of death). Going from 30% deaths to 1% deaths was a huge advantage for vaccinated populations however. It was an imperfect vaccine, but still a great tool.

Furthermore: those who were Smallpox vaccinated still got and spread Smallpox around. Just less so compared to non-vaccinated.