Coronavirus 2019-2020 thread (no unsubstantiated rumours!)

Phead128

Captain
Staff member
Moderator - World Affairs
This is just wrong.

0.13% chance covid infection each year works out to 1.3% chance of infection over 10 years (1 - 0.9987^10), and 2.6% over 20 years (1 - 0.9987^20). Those are pretty significant risks.

Thanks for proving my point.

Over a 10 year period, you have to be 98.7% confident of never getting COVID infection in order for a Pfizer Shot to not be worth it.

Over a 20 year period, you have to be 97.4% confident of never getting COVID infection in order for a Pfizer Shot to not be worth it.

For an individual, the difference between 97.4% vs. 98.7% vs. 99.99% is virtually the same, it's basically 100% confident of never getting COVID to make the Pfizer Shot not worth it.

Trying to argue the difference between 97.4% chance of not getting COVID or 99.87% is trivial and not clinically meaningfully different.

There's no such thing as "individual level risk" vs "population level risk", probability is probability.

Yes, it is called an "
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", where you cannot extrapolate population-level risk to an individual-level risk. The reverse of ecological fallacy is the "
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" where you cannot extrapolate individual-level risk to population-level risk.

Ecological fallacy, also called ecological inference fallacy, in
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, failure in reasoning that arises when an
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is made about an individual based on
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data for a group. In ecological studies (observational studies of relationships between risk-modifying factors and health or other outcomes in populations), the aggregation of data results in the loss or concealment of certain details of information.
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You are committing one of the most basic logical fallacies in epidemiology, assuming that individual-level risk can be extrapolated to describe population-level risk.
 

Phead128

Captain
Staff member
Moderator - World Affairs
There's no such thing as "individual level risk" vs "population level risk", probability is probability.

and if there is still any doubt whether there is "individual level risk" vs. "population level risk" and they are not equivalent to each other.

Distinguishing Sick Individuals and Sick Populations in Epidemiologic Research and Prevention
Geoffrey Rose [1] introduced into the public health literature the importance of differences between "sick individuals" and "sick populations" and the need for different prevention strategies for the control of individual- and population-level health problems [2].

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However, risk estimates are more accurate for populations of similar patients than they are for any individual patient. It may be hazardous to presume that the point estimate of risk derived from a population model represents the most accurate estimate for a given patient......We identify the following: (1) predictions of risk are accurate at the level of populations but do not translate directly to patients,...

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1631987833448.png

Population risk is not the same as individual risk​

We tend to think in very small sample sizes (after all, what happens to me and my family must be most important, right?) and not in terms of populations (which is how epidemiological statistics are calculated). However, scientists measure population risks. We, as consumers, assume that reports of population risk translates to the same amount of risk for individuals. But it is not that simple and this part of risk assessment is not intuitive at all .....
If something is reported to increase risk of disease in a population, does that mean that you or me, personally, will have a higher risk from exposure to this substance? Not necessarily. In fact, risk is, by definition, a population-based measure. The very idea of extrapolating a population level-risk down to a personal one is highly flawed, as described by Dr John W. McEvoy in
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. In an interview about predicting individual risk of heart attacks based on population-derived risk factors,
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:

…the concept of individual risk applied — truly applied — to any given person is an oxymoron. Risk for an individual is like a square peg for a round hole. We can never know, or estimate, one person’s risk. In fact, if you do the math, the confidence interval for a given risk estimate in one person would range from a 0% to a 100% chance of a cardiac event. Thus, risk is not ‘personalized’ and I think of risk as a ‘group-phenomenon’.
This ideal of personalized risk assessment is, of course, the ultimate goal of precision medicine and exposure science. At this point in time, however, we are far from being able to make these predictions for individuals.

The concept of individual vs. population-level risk is very fundamental to biostatistics and epidemiology. If you say it doesn't exist, they you fundamentally do not understand how risk is interpreted in epidemiology. A probability is not just a probability, the context matters.

If we used your logic, then herd immunity is impossible because vaccine efficacy of 95% risk reduction allows for non-zero chance of infection, so applied to entire Chinese population, there will be tens of millions of cases. You can't apply individual-level risk reduction to population-level risk of infection. The at-risk population in the denominators are different and the interpretation is different.

Source: I took four Epidemiology courses in undergrad and graduate school.
 
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Phead128

Captain
Staff member
Moderator - World Affairs
This is crazy.

There are 7496 VAERS-reported excess deaths over the previous year and 2021 was only 2/3 into the year. Projecting into the full-year the number would be 7496 x 4/3 = 9995.

Projecting it into China's population if China were to use the same type of vaccines, the number would be 1400/320 x 9995 = 43726.

That would be 43726/4849 = 9 times the number of death actually caused by Covid-19 itself in China!

There is significant limitation to this interpretation.

You can't assume that vaccines CAUSED all these side-effects or deaths due to limitations of VAERS observational surveillance database. The VAERS passively collects self-reported symptoms after vaccination, but the side-effects can be caused by anything, by vaccines, by comorbid disease, by infection by COVID, by other diseases, by anything. It's self-reported data that cannot be verified. Nobody verifies if these are true, it's a passive system, not an active tracking system. For example, I can go to the VAERS website and submit a report my grandma died 2 weeks after the Pfizer vaccine, and nobody double-checks or verifies if it's caused by the vaccine or if she had a heart-attack or stroke.

Due to incomplete, inaccurate, self-reported, coincidental, and unverifiable information, VAERS alone cannot be used to determine causality between vaccine and side-effects or death. It can provide patterns that alert FDA/CDC to conduct more clinical trials in controlled systems with rigorous follow-up period and collection of demographic and other patient characteristics.
 

supercat

Major

Bats in Laos Caves Harbor Closest Relatives to Covid-19 Virus

The research supports the hypothesis that the pandemic began from a spillover of a bat-borne virus. About 1,000 such infections may be occurring daily in southern China and Southeast Asia in areas with dense populations of bats from the Rhinolophus genus, a
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Tuesday found.


The three viruses found in Laos, dubbed BANAL-52, BANAL-103, and BANAL-236, are “the closest ancestors of SARS-CoV-2 known to date,” said Marc Eloit, head of pathogen discovery at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, and co-authors. “These viruses may have contributed to SARS-CoV-2’s origin and may intrinsically pose a future risk of direct transmission to humans.”

The receptor binding domains of three Laos coronaviruses are closer to that of SARS-CoV-2 than to the RaTG13 virus identified in Rhinopholus affinis bats from the Mojiang mineshaft in Yunnan province, that was regarded as the pandemic strain’s closest match. The BANAL-236 virus has an almost identical receptor binding domain to the pandemic virus, according to the paper.

“The receptor binding domain of SARS-CoV-2 looked unusual when it was first discovered because there were so few viruses to compare it to,” said Edward Holmes, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Sydney, who wasn’t involved in the research.

Tracing Ancestors​

“Now that we are sampling more from nature, we are starting to find these closely related bits of gene sequence,” Holmes said in an email Saturday. “Eventually, with more sampling, the natural ancestry of the entire SARS-CoV-2 genome will be revealed.”

None of the bat viruses isolated in Laos harbors a so-called furin cleavage site in the spike that facilitates cell entry. It’s a feature of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that has led some scientists to theorize that it was created in a laboratory.

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No evidence supporting the lab-leak theory has emerged. Last month, the U.S. intelligence community ruled out the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 was developed by China as a biological weapon, but no consensus was reached on its origin.

The lack of furin cleavage may be explained by insufficient sampling in bats, or by acquisition of the furin cleavage site during chains of transmission in an alternate animal host, or during unreported circulation in humans in the early stages of the outbreak when the virus may have caused few symptoms, the authors said.

“Our results pinpoint the presence of new bat sarbecoviruses that seem to have the same potential for infecting humans as early strains of SARS-CoV-2,” they said.

Guano Collectors​

People who spend time in or close to caves, such as guano collectors, are particularly at risk of being exposed. Further investigations are needed to assess if people exposed to bats have been infected by one of these viruses and whether they have antibodies that may provide protection against subsequent SARS-CoV-2 infections.

“This paper is really interesting and we need more research like it,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, the World Health Organization’s technical lead for Covid-19, in an email.

The researchers studied 645 bats from 46 species captured on four sites -- in Fueng and Meth districts of Vientiane province, and in Namor and Xay districts in Oudomxay province -- between July 2020 and January 2021. The bats live in the limestone karstic terrain common to China, Laos, and Vietnam in the Indochina peninsula.

The paper highlights the diversity of SARS-CoV-2-like viruses present in bats in Southeast Asia, Holmes said.

“Continual sampling is the only way to understand the origins of this virus and it is important that more sampling is done throughout China as this remains the most likely place of origin,” he said. “This study emphasizes that bat coronaviruses that have the potential to infect humans readily exist in nature and could emerge at any point. This is the clear risk for the future.”
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OppositeDay

Senior Member
Registered Member
Preliminary data on phase ii of CanSino’s aerosol vaccine as booster was released at a Chinese Medical Association conference

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The neutralising antibodies data looks good, and seems to be slightly better than the injection version of CanSino’s vaccine (as booster after two shots of inactivated). What’s more interesting is that in theory an inhaled aerosol vaccine should offer more protection along the upper respiratory tract which should make it better at preventing transmission. Need phase iii to see whether this works out in practice.
 

Phead128

Captain
Staff member
Moderator - World Affairs
I recall a while ago we were discussion the economic cost of an out of control outbreak, specifically with Vietnam as the context.
Well here's an update:

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I read the article... That's good news some companies are considering moving production back to China for "surge" capacity as the holiday season is coming up, esp. as Vietnam has very strict lockdowns to control their exploding cases....

It suggests Vietnam has very low-vaccination rate (only 4% vaccinated), so it's MASSIVE exploding cases, and Vietnanese gov't is shutting down every factory and locking down very tough.... which is driving business towards Thailand, China, etc...

I feel like if Vietnam can get it's vaccination rate higher, plus control outbreaks with strict lockdowns (like China has done), it will continue to take business away from China.... not least (according to your article) that US tariffs on Chinese-made goods will continue to be an incentive in long-term to shift production towards Vietnam and other nations.

I'm not sure if your ultimate point is that high-vaccination rate is good, or excessive lockdowns is bad...
 
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Phead128

Captain
Staff member
Moderator - World Affairs
A proper analysis will report the total sample size, the risk-ratio, the 95% confidence interval, the p-value, matching to minimize confounding or adjustment for demographic and clinical characteristics like age, sex, comorbidity, education, income, social health behaviors, etc...

Nobody takes such low-quality shitty analysis with line charts seriously. This is like sophomore-year high school level type of analysis. Something twitter trolls can easily disseminate as disinformation, but nobody in scientific community would take seriously.
 

Gatekeeper

Brigadier
Registered Member
More vaccines arrived at Philippines from China.

菲律宾政府采购的第二十五批中国科兴新冠疫苗运抵马尼拉
央视新闻 2021-09-19

当地时间19日,菲律宾政府采购的第二十五批中国科兴新冠疫苗运抵马尼拉国际机场。此批疫苗由菲律宾航空承运,共计300万剂。

至此,菲律宾共收到3600万剂科兴疫苗和100万剂国药疫苗。

FB_IMG_1632172358072.jpg
 

Strangelove

Colonel
Registered Member
I read the article... That's good news some companies are considering moving production back to China for "surge" capacity as the holiday season is coming up, esp. as Vietnam has very strict lockdowns to control their exploding cases....

It suggests Vietnam has very low-vaccination rate (only 4% vaccinated), so it's MASSIVE exploding cases, and Vietnanese gov't is shutting down every factory and locking down very tough.... which is driving business towards Thailand, China, etc...

I feel like if Vietnam can get it's vaccination rate higher, plus control outbreaks with strict lockdowns (like China has done), it will continue to take business away from China.... not least (according to your article) that US tariffs on Chinese-made goods will continue to be an incentive in long-term to shift production towards Vietnam and other nations.

I'm not sure if your ultimate point is that high-vaccination rate is good, or excessive lockdowns is bad...

For most of 2020, they had low levels of infection, so their government and population were of a "we beat this" mentality and were complacent. When Delta hit, it hit them hard like a train and they were totally unprepared. Anyway, China has been sending them loads of vaccines and they are accepting them. I think their situation would stabilize soon in a month or two.
 
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