On 2020-12-05 18:54:57, user Zed wrote:
Dear authors,
I'm pretty sure your preprint is now somewhere under peer-review, but I was wondering what are the main difference between your meta-analysis and Fiolet et al (https://www.clinicalmicrobi... "https://www.clinicalmicrobiologyandinfection.com/article/S1198-743X(20)30505-X/fulltext)"). It looks pretty similar or at least going in the same way.
Thanks :)
On 2020-12-11 10:13:56, user Marina Pollán wrote:
Please, notice that a new version of this paper, including additional information, has been accepted and published in the British Medical Journal:<br /> doi: 10.1136/bmj.m4509<br /> Prof. Marina Pollán in the name of all the authors
On 2020-12-15 10:58:41, user NK wrote:
Re: article pre-published at https://www.medrxiv.org/con...
There are several methodological problems in this study.
The summary states: "Teachers had no or only moderately increased odds of COVID-19". This finding is mentioned several places in the text of the article. Teachers are repeatedly referred to as having a low risk, even when the results for teachers show a significant increase in admissions and borderline significant increase in infection rates. Quotes: «First, our findings give no reason to believe that teachers are at higher risk of infection», and in the conclusion: “Teachers had no increased risk to only a moderate increased risk of COVID-19”. We wonder why the authors find it important to repeatedly mention this<br /> result for teachers when the result for the last period does not exclude a substantial increased risk for teachers, whereas occupational groups with lower risk than teachers are not mentioned in the summary.
The part of “Supplementary table 1” does not provide a basis for such a conclusion that teachers are a low risk group.
The OR (95% CI) for 1) primary school teachers 2), child care workers and 3) secondary education teachers were 1.142 (0.99-1.32), 1.145 (1.02-1.29) and 1.095 (0.82-1.47) respectively. The upper confidence limits does not exclude 29 % to 47 % increased ORs, which represent substantial increases.
Concerning the results on the risk of admission, it is stated: «None of the included occupations had any particularly increased risk of severe COVID-19, indicated by hospitalization, when compared with all infected in their working age (Figure 3, S-table 2), apart from dentists, who had 7 ( 2-18) times increased odds ratio, and pre-school teachers, child care workers and taxi, bus and tram drivers who had 1-2 times increased odds ratio”.
This finding is not discussed or mentioned in the summary, even if the findings were statistically significant for pre-school teachers as well as for child care workers.
It is not to be expected that teachers have higher infection rates than the average working population in periods when school are closed and when the infection rates are low in the age groups 0 - 9 and 10 -19 years. This problem is not discussed in the paper. Schools were closed from 12 March to 27 April. For a majority of the schools, holiday started from Friday 19 June.
The first study period lasted from February 27 to July 17. Thus, schools were closed for over 70 days of the first study period of 139 days. The infection rates in children at school age in the first study period were rather low (3.6 per 100 000 children per week between in the age group 10 -19 in week 19, 1.1 per 100 0000 children per week in week 25). In the last study period, the infection rates varied between 7 to 17 per 100 000 per week in the age group 10 - 19. Even if these rates are much lower than later weeks that were no studied (after week 42), the results from this second part of the study suggest an increased risk for teachers.
Thus, the infection rates among children started to increase from week 43, after the end of the study period. By not including this period, the study design excludes the possibility to detect if these high rates among pupils could be related to increase infection rates among teachers.
It is a problem that the results from this pre-published study has been quoted in the media and referred to as if teachers have no excess risk, or even possibly a reduced risk at the time that several municipalities were to decide what type of restrictions at schools should be introduced to reduce the risk of transmission among school children, see https://www.barnehage.no/korona/ny-forskning-nei-barnehagelaerere-har-ikke-okt-risiko-for -smitte/211143
On 2020-12-20 10:40:04, user Martin Reijns wrote:
Please note that this paper has now been published after peer review in PLoS Biology:
On 2020-12-21 18:08:41, user Michael Schrader wrote:
Very helpful study.<br /> Just a short comment on table: With 35 patients, precision is not better than +- one patient, corresponding to +-2.9 %. It is thus confusing to claim percentages with 4 digits like 97.12 %.
On 2020-12-24 07:31:39, user K Cornwell wrote:
Well done on your study. It is because of doctors who go the extra mile in the fight against this terrible virus. That we find that some of our medicines which may have been around for many years are having a significant impact on the treatment and recovery times. Let hope that the vaccines are enough to create some immunity across the countries and the treatment algorithms improve with better research.
On 2020-12-25 16:40:49, user Mukesh Bairwa wrote:
A novel topic chosen for systematic review and meta-analysis have medical implication for developing countries. The research question and search strategy is very clear and understandable. The results are quite impressive that M health intervention is helpful to improve the maternal and child health indicators in developing countries. The methodology is crisp and concise and readable. The work included the important parameters related to maternal and child health indicators. However, I suggest authors to include many other relevant parameters in future work.
On 2021-01-03 22:32:54, user Rodger Kram wrote:
Overall, I find this analysis to be interesting and well-conducted.
I would add Hunter et al. to the list of papers reporting improved running economy with neoteric Nikes. <br /> https://www.tandfonline.com...
Iain's treadmill was a bit slippery in the Vaporflys and I bet that accounts for their slightly lower savings.
minor points: <br /> Line 26 tongue in cheek: I know Joyner is prescient but how did he know in 1985 that he would be fascinated in 2019? Likewise for Hoogkamer 2017.
Line 42 (13) is a great paper but an odd reference here, Tung et al. would make more sense.<br /> Line 53 "led to" assumes cause-effect, horse before cart<br /> Line 82 doesn't really matter here but such directional hypotheses make 1-tailed tests legit. I am a proponent of directional hypoths<br /> Line 177 "moderated" seems like the wrong word here. plus "strongly moderated" seems like an oxymoron. like "mildly enthusiastic"<br /> Line 188-189 "average" but then "median" values are given.<br /> Line 209 cold temps too!<br /> Line 281 where does 1.5% come from? I thought the mean was 2%?<br /> Line 284 I would have provided (X%) in addition to the 4minutes since previous sentence was about %,
Line 301 I list my consulting to Nike on relevant papers, it would seem AJ should do so on this paper.
Ref (11) is 2020 not 1985
On 2021-01-05 14:01:12, user Lianna Martin wrote:
Hiya - I had suspected covid 11th March and still can barely smell. My nasal passage more recently has become painfully crusted up coinciding with most things with a strong smell coming across like bleach or petrol to me. Taste comes and goes. I can live with symptoms, but would love to be part of a study...
On 2021-01-06 12:33:57, user C'est la même wrote:
The authors state that there were 25 cases of GBS in London during the sampling period, which would lead to an estimated occurrence rate of 0.82 GBS cases per 1000 COVID-19<br /> infections.<br /> Yet they discount this by citing a claim that 17.5% of individuals London had been infected by that time. We now know that estimate was wildly inaccurate.<br /> Serological survey data collected by the ONS found that prevalence in London was just under 0.4% around that date (https://www.medrxiv.org/con... "https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.06.20147348v1)")
Which works out to around 36,000 people in comparison to the 26,784 PCR confirmed cases. <br /> This would lead to an estimated occurrence rate of ~0.6 GBS cases per 1000 COVID-19 infections which certainly seems suggestive of an association.
The authors also performed genomic analyses to rule out molecular mimicry due to epitope similarities.
I'd like to draw attention to the fact that many of the known viral triggers of GBS also do not have evidence of molecular mimic epitopes, instead suggesting other mechanisms of generating autoimmunity including the co-capture hypothesis, (http://www.pnas.org/content... "http://www.pnas.org/content/114/4/734)"), given that spike protein interactions with gangliosides have already been characterised in a substantial number of publications to date.
As such, while the lower population incidence during the observed period is compelling, that data alone is not enough to rule out the association of GBS with SARS-CoV-2, given the impact of lockdown measures on other infectious causes that happen to have lower infectivity (basic reproduction number) than SARS-CoV-2.
On 2021-01-09 09:39:25, user Dr. Sebastian Boegel wrote:
This is a wonderful study. Congratulations. I am very honoured that you used my tool, seq2HLA. As seq2HLA also output HLA gene (and allele) expression (normalized to RPKM and the coounts), i am wondering why you additionally used AltHapAlignR for obtaining read counts for HLA genes. Did you experience any issues with seq2HLA? If yes, i am happy to help. <br /> All the best for you and keep up the great work,
Sebastian
On 2021-01-10 10:09:41, user Disqus wrote:
Gandini S et al. updated their previous preprint without, however, resolving the<br /> methodological problems, that is the errors already highlighted and the<br /> arbitrariness of most of the conclusions (see comments for the previous version<br /> here https://www.medrxiv.org/con... "https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.16.20248134v1)").<br /> In particular in this second version the sample of public institutions increase from 81.6% to 97% of total, for a total of 7,376,698 students, thus it is not clear how on such large numbers one can hope to obtain significantly different or significantly more reliable results from such an update.
On the other hand Gandini et al. seem to have realized how their analyses suffer from the biases of an ecological study (page 13) though it is incomprehensible how the proposed additional analysis for the Veneto region only can significantly relieve the problem.
There are still also some gross errors here and there, e.g. although the authors have updated Table 8 by adding the (useless) absolute range of the number of tests per institution, the problem of standard deviations remains, certainly the result of a calculation error being compatible with negative values in the number of tests (e.g. 9-13 = -4 which would represent the lower limit for 1 standard deviation for the number of tests, see Student index case – Kindergarten row)
Finally, once again in spite of the medRxiv warning, Gandini et al. seem to consider it as a sort of personal press agency, a springboard to relaunch their studies without having to wait for the peer review, so much so that on the fb page of the first author (Gandini S.) a link to the article promptly appeared, the day after it was published on medRxiv
On 2021-01-12 17:22:08, user Ann Marie Miller wrote:
Can any one tell me if the Herpes 6/7 loads could cause a false positive Hep. C test, during a flare up? Thank you!
On 2021-01-15 14:29:13, user Serge Richard wrote:
Would you please inform the financial Interest Links between these authors and the pharmaceutical compagnies involved in the drugs refered to ?
On 2021-01-16 00:11:22, user Sandrine_G ???????? ???????? wrote:
All the people involved and mentioned above have the duty (and the obligation, for the French) to declare their conflicts of interest. Make them obey the law. Thank you !
Toutes les personnes impliquées et citées en haut ont le devoir (et l'obligation, pour les français) de déclarer leurs conflits d'intêret. Obligez les à respecter la loi. Merci
On 2021-01-15 20:36:01, user Yves Muscat Baron wrote:
Could changes in the airborne pollutant particulate matter acting as a viral vector have exerted selective pressure to cause COVID-19 evolution? Medical Hypotheses DOI: 10.1016/j.mehy.2020.110401Reference:YMEHY
On 2021-01-17 17:03:45, user kdrl nakle wrote:
Extremely important result. Shows aerosolization of the virus when it can be cultured from less than 0.5 micron particles, these are definitely aerosol size.
On 2021-01-19 15:51:45, user Alter Ego wrote:
In the text it is written: "LamPORE reliably detected SARS-CoV-2 to 20 copies/ml of sample. SARS-CoV-2 reads were detected in the 0.2 copies/ml sample but this was below the threshold for calling as positive sample in LamPORE but were not detected via RT-qPCR (Table 1, Figure 3)." - I assume that with "sample" the original saliva or NP sample is meant. If this is true the assay would be amazing .... my question: ins't there an error and it should be written 20 copies/microliter ... and also 0.2 copies/microliter. This would better fit to the rather low sensitivity of the assay in Figure 4 and an overall performance that is rather on the lower side of other LAMP reports where generally a cut of of approx CT=30 has ben reported (corresponding to approx 20'000copes/millilitre. This Figure is otherwise consistent with the idea that the N2 priers are much better than the E1 and ORF1ab primers....
On 2021-01-19 18:29:14, user Monika J. wrote:
As a Slovak citizen I can tell your that they are NOT telling the whole truth. Your can fact check my every single word.<br /> They claim that the testing was not obligatory... NOT TRUE<br /> People where forced to attend this mass testing. Prime minister admitted that they forced us to do this on the Press conference. Our Human rights where oppresed. Without negative test certificate your couldnt go to work, bank, post Office, all shops denied you to enter their premises. All services where denied to your without certificate. Even some doctors refused to treat patients without cerificate. You could only go to grocery store, pharmacy and drugstore without certificate. There were some exceptions, but not important. Some employers called the police on employees who wanted to go to work (they where healthy, had no symptoms) but didnt hlave the certificate. A lot of employees were fired, because they refused to get tested.
Lets talk about the study. They claim that they have participant conset.... NOT TRUE we havent sign anythig. Nobody informed people what kind of test they are using, who will hlave their samples afterwards, who will procesed their personal information..yes they hlave our personal numer and wrote some information from our ID....we dont know which information they collected.
Thay claim that tests where done ONLY by profesionals.. NOT TRUE. Tests where done by non medical personnel too - in some cities - those people braged about it on Facebook. There is NO name of person who tested you. You can not check if this person <br /> is profesionall or not.<br /> In some cities testing was done outside. People where forced to stand for multiple hours in lane just to get tested, in rain, and low tempersture...<br /> I could continue on and on and on....<br /> Now they are going to do the second round od this mass testing. They are again FORCING us to do it Once again. The second round is even worst than the first one. Now they want us to stand in lane to get tested in -10 to -15°C.<br /> Now the police will be controlling us if we have the certificate or not. If your will not have the certificate you will get a fine. And they will oppresed our human rights again. Segregstion od people to two categories is called apartheid and it is illegeal....this is what they are doing. They are creating second category people. First category Has certificate and Can live relatively normaly. Second category is treated like garbage.
On 2021-01-24 11:43:28, user Zdenko Ontek wrote:
I have to express myself as a citizen of the Slovak Republic. Several points in the research conditions do not agree with reality. Test subjects did not sign informed consent or instruction. It is also untrue to claim that testing was voluntary. The Government of the Slovak Republic created direct and indirect pressure, for example, through employers, who conditioned the entry of their employees into the workplace by passing testing. I note that the translation is machine, so I apologize for the English. Affected citizen of the Slovak Republic.
On 2021-01-21 15:04:47, user CB Bass wrote:
Been saying this for 9 months but Ignored by all MSM outlets. Our published study found that the culprit in the cytokine storm and Covid severity is IL-6. Guess what else? Your gut bacteria- specifically Bifidobacterium regulate IL-6. This is why we are not seeing severe cases of covid in children. They have much higher concentrations of Bifidobacterium in their guts than adults do and it down regulates IL-6 which is pro inflammatory, while up regulates interferon and IL-10 which are anti inflammatory.
Also a study coming out of Hong Kong university last week not only confirmed what our Initial study and discovery showed, it found that patients with Covid severity had deficiencies in Bifidobacterium.
Here is a summary of our study if you’d like to read more on how IL-6 plays a major role in Covid severity in high risk individuals.
On 2021-01-22 21:53:47, user Takashi Nakano wrote:
The article was peer-reviewed and published on JMIR in November, 2020. <br /> Nakano T, Ikeda Y<br /> Novel Indicator to Ascertain the Status and Trend of COVID-19 Spread: Modeling Study<br /> J Med Internet Res 2020;22(11):e20144<br /> URL: https://www.jmir.org/2020/1...<br /> DOI: 10.2196/20144<br /> PMID: 33180742<br /> PMCID: 7708296<br /> https://www.jmir.org/2020/1...
On 2021-01-27 10:19:32, user Fred wrote:
I am not convinced of the data. Eg for Germany it is presumed that only about 1 of 10 infections is detected. The data I know from Germany say this number ist only 2-4 . So the IFR for Germany would not be O.2% but at least o.4 or even near to 1 %
On 2021-01-29 18:28:35, user hlritter wrote:
The stated 51% reduction in daily incidence reflects only that half as many cases occurred in the second 12 days as in the first 12. But that does not take into account the fact that the curves don't begin to diverge until 6 days into the second 12-day interval. What's important is the improvement in incidence that occurs after immunity develops, not after the halfway point to some arbitrary date. It appears that only about 1/6 as many new cases occurred in the 6 days after the onset of relative immunity at Day 6 as occurred in any 6-day interval prior to this. This supports an efficacy in the range of 80%-85%, not 51%.
On 2021-02-06 06:12:34, user Scott Huffman wrote:
So what exactly was the n value in the non-vaccinated group, and what was the n value in the vaccinated group? How was a positive case defined? Was it merely a positive PCR test, or was it an actual symptomatic case where a person was sick? And importantly, what was the average cycle rate of the PCR testing? What is the Absolute Risk Reduction? What's the NNT? These are legitimate questions that must be asked. The answers should be very simple.
On 2021-01-31 18:53:06, user Timotheus123 wrote:
This is clearly not a serious study. No apparant controls for age or comorbidity, no random assignment of treatment or control, an "inverse probability of treatment" adjustment.. etc etc.
And yet a strong conclusion debunking ivermectin?
This is NOT science.
On 2021-02-01 15:59:31, user Victoria Gates wrote:
What about the studies done by the FLCCC Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance? They present strong evidence to the contrary.
On 2021-02-02 16:30:41, user Martha Albertson wrote:
This is a poorly-designed study that looked at very few trials of ivermectin. The authors picked the studies that portrayed ivermectin in the worst light and ignored the many studies showing that ivermectin is a safe and effective treatment for Covid-19. I wonder who funded this study. Ivermectin is so much more effective than the expensive treatments promoted by the pharmaceutical industry. I can't imagine this biased study will survive peer review.
On 2021-02-02 22:45:20, user Elizabeth McNally wrote:
We are running similar ELISA assays after vaccination and not seeing this same robust IgG response. I would like to see more data prior making any recommendations about deviating from the vaccination protocols followed in the clinical trials.
On 2021-02-10 17:50:30, user Humanitarian wrote:
This is a wonderful application of science for common good, I love it. One question is the mass spectrometer affordable and portable to be useful in a surgical environment? It may be early, how much it would cost a surgery department to buy?
On 2021-02-14 17:53:25, user Bruce Aronow wrote:
Is Children's National seeing a recent rise in MIS-C cases and do you think this variant may be responsible?
On 2021-02-27 07:05:42, user jeromee5000 wrote:
published
doi
10.22034/jzd.2021.43762.1097
On 2021-03-03 01:17:29, user Dawn Christine Khan wrote:
I am a covid survivor, and said the same. 95 symptoms was incomplete. <br /> I had 150. This is the most comprehensive Long Haul research I have seen. I recommended it for CDC/NIH publication. Community NEEDS this!! May I receive a text or spreadsheet list of symptoms and categorization used? for more information http://www.linkedin.com/in/...
On 2020-10-31 00:01:20, user Joe Feist wrote:
It is funny that the CDC has issued a statement that wearing masks to filter smoke particles around the california fires isn't recommended because the smoke particles are too small. Yet the particles are at least twice the size of the covid 19 virus particles. Can you offer any explanation?
Also what do you mean exactly when you say ultra-fine particles? What size ranges?
On 2020-11-02 00:38:07, user Md Mokhlesur Rahman wrote:
The peer-reviewed version of this paper has been accepted and published online. You can find the paper at the following link.
On 2020-11-03 20:27:05, user SteveH wrote:
Vitamin D levels do not decline quickly enough to explain the October surge. https://www.hindawi.com/jou...
On 2020-11-06 09:08:27, user Maksim wrote:
This is a nice point. “ plasma levels of total catechins are at submicromolar level, which is below the effective dose in many in vitro studies, tissue dispositions could be much higher “ (DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.74190). Besides, in the throat (during tea consumption) catechins levels could be much higher, though for a short period of time. (The latter is just a speculative idea to think about).
On 2020-11-17 00:14:37, user Laurence Renshaw wrote:
Apart from one sentence, this paper does not discuss deaths that are not directly attributable to the disease - for example, it does not appear to consider future deaths caused by the massive economic downturn as a result of people staying at home and businesses failing or downsizing.<br /> So how can it predict that people born in 2020 will expect to live 1 year less? People born in 2020 will certainly not die from Covid19, and the paper does not discuss anything else that could affect their life expectancy.<br /> Even for the over-65 group, how can a 0.1% population fatality rate (let's say that's 0.3 or 0.4% over over-65's) bring down their future life expectancy by several percent?<br /> This paper is very short on methods and data, and very long on conclusions.<br /> It also dismisses the impact of what it refers to as 'harvesting', and claims that few of the Covid19 deaths would have died soon - this contradicts all other studies that I have seen.<br /> It may well be that life expectancy, for those not killed by Covid19, will be reduced for decades to come, due to the economic and social impacts of the virus and our reactions to it (lockdowns and other restrictions), but deaths from the virus itself (a one-time loss of 0.1% of the population, with the vast majority over 70) can only have a tiny impact on life expectancy.
On 2020-11-17 21:24:47, user George wrote:
The two leading comorbidities associated with COVID-19 mortality, SCD and kidney disease, are mechanistic causes of selenium deficiency. Selenium deficiency is associated with hemolysis in SCD and has been strongly associated with mortality and other outcomes in 4 COVID-19 studies so far. High-dose sodium selenite infusion is safe and well-tolerated in dialysis patients.<br /> Vitamin D and dexamethasone both alter selenoprotein expression, and thus may be ineffective if selenium is deficient.
On 2021-09-13 14:36:27, user Chadwick wrote:
It is incredibly odd that the study authors provide us copious odds ratios but never the number of participants in each condition with each outcome. It's absence is quite strange.
On 2021-08-26 08:55:34, user William Richard Dubourg wrote:
Because of the voluntary nature of testing, testing rates as an outcome measure are on their own unreliable. There is reason to think the propensity to get tested is different between the vaccinated and infected groups. You need a model to predict testing propensity.
Your Table S1 does not match the text. Odds ratios and CIs are different.
My main concern relates to underlying health status. The infected group will exclude people who have previously died from COVID. The vaccinated group will not. Thus, there is reason to believe the infected group will have better underlying health status than the vaccinated group. This might explain why there were marginally more hospitalisations (a better and less biased outcome measure) in the vaccinated group than the infected group.
It should also be noted that there was no difference in deaths between the two groups.
Your conclusions about the beneficial effect of infection vs vaccination are therefore unwarranted.
On 2021-08-27 14:34:28, user Jonathan Bennett wrote:
Does this mean I should be allowed to travel anywhere, given I have prior infection, and people who are merely vaccinated should be subject to tight restrictions?
On 2021-08-27 15:57:52, user Jacky wrote:
The study does not account for survivor bias (i.e., those who got COVID and died; however, hardly anyone--probably nobody--who got a <br /> vaccine died); the estimates they report are confounded and not <br /> interpretable. Also, it does not account for time differences of when <br /> the person was vaccinated and when when the person got COVID. If most <br /> individuals were vaccinated say 6 months ago and they are compared <br /> individuals that got Delta recently, then of course the latter will have<br /> more antibodies than the former (antibodies will wane in both groups). <br /> Thus, this study has sever methodological challenges.
On 2021-08-29 03:38:56, user julie kemp wrote:
I've heard many different reports , and most agree , that if you recover from Covid 19 your immunity is greater than a vaccinated person. A lab test would prove it. I had the vaccines, my friend had the Covid 19 virus, and doesn't want the vaccine. Why can't she just have a lab test to check her immunity ,and that should suffice.If she's immune. why force her to take a vaccine.??
On 2021-08-29 08:15:47, user Jeroen Boschma wrote:
The group of unvaccinated persons are truly survivors of their first infection, this means that many of the weak and problematic health cases have died during their first infection and are no longer present in that group. If Covid has a mortality of 1.5%, then this subgroup is 240 cases for the 16000 large group. However: all those cases of weak and problematic health who likely die from an unprotected infection are still present in the group of SARS-CoV-2-naïve vaccinees. So a selection was done where the most vulnerable persons were taken out of the unvaccinated group (death), but that selection is not done in the vaccinated group simply because it is not possible to predict at forehand who will die from an unprotected Covid infection. Although the groups are finally selected on equal risk factors, the above observation will always introduce a huge statistical bias.
I am quite sure that the group of cases found in the 'vaccine' group are largely those persons who would have died from an unprotected Covid infection. Because those persons are by definition not present in the unvaccinated group (they died during the first infection) you can explain the number of cases in both groups precisely by the above described mechanism. The conclusion then is that the found cases have nothing to do with 'better resistance due to an earlier infection'.
EDIT: I see now below that William Richard Dubourg made the same comment about the deaths due to Covid. I had problems with my Disqus account and could not post for a couple of days. Moreover: yesterday I saw 0 comments below this article while today suddenly comments appear that are 3 days old. Strange behavior....
On 2021-08-30 19:37:56, user 0/0 wrote:
It's ironic that so many lay-people from the US are commenting on (and mostly complaining about) a study that shows something contrary to the public narrative. They are clearly not aware of the large number of studies showing the effectiveness of natural immunity that have been published since the first of the year.
To the point, survivor bias is not relevant to the study or the conclusion; it's an attempt to extrapolate, or more accurately to correct for the lack of, alignment with a desired narrative. The study examines cohorts of existing people to determine effectiveness of the sources of immunity in those *already protected* cohorts. These findings do not recommend a course of action for those who are not yet protected - that's an entirely different study, and the explanatory narrative explicitly reinforces the importance of vaccination for those populations.
On 2021-09-01 10:08:16, user Jonh Peter wrote:
About Graphene’s health effects summarised in new guide (European Commission Feb.2015)<br /> At the level of the whole body, the authors indicate that there are two main safety factors to consider regarding exposure to CNTs and graphene. The first is their ability to generate a response by the body’s immune system; the second is their ability to cause inflammation and cancer.
On 2021-08-19 07:37:44, user dixon pinfold wrote:
The bulk of these comments cover in a more or less cogent manner the various ways the survey results could be wrong—the portion, that is, concerning respondents who reported holding doctoral degrees. No one questions the other findings, which are all congenial to ordinary educated prejudices.
Few are dissatisfied with the survey's respondents having self-selected, which I view as the chief problem with it. I am inclined to say quite flatly: Not a random sample, not valid. But then, if self-selection were the main objection in these comments, all the education-category results would fall under similar doubt, not just one. Is that why this objection seems not to have occurred to many?
I read anxiety and indignation into the tone of most of the comments. I confess to a slight doubt about the depth of their sincerity. I feel quite certain that if the survey showed a mere 1% of doctorate holders were vaccine-hesitant, the commenters would instead be saying "See? The more educated you are, the less likely you are to be vaccine-hesitant" and would express at least qualified approval of the survey.
Needless to say, these are mere opinions of mine. I should be interested to hear other people's.
(N.B. I myself have received two Moderna doses and mention it to establish my bona fides, not wishing to be pilloried for a lack of it.)
On 2021-08-27 21:37:41, user Infinite Monkeys wrote:
Why has the updated version of this article removed ~4,000 respondents from figure 1, of whom ~1,000 were PhDs? This affects the results of the survey regarding vaccine hesitancy by education, after it has been reported in the press. An explanation for discarding those results should be provided.
On 2021-08-19 11:53:03, user Brian Mowrey wrote:
Er.. Is anyone able to discern how "unvaccinated" subjects were located? The authors refer to them as "patients" - patients of what? At times in the text it seems like the study is using retroactive performance of individuals who were vaccinated - say, that if someone is vaccinated in May, they are eligible for matching for the previous months. But I don't see how that would allow them to have enough subjects for July.
On 2021-08-23 17:44:20, user Olga Matveeva wrote:
Very interesting paper, however, I can't find supplementary material.
On 2021-08-25 00:35:16, user Andrew Huang wrote:
Can I check, if my body weight is 67 kg, I need to take : Honey 67gms per day Nigella Sativa - 12,060mg = 80mg/day ? Quite a large amount of honey based on this.
On 2021-08-27 06:09:19, user William Brooks wrote:
This is interesting paper showing that the first three states of emergency (SoE) and GoTo campaign didn't have much effect on the fluctuation on K. However, rather than conclude that the medical system is at no risk of collapse and the government should copy Texas and Florida and eliminate all business restrictions, the author calls for stricter border measures, lockdown, and more tests for healthy people despite it being clear for over a year that "Rapid border closures, full lockdowns, and wide-spread testing were not associated with COVID-19 mortality per million people" [1].
Since Covid's case fatality rate in Japan is now close to 0.1%, it's hard to see the point of spending even more time, money, and effort copying testing strategies that have been ineffective even in advanced countries like Germany [2] and Denmark [3].
[1] https://doi.org/10.1016/j.e...<br /> [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.go...<br /> [3] https://doi.org/10.1101/202...
On 2021-08-29 20:06:25, user Peter A McCullough wrote:
Most in this area of China are vaccinated. Authors please confirm all these Delta cases were fully vaccinated. Data likely congruent with Chau et al in Lancet.
On 2021-08-29 21:48:43, user philipn wrote:
Thank you for this great trial!
I shared some of my thoughts in this twitter thread here: https://twitter.com/__phili....
RAAS components: preprints notes no impact of treatment on measured RAAS components. In studies I've read (non-COVID), ARBs raise Ang II (see e.g. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih...; "https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10082498/);") idea is less AT1R binding => more Ang II. But the trial found no impact on even Ang II with treatment.
Preprint doesn't mention how many participants had RAAS components measured, so maybe it wasn't enough for significance. But the preprint does give significant p-value for an association with baseline. In the above non-COVID study showing ARBs raise Ang II, n=12 wasn't enough for significance with 50mg losartan (but was for the other ARBs; 50mg losartan pictured as open diamond in Figure 4).
If argument is treatment was dosed to block AT1R sufficiently but had no impact on RAAS components, why Ang II isn't higher in the treatment group is an interesting question?
The preprint looks at PK data in n=7, "consistent with..maximal AT1R blockade." Earlier in preprint, "yielding an expected 70% inhibition of AT1R." 70% inhibition doesn't appear in citation (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih... mentions 77% at trough with 100mg bid).
In this paper (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih... "https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11392465/)") 50mg od losartan looks like ~35% in the peak window. In https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih..., 50mg again looks like ~35% at peak (open diamonds in Figure 3).
I was unable to find a study that tests exactly 50mg bid losartan and looks these proxies for % AT1R blockade.
I think the preprint authors may be getting the 70% figure from an earlier citation, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih..., Fig 3 and ~205 ng/mL EXP3174 (median C_6h) => ~70% according to figure. It seems this argument is based on PK in this n=6 study. The PK study uses SBP response to Ang II but looks pretty different from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih....
https://twitter.com/__phili... - side by side figures are illustrative
Compare the ~50mg losartan (open diamonds in right figure, from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih... "https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10082498/)"). Looks like ~35% at peak vs ~70%. The graphs look pretty different.
The authors of the ~35% study address this difference, stating:
"The antagonism produced by 50 mg of losartan (ie, 35% to 45% blockade of AT1 receptors) was also weaker than expected on the basis of previous results of studies using 40 mg of losartan. To explain this difference, one must consider that in our study, the placebo had no effect on blood pressure response to exogenous Ang II, whereas it blunted the effect of Ang II by almost 20% in Christen et al’s6 study. Thus, if one corrects for the placebo effect, the percentage of inhibition obtained in the 2 studies is comparable."
So once the PK study’s placebo response is adjusted, results are similar. So isn’t the value ~35%, not 70%? Would be consistent with other studies, showing proxies for % blockade being around ~35% for 50mg losartan rather than 70%. I also wonder if “Labeled Ang II %” figures may be a better proxy for % AT1R blockade than SBP (less prone to placebo etc)?
--Philip Neustrom
On 2021-08-30 22:37:50, user Dave Kavanagh wrote:
Will C.1.2 be the next pandemic wave of Covid to sweep the globe and will this potential vaccine resistant variant pose a greater problem to the WHO when considering the sharing of information to the general masses?
On 2021-08-31 03:11:22, user Judy Friend wrote:
when will this report be fully peer reviewed and when will we have more information. also how often are variants actually coded in these countries for genome sequencing
On 2021-08-30 22:44:45, user Rachel Ezzour wrote:
Is the follow up study available yet?
On 2021-08-31 19:11:00, user Andy Loening wrote:
I think this is a thought provoking model. However, I think there are some major flaws with the model (as I understand from the pre-print manuscript) that severely limit the interpretation of the results.
The biggest flaw I see is:<br /> 1) "Case-investigation of potential contacts is not conducted." So the "no testing" cases have NO contact tracing, which makes this not at all a far comparison. If they included contact tracing/testing (status quo), I would believe most (or all) the difference between their "testing" and "no testing" lines would go away.
Other flaws I see<br /> 2) As a previous comment pointed out, they assume an initial rate of infections coming into the school at ~10-20-fold greater rate then actually infection rates. Similarly the 1 new case coming into the school per week may be too high.<br /> 3) They don't seem to build in any allowance for the ~36-48 hrs it would take a RT-PCR test to get a positive result back. The model doesn't seem to take any of this delay in testing results into account. This would obviously blunt the positive effects that surveillance testing would have.<br /> 4) They seem to treat their student population as a single classroom of 500 kids, and do not take into account that kids (even in the pre-covid days) are mostly segregated into their classrooms for the majority of the day.<br /> 5) There are no error bars provided for the model. Presumably the model has randomization within it, so there should be some variation in the outputs, it would be interested to see what the spread of the outputs are to gauge the significance of the findings.
I would be really interested in the results of this manuscript if it was redone with more appropriate assumptions. My guess is that there would be a much smaller difference between the surveillance and non-surveillance groups.
On 2021-09-01 17:09:10, user Elle Tigre wrote:
Why did you choose the 2016-2017 period to monitor? Why not 2018-2019, respectively?
On 2021-09-01 21:33:26, user Paul wrote:
In reviewing your study's hospitalization rates by age group (your Figures 3 A, B and C), it shows that peak hospitalization rates per 100k in the unvaccinated population to be at about 12-13 for ages 18-49; about 35-40 for ages 50-64; and about 80-90 for ages 65+. These peaks happed mid to late April.
The hospitalization rates by age group during the worst peak of COVID in late December 2020, before the vaccines were available, were as follows (per the CDC COVID-NET data, week ending 1/9/21): 9.6 for ages 18-49; 28.4 for ages 50-64; and 71.9 for ages 65+.
Under the theory that the risk of hospitalization from COVID in the unvaccinated population did not change dramatically from December 2020 to May 2021, seems hard to explain how unvaccinated hospitalization rates were 20-30% higher in April/May peak vs. December peak when overall deaths were 6 times higher in December. I understand you cannot compare the deaths between the two periods because of vaccines, but it seems there is a disconnect between your study’s unvaccinated hospitalization rate and the hospitalization rate before the vaccines were available.
Would be interested to know if your study’s unvaccinated hospitalization rate was compared to hospitalization rates during periods when the vaccine was not available to test for reasonableness. Also would be interested to know if it is possible that your study under reported the number of hospitalizations in the vaccinated population (for example, how confident were you in matching the IIS vaccination patients to the COVID-NET hospitalized patients, how likely are providers to report a COVID vaccine to their state’s IIS database, are different provides more or less likely to report vaccines to the IIS, were any smaller follow-up surveys performed on hospitalized patients to see if their reported vaccine status is consistent with what you assumed in your study, etc.).
On 2025-10-12 13:03:25, user Ceejay wrote:
There are many other plausible mechanisms than antigenic imprinting for the "counter-intuitive" result, some vaccine-related, but others such as nutritional state and prior flu or indeed C19 exposure. May be too late for this paper, but my belief is that all such investigations should include measured Vitamin D status. The effect of Vit D on respiratory tract infection resilience is well known, and particularly over the winter months covered in this study, vitamin D titre will naturally fall due to reduced sun exposure. In similar vein, those who decline flu vaccination may adopt a significantly different health regime to those accepting vaccination, obviously not terribly easy to capture. But one I think you could capture is the C19 and C19 shots status, since I would imagine many of those tested might have taken part in your earlier studies. Those declining a flu shot could easily coincide with those declining a C19 shot. It all certainly shows vaccination science is complex.