Medical Discussion of Coronavirus

[Lordosis]

The rate of the people in the hospital who are vaccinated versus unvaccinated is not really the important number. It is the incident of people who have covid that require hospitalization or have serious comorbidities that is important. If your area is 70 to 80% vaccinated of course you are going to have a larger component of those people in the hospital just because they are a larger portion of the population. Also the old and sick tended to have higher rates of vaccination causing some self-selection bias.

This would be like someone looking at my hospital census thinking that there must be something wrong with caucasians because they are 98% of the cases in the hospital.

[MadGasserOfMattoon]

Sure, that's pretty much what I said in my post. Nonetheless, I'm not sure where people get ">90% of hospitalized patients are unvaccinated" from. Illinois, which is where I'm located, ranks squarely in the middle of US states with just under 62% vaccination rate, US average being 59.6%, apparently. No one seems to have any idea that 25 - 40% of Covid deaths in this state are in fully vaccinated individuals.

[Shant]

Re the which booster question there is some weak evidence that Moderna may be more effective against the delta variant. But the data that is currently available was not able to be controlled for the difference in timing of the availability of each vaccine - the first immunizations with Pfizer shots are several weeks older than with the first Moderna shots, and the patient population was different since most jurisdictions prioritized the most vulnerable, who would also be less likely to mount a strong immune response. There is also the speculation that it may relate to the different sizes of the dose as noted above.

[CordMcNally]

Re the which booster question there is some weak evidence that Moderna may be more effective against the delta variant.

The delta variant was sooooo last week.

[Shant]

I know I am so antiquated. I heard that some data about the best vaccine for omicron would be out next week which I presume would have to be computational rather than real world data.

[Tim]

Re the which booster question there is some weak evidence that Moderna may be more effective against the delta variant. But the data that is currently available was not able to be controlled for the difference in timing of the availability of each vaccine - the first immunizations with Pfizer shots are several weeks older than with the first Moderna shots, and the patient population was different since most jurisdictions prioritized the most vulnerable, who would also be less likely to mount a strong immune response. There is also the speculation that it may relate to the different sizes of the dose as noted above.

Don't forget that the distribution was controlled. Pfizer was delivered to the large hospital groups that had the cold storage capacity in the beginning. Moderna went to the smaller county health depts and the smaller groups/pharmacies that were available for sign up rather than by invitation. It wasn't until March 15 that any was available to anyone under 65 (with exceptions). Not only timing of availability but the Pfizer was targeted to Phase 1 and 2 priorities. Pfizer went to healthcare and high risk by huge volumes until March. I have no idea of the volumes. Anecdotally, the large healthcare systems were allocated up to 10k doses (Pfizer) and the others were much smaller lots of 100-500 (Moderna). We are not even much past the allocation phases. It seems like years ago.

[Bellescamp]

Sure, that's pretty much what I said in my post. Nonetheless, I'm not sure where people get ">90% of hospitalized patients are unvaccinated" from. Illinois, which is where I'm located, ranks squarely in the middle of US states with just under 62% vaccination rate, US average being 59.6%, apparently. No one seems to have any idea that 25 - 40% of Covid deaths in this state are in fully vaccinated individuals.

80+% unvaccinated in our large system.
the vaccinated in the hospital are mostly elderly or with significant comorbid dz
we have a lower percentage of deaths in the vaccinated

[StarTrekDoc]

San Diego county: 80% vaccinated
Cases/day: 300-600 range steady for past 2months
Hosp admissions: 65% unvaccinated 45% vaccinated --has stayed pretty steady for past 2months
ICU 95+% unvaccinated age range entire; including healthy no underlying medication conditions

Deaths: 90%+ unvaccinated that range entire spectrum; 10% vaccinated are elderly with known underlying medical conditions.

The Relative Risk of being unvaccinated and having a poor outcome is significantly higher than vaccinated --- not even close by a very long shot. Like Minn reaching the NBA finals odds. (I jest on that last analogy)

[StateOfMyHead]

Are the alarm bells for new variant substantiated by anything this early?

[Tim]

Are the alarm bells for new variant substantiated by anything this early?

How would I know?
Some “experts” say yes and some “experts” say no. I don’t know so I trust the “experts” that say “I don’t know”. See what I did? I picked the ones that reinforce my ignorance.
You asked a very good question.

[Zaphod]

And both showed mild symptoms, along with every other case that I’ve read about so far. I hope that I’m right, since I believe covid is mutating into a more contagious but less virulent virus.

This makes no sense why it would happen and there is literally not enough data to support that (or anything at this time), and given where we are in the timeline of knowing about omicron, we wouldnt even expect to see severe cases yet. I am continually dumbfounded that people keep messing up these things at this stage in the game.

[Zaphod]

Really? In my hospital system, over the past 3 or 4 months about 30 - 40% of covid hospitalizations were vaccinated patients, with the high being 49% a few weeks ago.

The breakthrough deaths statewide reflect this as well, although the Department of Health doesn't seem interested in publicizing this and you have to do the math yourself using the raw numbers from their data.

Obviously this still implies a high level of protection, given that vaccination status correlates fairly well with risk for severe disease due to self selection. However, it might give pause to those sneering about the "pandemic of the unvaccinated".

Dont know how your math works, but 60-70% is indeed a majority.

And if you go by the level of vaccinations its actually far far lower than expected, simple bayes theorem here. So the vaccine is providing incredible coverage.

And if there were more vaccinated the vaccine effectiveness would greatly increase.

There is simply no doubt that being vaccinated greatly reduces infection, severity, and death. Most highly vaxxed group are the oldest and guess what, theyre most likely to die anyway. You'd have to age match things to get a better view, but you dont have to you can simply look at national data, the contrast is beyond stark.

It will diminish some with the new variant IF it out competes delta. Delta is a beast rn all on its own.

[jacoavlu]

how long until unboosted are lumped with unvaccinated? i would guess we’re getting close

[AR]

how long until unboosted are lumped with unvaccinated? i would guess we’re getting close

Depends on what you mean by "lumped"

[jacoavlu]

Depends on what you mean by "lumped"

viewed and treated as the same