when i look at norway over time, it seems coronavirus has had a steady rise since pretty much october. in the logarithmic view you can see the rate of change increasing at that same point and still slowly increasing the change
so, yeah: i think people should take it seriously. i just think that we’ve got enough time depth on this now that maybe month to month isn’t nearly as telling as the overall trend
the us, by contrast while still doing terribly in daily numbers has been flattening the rate of increase since the start of the year, and that does seem to be a meaningful change. ( though texas reopening is doubtless is going to wreak that completely )
This is what we’ve been saying here in France (me and Mrs Hotel that is): unless the public health bodies have non-public information that connects these clots to the vaccine, or shows they’re very unusual, or that shows they’re much more frequent than the reported numbers, I can’t see how we’ve reached the bar of “statistically significant”, let alone the bar of “let’s slow down an already very slow vaccination program”.
The article below is from September. I’m not sure what the number is now, but selling cruises to nowhere while this is happening (and before the victims’ needs* have been met) seems indecent, to say the least.
*There are pending claims for back pay, therapy, workplace safety violations, unenforced labor regulations, death benefits, negligence, etc…
I’m going to voice a potentially unpopular opinion here and say that this isn’t necessarily great news. Every study I’ve read and report I’ve heard from epidemiologists and pediatric specialists indicate that kids, especially younger kids, are at extremely low risk of both getting sick themselves and spreading it to others. One useful way to think about it is that I just heard from an epidemiologist is that unvaccinated kids around age 9 are already on par with vaccinated adults (or actually even lower) as far as risk of catching the disease or spreading it to others. It’s safer to be around a 9 year old than it is to be around an adult who received the Moderna vaccine, and much safer than being around an adult who received J&J vaccine. If you’re going to allow vaccinated adults to participate normally in society then unvaccinated kids below a certain age should be allowed to do the same.
Clearly the risk to a child of being harmed by the vaccine are expected to be quite low, and I certainly hope this new clinical trial goes well for everyone. But the risk/benefit calculation for vaccinating groups such as 6-month-old infants is very different than for adults.
Like I said, I know this isn’t a popular opinion here, and I fully expect some disagreement. My only request is that if you’re going to attack this position please do it with data.
No, when I posted it, I was shaking my head over this super-express mass testing and roll-out. In normal times, this would be dubious ethics and risky.
I know they’re trying their best in difficult circumstances, but I hope no one makes a mistake or that we find out something tragically unexpected.
The true incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection in children is not known due to lack of widespread testing and the prioritization of testing for adults and those with severe illness. Hospitalization rates in children are significantly lower than hospitalization rates in adults with COVID-19, suggesting that children may have less severe illness from COVID-19 compared to adults.
Recent evidence suggests that compared to adults, children likely have similar viral loads in their nasopharynx,7 similar secondary infections rates, and can spread the virus to others.8,9
Due to community mitigation measures and school closures, transmission of SARS-CoV-2 to and among children may have been reduced in the United States during the pandemic in the spring and early summer of 2020. This may explain the low incidence in children compared with adults. Comparing trends in pediatric infections before and after the return to child care, in-person school, youth sports and other activities may enhance our understanding about infections in children.
In short, the data suggest that your statement is not accurate. Data on kids are limited due to much lower level of severe or even symptomatic disease, therefore lower levels of testing, but the viral load seems to be comparable to adults, and the risk of secondary infections also is similar. As schools reopen and the relatively protected status most kids have had goes away I fully expect the numbers to rise.
Yesterday I heard an interview on the radio with a doctor from Moderna who is working on this trial. He basically straight-up admitted that the push behind the trial is not about the safety of the kids (in his own words he said that “kids don’t get sick” from covid) but about the “concerns” of the parents, who are pushing hard to get their kids enrolled in the trial because they want to feel safer about letting their kids see their grandparents and whatnot. So yeah, the justification for rushing this trial is somewhat dubious.
I agree with that part of your statement. Fortunately the data and trends for this already exists and has been studied by epidemiologists. It’s not hypothetical anymore. The CDC used this data to make their most recent recommendations regarding school openings.
Edit to add: let’s say, hypothetically, that contrary to the current CDC position there simply wasn’t enough data out there to know whether children were at significant risk of being major spreaders of the virus or not. In that case, wouldn’t the onus normally fall upon those pushing to do this trial to first show that kids actually are major spreaders, rather than on others to prove that they’re not? Remember, the Moderna RNA-based vaccine is a novel new type that works much differently than other more traditional types that we have decades of experience with, so we really need to get this right. Rushing to do a large clinical trial for something like this normally has to pass a high bar of urgency. (We obviously had that level of urgency for adults.)
No. Flat out no. The onus would be upon those who feel that allowing the virus to multiply and mutate unchecked in a large and very well-connected population is a good idea. It really, truly is not. And I am speaking as someone who does this for a living and tracks the stats like it was my job (because it is.) The pediatric population has always been the key to controlling viral illnesses, and almost never because they are the ones at highest risk of bad outcomes. They are very generous in sharing their secretions, they are pretty much immune to lectures on washing hands and not touching, kissing, drooling on, etc any other person they come in contact with. Under current circumstances, I would prioritize vaccinating 18-40 year olds first for controlling the spread, and the school-aged population second. These are the populations most likely to show asymptomatic spread, even though they are also, by far, the least likely to suffer poor outcomes. The other factor that needs to be considered is the increasing evidence for long-term cardiac and neurologic problems in even asymptomatic patients regardless of age. School age kids have a very, very long time to deal with cardiomyopathies and neurological deficits which could be prevented by vaccinating them. Just to be clear, I make no claim to being objective about this. I am not. But for me, getting a pediatric vaccine approved would be a game-changing development in terms of my anxiety for how this all eventually plays out.
It boggles the mind how quickly everyone seems to have thrown the time-worn adage that kids are ambulatory petri dishes out the window with this virus. As a teacher, my mom would get colds, the flu, and even strep throat pretty much every Christmas without fail, because she was in a room with 20 children for 8 hours whose only job seemed to be to spread whatever was going around at the time.
You may be right, especially if studying epidemiological data is your job! But once again, I humbly request you share the hard data that you’re basing this on. And what is your response to the reports, such as those that I linked to, which indicate very low levels of spread in the schools that have reopened?
This highlights a key difference between epidemiologists and pediatricians/parents. To an epidemiologist, [for example] a 5% hospitalization rate and 0.5% fatality rate is “kids don’t get sick.” For pediatricians and parents, those same metrics mean baby funerals.
Edited to clarify that the numbers I’m using are rhetorical examples
I don’t think people came to that conclusion quickly AT ALL. It took quite some time before the CDC and prominent virologists like Dr Fauci put out their latest recommendations on school reopenings.
