On 2021-08-15 00:21:45, user Covid Hospitalist wrote:

This abstract of this pre-publication is highly irresponsible. There is no clear delineation between 'infection' and 'illness'. This is going to be taken out of context as 'vaccine failure' by multiple groups and news media sources. The drop in prevention of 'infection' ei detectable virus on PCR is important. AND without the data showing that it is still exceptionally effective at preventing hospitalization, is reckless. The authors need to fill in the rest of the blank... they quote the ability of the vaccine to decrease illness/hospitalization from the wild-type "wuhan" strain EUAs in the intro, but then completely leave it out of the results portion of the abstract??? How many antivaxxers/news media are actually scrolling down to table 7 to see that the rate of covid death for pfizer was 0/38,000(n rounded) and moderna 1/36000(n rounded). Seriously irresponsible headline grabbing abstract.

On 2021-08-20 12:18:37, user Jodi Schneider wrote:

Were there any differences in the underlying populations vaccinated with Moderna (mRNA-1273) and Pfizer/BioNTech (BNT162b2) in the Mayo Clinic Health System?

On 2021-08-15 02:02:46, user bcwbcwbcw wrote:

An online survey, where anyone can claim to have a PhD and no tests or controls for whether that's true? If you're anti-vax what better way to claim credibility than to lie and claim to have a PhD? In other past surveys , 6% of PhD's said they are Republican, yet the hesitancy results for PhD's are nearly the same as the strongest Trump supporters. (statistically possible but very unlikely.) (https://www.pewresearch.org... ) If I was a reviewer, I would ask see the breakdown of Trump support versus education level. If not consistent with other studies, the educational attainment data should be discounted.

I took this survey and it likely has some use as far as changes in totals over time but PhD's not really.

Let me give you a data point from a lab with about 1500 PhD's and tech staff. Everyone I've asked is vaccinated and I've asked everyone I'm in contact with.

On 2021-08-15 10:02:06, user Anna Z. wrote:

This paper is circulating among no-vax groups and used as a prof that educated people don't get the vaccine because they are not fooled by the government.<br /> How did you make sure that the survey was not circulated among no-wax groups that on purpose answered to obtain this result?

On 2021-10-05 10:08:23, user Samantha Hester wrote:

Members of the trans community are raising questions about your new exclusion criteria that eliminated people who self-identified as unicorns. Unicorns belong to the otherkin community and their responses could be in good faith.

Please review this post from a trans advocacy organization for more details:

https://www.facebook.com/pe...

On 2021-08-16 15:59:43, user A. Jamie Saris wrote:

There are some excellent comments below that I will not rehash, but I agree that this pre-print "as is" would not survive peer review without some serious revisions. Unfortunately, as this site is Open Source, this "study" is appearing in a lot of anti-vaxx rants on social media (it's been cited twice to me on Twitter so far today). It would be a great help if there were some printed caveats on sites like this (especially around topics where pseudoscience to outright quackery is rife) to dissuade people from taking VERY provisional results (from a flawed study with a modest number of participants) as "settled" science "proving the effectiveness" of Ivermectin.

On 2021-08-17 14:22:29, user Jon Hillman wrote:

'Taken together our results indicate that state implemented NPIs can lead to less COVID-19 cases and mortality.' How much less? CDC concluded it was no more than 1.8% reduction in cases: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7010e3.htm Quantifying the reduction matters to anyone concerned with objectively measuring NPI cost vs outcomes.

On 2021-08-17 14:26:39, user Andrew Sefton wrote:

In the research, how were those previously infected by COVID-19 categorized? As unvaccinated? Excluded?

Specifically, I am interested in the viral loads of those previously infected by COVID-19 as it relates to:<br /> "Delta viral loads were similar for both groups for the first week of infection, but dropped quickly after day 7 in vaccinated people."

On 2021-10-05 22:04:39, user Brooke wrote:

It would be useful to know what sorts of samples were used for PCR testing — were they nasal swabs or saliva?

On 2021-08-18 18:37:59, user Sumit Rawat wrote:

https://timesofindia.indiat...

On 2021-08-18 18:40:47, user Sumit Rawat wrote:

News article by ET health <br /> https://indianewsrepublic.c...

On 2021-08-20 23:58:21, user Chris Raberts wrote:

This model ignores the wave form observed repeatedly over the past year and a half. Covid infection is not a never-ending exponential function. Terrible.

On 2021-08-21 00:31:20, user Sonia Villapol wrote:

This article has been published in "Scientific Reports" on 09 August 2021, a Nature Publishing Group's open access research journal: <br /> https://www.nature.com/arti... <br /> Thanks! <br /> - Sonia Villapol

On 2021-08-21 16:43:18, user Mark J Kropf wrote:

A good many issues are of question in regards to this work, after mulling it over a good time. Firstly, evolution is always going on. If one is defining mutations in the most general sense, no treatment alters that rate. However, if one means by mutation the generation of some particularly problematic change causing a variant, then perhaps the logic dealt with here is relevant. Evolution is not a process which can be terminated or quelled, though it may be channeled and controlled! Secondly, a period of about 5.5 months can give some possible resonance to the supposed finding, but the ability to alter progression needs to really have significant follow up. Is the process of some unfavorable change (i.e my latter use of 'mutation' above) really limited or is it only impeded and delayed? A true ability to confirm requires a longer period of analysis and the current argument conclusion may be somewhat presumptuous in its statement. Thirdly, I am concerned that the numbers may yet be a bit too small for the conclusion reached, though running a study with the proper enrolled numbers for such comparisons is probably too problematic to be practical.

I believe there is some evidence here, but perhaps not so complete as to be given the full impact that the conclusion provides. It is likely, but it is not confirmed to nearly the extent that I might desire for such a paper.

On 2021-08-21 19:03:01, user Jonathan C wrote:

Hello,

Thanks for an interesting analysis. CDC estimates a far higher infection rate (36.77/100k, <br /> https://www.cdc.gov/coronav... "https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burden.html)"), <br /> at a similar rate for the 0-17 y group, although they do not seem to show data for the 12-17 y group).

Am I correct in interpreting your assumption that the infection rate for the <br /> investigated COVID-19-related period was at a far lower <10%? (and that 2.5% of all COVID-19 cases should represent males aged 12-17)

Or is there some information missing regarding your analysis?

On 2021-08-24 07:21:17, user Red wrote:

This paper is missing one very crucial piece of information: 6-month adverse event followup. Table S3 still reports only adverse event counts up to 1 month after the second dose, but nothing about longer followup periods. This is a violation of a commitment from the study's protocol where it was stated that 6-month safety data will be reported (section 9.5.1). And the only reason I can think of why such a data was not reported is because it suggests the treatment is not as safe as it is claimed.

On 2021-08-04 07:40:42, user Mike wrote:

I'm curious about the HIV infected patients. There were exactly 100 in both vaccine and placebo group. If you look at the co-morbidity tables, no other co-morbidity is balanced in that way. I suppose it's possible that this occurred by chance but it's a very small one if so. Also, why did they include HIV+ patients in the study at all, if they exclude them from all reporting of deaths and adverse events? The HIV+ can lead long lives these days, it's not quite clear to me why they are being treated separately here, especially as it should hopefully be clear if they died of AIDS.

On 2021-08-05 17:53:36, user pedro paulo castro wrote:

It doesn't seem right that a much lower number of subjects from the vaccinated group came down with COVID 19, but the same number died as in the placebo group, which seems to indicate therefore a higher proportion of deaths among those who contracted COVID 19 AND were vaccinated. There is a conspicuous lack of what would have been a very useful breakdown of the instances of death, in such a way that we could see, for both groups, what number of deaths was among those who had COVID or those who didn't have COVID. This prevents us from seeing whether a subject had COVID, but had his or her death reported as, say, cardiac arrest, for example, which might change the context a bit.

On 2021-10-03 02:28:34, user OBS wrote:

How come this preprint (and the very recent publication of this in NEJM) both say 15 deaths vaccine vs. 14 deaths placebo, but the FDA briefing document for the booster shot (which summarizes the safety of the primary 2-dose series, see page 7), says 21 deaths vaccine vs. 17 deaths placebo?

https://www.fda.gov/media/1...

21 vs. 17 doesn't seem to be an update of the 15 vs. 14 result, since the booster FDA briefing document specifies March 13, 2021 as the data cutoff date corresponding to the 21 vs. 17 result, and that is the exact same cutoff date mentioned in this preprint / NEJM article. So why the discrepancy- what is going on here?

On 2021-08-26 07:10:10, user William Brooks wrote:

To help readers clearly see the difference in infectiousness before, during, and after the various interventions (i.e., the states of emergency, school closures, and GoTo travel campaign),the authors should add the start and end points of the interventions in Figure 2.

On 2021-08-27 02:57:37, user Jason Eshleman wrote:

The author's model assumes that the generation time for the variants is the same. This seems to run counter to observations of a markedly shorter incubation period with delta. This analysis absolutely needs to be rerun without that assumption. Are we seeing greater transmission between generations or are we seeing a fitness advantage due to a shorter generation time?

On 2021-08-27 12:30:01, user Nikos Salingaros wrote:

Hello everyone. Alarming results indeed. Are there any data on the visual complexity of the indoor environment in which these babies were raised? Our group is trying to relate low intelligence to the lack of mathematical stimulation coming from visual patterns. This is especially relevant since exposure to natural complexity such as outdoor plants is severely limited during the lockdown. The preferred architectural style today is minimalist: very different from the visual complexity of past generations, and this factor might contribute. How do we get some data on this possibility?

On 2021-08-27 22:08:03, user evasmagacz wrote:

To look at the data from a different perspective:

In your first dataset:

Model 1: n = 16000 <br /> In patients who were previously infected: <br /> There were 5 symptomatic re-infections per 10000;<br /> Less than one hospitalisation per 10000, and no deaths.

In patients who were previously vaccinated, <br /> There were 124 symptomatic re-infections per 10000;<br /> 5 hospitalisations per 10000 and no deaths.

In your second dataset:<br /> Model 2: n = 46000<br /> In patients who were previously infected: <br /> There were 15 symptomatic reinfections per 10000; <br /> Less than one hospitalisation per 10000, and no deaths.

In patients who were previously vaccinated, <br /> There were 105 symptomatic reinfections per 10000 <br /> 5 hospitalisations per 10000 and no deaths.

In your third dataset:<br /> Model 3: 14000<br /> In patients who were previously infected: <br /> There were 16 symptomatic reinfections per 10000 <br /> Less than one hospitalisation per 10000, and no deaths.

In patients who were previously infected and then vaccinated, <br /> There were 11 symptomatic reinfections per 10000 <br /> No hospitalisations per 10000 and no deaths.

On 2021-10-30 04:38:45, user Rn wrote:

The conclusions of this study stand in stark contrast to a report published today by the US CDC. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/vo...

Among COVID-19–like illness hospitalizations among adults aged >=18 years whose previous infection or vaccination occurred 90–179 days earlier, the adjusted odds of laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 among unvaccinated adults with previous SARS-CoV-2 infection were 5.49-fold higher than the odds among fully vaccinated recipients of an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine who had no previous documented infection (95% confidence interval = 2.75–10.99).

On 2021-08-29 20:54:09, user peter_wark wrote:

Thanks again Recovery trial.<br /> Participants admitted with COVID19; unable to maintain SpO2 <94% despite FiO2 0.4.<br /> Mean age 57yrs<br /> Primary outcome was intubation or mortality at d30.<br /> CPAP HR 0.72 (0.53-0.96) p=0.03<br /> HFO2 0.97 (0.73-1.23) p=0.85<br /> The number needed to treat for CPAP was 12 (95% CI, 7 to 105) and for HFNO was 151 (95% CI, number needed to treat 13 to number needed to harm 16).

On 2021-08-04 07:26:14, user oikoslibre wrote:

In the first chapter you talk about PCR.

I would like your opinion on the following document

https://www.fda.gov/media/1...

When I read this document , it becomes clear that this test is of no use at all

Positive results are indicative of active infection with SARS-CoV-2 but do not rule out bacterial infection or co-infection with other viruses. The agent detected may not be the definite cause of disease

In this document I also read: Since no quantified virus isolates of the 2019-nCoV were available for CDC use at the time the test was developed and this study conducted, assays designed for detection of the 2019-nCoV RNA were tested with characterized stocks of in vitro transcribed full length RNA.

Is it possible to write an article on this virus without the use of PCR data?

Do you have the isolated virus?

On 2021-08-05 18:41:36, user Ultrafiltered wrote:

With the probability of a PCR match of 1 with any sample comparison to a reference given 8 billion genotypes against strands of 30 to 50 mRNA, as DNA is expressed in any and all cells, the study only shows how many in the population are expressing a gene similar to a COVID phenotype, thus why the CDC has pulled its support of the PCR tests and going back to the process of isolation and identifying cells discovered through patient exam, similar to current Influenza like analoques. The basis of this paper goes to show that if you're sick with disease, you are sick with the disease and shed components, just like any other virus. The idea this effect is novel in this paper is superceeded by years of virology and research.

On 2021-09-16 07:33:29, user Chaos_14 wrote:

This study doesn't mention how many vaccinated vs unvaccinated people were tested.

"Notably, 68% of individuals infected despite vaccination tested positive with Ct <25, including at least 8 who were asymptomatic at the time of testing." (68% of what number?)

Since we know immune response, even with vaccines, decreases with age, it would be helpful to know the ages of the people in both the vaccinated and unvaccinated groups.

It would also be helpful to know the Ct in the samples of asymptomatic, <br /> unvaccinated people if there were any.

While it's beneficial to know that it's possible for infected vaccinated people to carry a viral load similar to infected unvaccinated people, this study left me with a lot of unanswered questions.

On 2021-08-06 23:22:56, user disqus_92pIDbtuHj wrote:

Hey, where's the full description of method and limitations? I get that this was published in medRxiv, a free distribution server for unpublished preprints that haven't been peer reviewed. It even states preprints "should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information".

This was a SMALL sample of 43 men... undergoing IVF and they served as their own self control. WHEN, was a sample after vaccination taken? WHEN was the baseline taken? HOW did they control for the effects of other variables... like the treatment recommendations these patients may have been following at the IVF clinic (especially since these were pulled Hospital IVF records)! They compared each man to his own baseline before and after vaccination, (14 men had male factor infertility, and 29 with normal spermogram results). Regardless all men were very likely receiving lifestyle, diet, or even medication recommendations! They also neglected to control season as a variable. Previous literature shows poorer sperm quality in Winter, and better quality in Spring. This design looked at two samples from each man somewhere between winter and spring. The same span of time for each man? No one knows!

On 2021-08-07 16:14:30, user Dmitry Pruss wrote:

Isn't it a time-of-testing confounding effect? In Israel, percent of positive tests increased from 0.1% in the beginning of the study period to 1.5% in its end, which would likely result in an artifactual increase of positive in those vaccinated (and tested) earlier...

On 2021-08-08 19:23:45, user Sam Wheeler wrote:

So against delta, 1 dose of The Moderna COVID-19 (mRNA-1273) vaccine seems much more efficient than 1 dose of Pfizer Biontech?<br /> And no data about how efficient is Moderna with 2 doses against delta?<br /> What do we know about Janssen = J&J? Janssen is very efficient if you take into account it is given as a single-dose, and one can boost it by taking a booster or primer with other covid vaccine.

On 2021-08-09 15:03:31, user Disha Agrawal wrote:

Figure 3b is surprising and difficult for me to understand. The Y-axis for all figure 3 results should be Geometric Mean of the ELISA tests, as per the text. Assuming that to be so, Figure 3b is Antibody to N protein, which should not be induced by Covishield. Yet most Covishield/Covishield samples seem positive, as shown, with no difference from Covaxin/Covaxin. A possibility I considered is that most people were already infected, but then the Covaxin/Covaxin group should have been strongly boosted. Clarification from authors or others who were able to figure it out is welcome.

On 2021-12-01 22:44:50, user Tom wrote:

The susceptibility of Chilrden was estimated by PCR-Testing alone and has a high variance in the 95-CI. I guess the numbers may be even lower.

On 2021-09-14 21:28:12, user Alberto wrote:

23 vaccinated individuals, samples collected 5.2 weeks (average) after the second dose of the vaccine. No information about age, health, etc... compared to 10 individuals infected one year prior to taking the blood samples and 7 infected less than 2 months prior to taking the blood samples. Again no information about age, health, etc...

Conclusion: "Hence, immune responses after vaccination are stronger compared to those<br /> after naturally occurring infection, pointing out the need of the vaccine to overcome the pandemic".

Isn't that conclusion going well over the possibilities of this study? When in real world studies with cohorts of > 25.000 individuals it has been proven that the immunity acquired from infection is vastly superior to that from vaccination, how should we take these results?

On 2021-12-15 06:52:55, user MD PhD wrote:

Although it's a small sample size still it would be worthwhile to know the antibody response to booster/third dose in 6 months vs 9 months group post-vaccination. Additionally whether these groups received first and second shots at 3-4 weeks or 7-8 weeks interval will offer pertinent information since this basic difference rendered more antibody response in the latter groups as per studies (the point being that boosters might turn out to an immediate requirement for the 3-4 weeks vaccination interval group while the 7-8 weeks interval group might potentially be able to put it off for a month or so in light of prior studies showing a robust antibody response with delayed vaccination)

On 2021-09-16 13:24:58, user Theo Sanderson wrote:

The apparent pattern of back mutations at position 142 is an experimental artefact due to errors in some Delta sequences. It emerges from the fact that Delta has SNPs in the primer binding site for ARTIC amplicon 72 (in a previous ARTIC scheme) which often result in the failure to amplify this amplicon, containing the G/D 142 locus, from Delta samples. Small amounts of contamination from other genotypes (e.g. B.1.1.7) that are amplified normally at this location can then lead to an amplicon here (typically with reduced depth). This results in a final sequence which appears to have a back-mutation at this position, and phylogenetic analyses can tend to group such samples together on trees.

T95I is in this same amplicon.

It is likely that the Ct correlations observed here reflect the fact that the correct G142D call is much more likely to be detected despite the low efficiency of amplification for samples with higher viral loads.

On 2021-09-16 13:35:24, user David Brown wrote:

There is evidence that abdominal obesity in both humans and chickens is determined by the fatty acid profile of the diet; specifically, the linoleic acid content. Read pages 7-9 of this 2019 Master's Thesis. https://trace.tennessee.edu...<br /> For further comment regarding linoleic acid intake and vulnerability to COVID-19 complications, read these articles:<br /> https://www.medpagetoday.co...<br /> https://www.science.org/doi...

On 2021-09-17 17:04:42, user kdrl nakle wrote:

This would all be OK if we could rely on COVID reporting but we cannot. For example a continent of 1 billion people, Africa, on Wednesday reported 12,000+ cases while we have seropositivity in Kenya of 50%! Meaning, their numbers as reported, are a joke. India that reported some 33 million cases had more likely some 900 million cases. And similar things are happening throughout Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe. In other words, your statistics are a joke.

On 2021-09-19 12:46:53, user daan joubert wrote:

I rhink you are referring to the article entitled "Africa Dailye deaths.100k etc" showing the difference between the high incidence in the upper and lower parts of the continent compared to the equatorial region where Ivermectin is used against tropical parasites and there are few deaths. It seems to have been removed for some guessable reason.

On 2021-09-22 01:46:06, user jhick059 wrote:

Dear authors,

I believe your denominators (15,997 Moderna doses and 16,382 Pfizer doses) are off by more than a factor of 10.

Ottawa Public Health has 342,656 doses of Moderna and 485,178 doses of Pfizer between 2021-06-01 and 2021-07-31. Link: https://open.ottawa.ca/data...

You also state (pg. 6/20) that your data suggest a tenfold higher incidence than other papers estimating an incidence of 1/100,000. A tenfold higher incidence than 1/100,000 is 1/10,000, which is closer to the value you would obtain with the adjusted denominator.

Sincerely,<br /> Joseph Hickey

On 2021-09-22 03:14:20, user Norsksoul wrote:

It is a preprint article but they basically identified all vaccine recipients in Ottawa during the June 1 through July 31 study period. <br /> This was the denominator of the study group. <br /> Anyone from this study group that was admitted with Acute Myocarditis or Pericarditis within 1 month of a Moderna or Pfizer vaccine became the numerator. <br /> So 32 cases occurred in 32,379 vaccine recipients which comes out to a 1/1000 incidence. This study should be done in the 12-18 year old age range and the incidence would likely be even worse.<br /> But wait,....it gets even worse. <br /> That 1/1000 incidence is in a group of 32,000 men AND women. <br /> But out of 32 cases of myocarditis, 29 occurred in men. <br /> That’s 90%! <br /> They unfortunately don’t give the data on male/ female percentages in the study group denominator but if we assume a 50/50 split, then the male incidence is actually 29/16,189 or 1 in 558 males vaccinated. <br /> 1/558<br /> 1/558<br /> 1/558<br /> Let that sink in for a minute. <br /> This is reckless medical malpractice at its worst.

On 2021-09-23 06:52:46, user White Rabbit wrote:

There are several issues about the meta-analysis by Martinoli et al. for example they wrote they did a meta-regression in order to explain the the huge between-study heterogeneity affecting the results, but no meta-regression results appears anywhere. They observed a statistically significant publicaton bias ("We found an indication for publication bias (P=0.03)" ,page 10) a serious but unaddressed issue. Ther are also inconsistencies between the results and the conclusions, e.g. though they found that "Children and adults showed comparable SARS-CoV-2 positivity <br /> rates in most studies" (page 9)" the abstract reads "children are 43% less susceptible than adults".Furthermore in some tables and forest plots, they used as denominator the total of students and staff altogether instead of students only, to estimate the students incidence.

On 2021-09-23 15:49:33, user kdrl nakle wrote:

What is needed more is the distance between the shot and data collection. We need longer duration period for VE evaluation. Your time period is too short.

On 2021-09-23 18:14:58, user kdrl nakle wrote:

n-28, n=29, n=106 and no significant difference between 2.4x10^5 and 3x10^4? That is because your samples are small. I think that 8 fold increase would be significant if you got bigger samples.

On 2021-09-24 06:20:12, user Ella Lively wrote:

Where can I get the questionnaire for thus study please?

On 2021-09-28 15:09:49, user Tomas Maximus wrote:

Looks like the proportion of breakthroughs climbed dramatically as time went on, with breakthrough accounting for 17% of total new cases in July. Wonder what the August and September numbers showed.

On 2021-09-29 04:15:27, user Nikki wrote:

I work as an account Escalation Specialist/call center supervisor who takes over Escalated calls. I've never had issues with missing small details which are required to do my job. I caught covid in mid July, had a horrible experience with two weeks worth of severe vertigo, nausea, fever spikes, tons of phlegm, panic attacks. <br /> One month and a half after recovery, I've had 4 major fails which may ultimately end up costing me my job. <br /> My pcp, therapist, and boss appear to disregard this when I try to explain to them about the fogginess. <br /> As a very detail oriented person, I just don't miss those things.... never in my 15 years in callcenter experience.

On 2021-09-29 11:30:07, user kdrl nakle wrote:

Good example of making a paper focused on useless graphics instead on self-explanatory data.

On 2021-10-02 14:59:26, user Alberto wrote:

Thanks for the detailed report. I'd only like to ask about the last sentence included in the abstract: "The beneficial and protective effects of the COVID-19 vaccines far <br /> outweigh the low potential risk of neurologic and psychiatric reactions. Going through the paper I haven't seen anything that attempts to estimate these rinks vs. benefits in any way (let alone a systematic way, by age, risk of severe disease in case of COVID-19, etc...). It seems like a statement that's been added there arbitrarily and does not belong to a scientific paper that not actually evaluating any risks associated with the disease itself or the vaccine efficacy to prevent them.

On 2021-10-03 07:19:18, user Ruth Berger wrote:

That age and male sex are major risk factors is well known; mortality associations with pandemic wave should not be reported without factoring in varying levels of underdiagnosis (to my knowledge, it was larger in the first wave than the second) and age-specific vaccination rates.

On 2021-10-03 16:42:16, user Luke Yaldo wrote:

The peer reviewed, published version of this article can be found here: https://link.springer.com/a...

On 2021-10-04 06:54:30, user kdrl nakle wrote:

Simple yet important result, meaning we should definitely know Cp (Ct) value after getting tested. The next thing would be to investigate transmissibility but that is obviously much harder research.

On 2021-10-04 12:12:28, user LG27 wrote:

Why was there no stratification by prior infection? It's not even mentioned in the limitations.

On 2021-10-05 22:59:35, user MrMemeinator wrote:

So you're seeing the same thing we all saw in the UK and Israel months ago. Color me surprised...

On 2021-10-16 12:57:40, user gerryz wrote:

Can anyone tell me if there is evidence infection symptoms are milder in vaccinated? Articles?

On 2021-10-06 16:56:58, user zega wrote:

Baseline is 1/100000/365days https://www.myocarditisfoun... vast difference, they an be off by 8000times and still below...

On 2021-10-07 22:22:53, user Robyn Schofield wrote:

"As the devices do not meet medical device electrical safety standards (EN60601) they were operated at a distance of >=1.5metres from any patient." Can the authors please clarify - what wavelength the UV was operating at, and whether this device has been tested for ozone production / loss rates. I assume that the EN60601 requires ozone production to be tested for? If ozone is being produced (or destroyed to odd oxygen) that this would need testing before deployment in a medical setting. Ozone, a respiratory irritant gas, will easily travel more than 1.5m (so distance should not be seen as useful in setting safety protocols for electronic air cleaning devices in a medical setting).

Are hospital rooms with no ventilation in line with current infection prevention and control or hospital design / operational guidelines in the UK? In Australia this would be in breach of both our hospital design and operating guidelines which require a minimum of 6 ACH for all hospitals.

The effectiveness of UV with air high flow rates has to be questioned (because the exposure time for bio-aerosols is short) - are the authors able to separate the effectiveness of the filtration over the UV features? Most literature on this point shows that in real-world operation the HEPA provides 99.97% of the removal of bio-aerosols from air and the advantage of UV is untested / unproven (this is particularly true at 1000m3/h flow rates this device is operating at). I assume this device will be noisy >65dB - can this please be specified.

On 2021-10-11 18:40:32, user Andrew T Levin wrote:

Comment #1: Research in Context

1. Diamond Princess Cruise Ship. The manuscript makes no reference to any epidemiological analysis of this episode, which informed seminal assessments of the age-specific infection fatality rate (IFR) of COVID-19.[1-4] Nonetheless, that evidence is particularly relevant, because the cruise ship’s passengers included 1231 individuals ages 70+ who were not merely “community-dwelling” but healthy enough to embark on a multi-week grand tour of southeast Asia. Following extensive RT-PCR testing, 335 passengers ages 70+ were confirmed to have been infected with SARS-Cov-2, and 13 of those passengers died from COVID-19 – an IFR of about 4%. Moreover, the strong link to age is underscored by the even higher IFR of 8% for passengers ages 80+. Given the size of that sample (which meets the 1000+ threshold used here), this evidence should certainly be incorporated into this meta-analysis.

2. Comprehensive Tracing Programs. The manuscript makes no reference to countries that succeeded in containing the first wave of the pandemic in spring 2020 through systematic tracing and testing of all contacts of infected individuals.[5] Such evidence is particularly relevant here, because the virus was contained within the “community-dwelling” populations of those locations and never spread to any elderly care facilities. For example, in the case of New Zealand, there were 256 infections and 19 deaths among adults ages 70+ -- an IFR of about 7%.

3. Hospitalized Patients. The manuscript cites a single study (published in July 2020) that examined the association between comorbidities and mortality risk of COVID-19.[6] However, that study was not able to distinguish whether comorbidities were linked to greater prevalence (the probability of getting infected) or to a higher IFR (the risk of mortality conditional on infection). Unfortunately, the manuscript makes no reference to any subsequent studies on this issue. In particular, a large-scale study of U.K. BioBank participants found that measures of frailty were indeed associated with higher mortality rates in the overall panel but not linked to mortality within the subset of hospitalized COVID-19 patients.[7] In effect, the prevalence of COVID-19 was markedly higher among residents of U.K. nursing homes compared to individuals of similar age living in the community, but the IFR was not significantly different. Those findings directly contradict a key assertion made at the start of this manuscript.

4. Prior Meta-Analysis of Community-Dwelling Populations. The introduction of this manuscript neglects to mention that an existing meta-analysis study (published in Nature in November 2020) was specifically focused on assessing IFRs excluding deaths in nursing homes.[8] That study estimated the link between age and IFR using seroprevalence and fatality data for adults less than 65 years old, and then showed that the model predictiions were consistent with data on fatalities among community-dwelling adults ages 65+. Moreover, that study used seroprevalence data adjusted for assay characteristics, and the results were obtained using a rigorous Bayesian statistical model that incorporated random variations in the time lags between infection, seropositivity, and fatal outcomes – a striking contrast to this manuscript, which uses rudimentary assumptions to address those issues.

5. Other Meta-Analyses. The introduction of this manuscript briefly refers to two other meta-analysis studies of the link between age and IFR.[5, 9] However, the manuscript then asserts: “Importantly, the vast majority of seroprevalence studies include very few elderly people.” (p.5) That assertion is supported by a single citation to the SeroTracker database, which provides comprehensive coverage of all existing national, regional, and local seroprevalence studies across the globe.[10] However, this assertion is completely incorrect as a characterization of the preceding meta-analysis of age-specific IFRs. As indicated in Levin et al. (2020, figure 5), that meta-analysis study included seroprevalence data on older adults (including narrow brackets for ages 60-69, 65-74, 70-79, and 75-84 as well as open-ended brackets for ages 60+, 65+, 70+, 80+, and 85+) from nine national studies (Belgium, France, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and the U.K.) and eight regional locations (Ontario, Canada; Geneva, Switzerland; Connecticut, Indiana, Louisiana, Miami, Missouri, and San Francisco, USA).[5]

On 2021-10-14 17:12:39, user lbaustin wrote:

Has this been submitted to any of the MEDLINE indexed journals who publish on this topic?

On 2021-10-17 22:54:41, user Rob Reck wrote:

If appears that there is no differentiation given to to the amount of time that passed since a subject contracted CoVid19. Waning immunity is an issue that has been studied. Certainly more study would be a good thing. But there is enough current data to know that it does happen. People who have had CoVid19 do get re-infected.

Given the existence of even a small number of reinfections, the claim that a person who previously was infected with CoVid19 need not be vaccinated is not supported by this study.

On 2021-10-22 17:10:09, user Jeremy M Bartels wrote:

Can you clarify if Ct values decrease, does viral load go up or down?

On 2021-10-31 02:14:19, user Peter Jaji wrote:

So this shows vaccinated people spread the virus as much if not more then unvaccinated?<br /> Please enlighten