Watch out, here comes Unicorn!

[+ WilliamM]

Well, the only man I really fell for immediately was Lindor.

 

Respectfully. In your entire life?

[+ sniper]

I was speaking figuratively when I said 5 minutes. You seemed to have serious negotiations underway within a couple of weeks of meeting other guys. That's as good as five minutes for most ordinary mortals.

[Luv2play]

BioNTech/Pfizer is the full attribution of the two companies involved, Pfizer is a short form of the name, so Unicorn's two jabs were the same vaccine (if that was the source of any confusion).

I think the point is that you shouldn’t mix the Pfizer with the Moderna vaccines.

[+ harey]

One Year, 400,000 Coronavirus Deaths: How the U.S. Guaranteed Its Own Failure

[mike carey]

I think the point is that you shouldn’t mix the Pfizer with the Moderna vaccines.

Yes it is, or any other, but the question was asked after Unicorn posted a pic of his vaccination record that used two different nomenclatures for the Pfizer vaccine. I was aiming to remove any idea that he had received different vaccines.

[+ WilliamM]

Can we stop watching out now? Please. I watched out all night.

Edited January 19, 2021 by WilliamM

[SirBillybob]

Even if it were to be absolutely true that those for whom vaccination confers immunity, along with protection in terms of acquisition of novel coronavirus, AND inability to transmit infection while neutralizing a happenstance exposure, so what?

 

It is clear from the research trial that Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine does NOT work for at least 5% of recipients following Day 28. All positive cases were symptomatic. Though severe COVID was rare, 1 of the 5 cases had received vaccine. The severe case split is no less predictable than a single die roll result. In fact, the ratio of severe case status did nothing to support the idea that vaccine attenuates the possibility of severe case status among those for whom it is inevitable the vaccine does not inoculate.

 

Everybody with symptomatic COVID has transmissible COVID, let alone asymptomatic people for whom vaccine had also been presumably ineffective. It is not a huge stretch to assume that if one can be vaccinated then sick and infectious, one can be contagious anywhere on the gradient from naïvely sick to severely sick within the subgroup of those administered vaccine that does not provide immunity for them. Granted, the asymptomatic may be less infectious, but their stealth makes up for it. All complicated by the the idea that perhaps 25% of infectious persons are responsible for 75% of new cases.

 

This is not a complex logic puzzle. Some vaccinated individuals will contract COVID and transmit infection. The risk is identifiable and commensurate with prevalence at any point in time. It is not negligible, though the proportional degrees of illness on the severity continuum will likely be consistent with the pre-vaccine duration of the pandemic.

 

There is no predicting who the unfortunate will be. Vaccine passports should have a Swiss-cheese design, because denialism reigns. Mitigation measures followed by the vaccinated and unvaccinated alike will help protect both categories.

 

The unvaccinated/pre-vaccinated as a whole will have more bullets in their chamber but the vaccinated will not have zero bullets.

Edited January 22, 2021 by SirBIllybob

[Guest]

....did nothing to support the idea that vaccine attenuates the possibility of severe case status among those for whom it is inevitable the vaccine does not inoculate.

 

Everybody with symptomatic COVID has transmissible COVID, let alone asymptomatic people for whom vaccine had also been presumably ineffective. ...

You sure make a lot of bold statements with no science or evidence to back you up. First of all, I have no idea what you're trying to say in the underlined phrase "among those...did not inoculate." But you underlined it, so it must really, really be true. Your statement that everyone with symptomatic COVID has transmissible disease is false and refuted by the CDC and by scientific studies:

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/duration-isolation.html

Please read that webpage to educate yourself further. It clearly states:

"Accumulating evidence supports ending isolation and precautions for persons with COVID-19 using a symptom-based strategy. This update incorporates recent evidence to inform the duration of isolation and precautions recommended to prevent transmission of SARS-CoV-2 to others, while limiting unnecessary prolonged isolation and unnecessary use of laboratory testing resources."

"For most persons with COVID-19 illness, isolation and precautions can generally be discontinued 10 days after symptom onset1 and resolution of fever for at least 24 hours, without the use of fever-reducing medications, and with improvement of other symptoms.

• A limited number of persons with severe illness may produce replication-competent virus beyond 10 days that may warrant extending duration of isolation and precautions for up to 20 days after symptom onset; consider consultation with infection control experts."
  

Severe illness refers to patient who needed to be hospitalized. There are plenty of people who have had Covid-19 whose symptoms have lasted more than 10 days (in fact, it's probably a majority of symptomatic patients). As long as the symptom is not fever, they're not contagious. Period. The scientific studies that formed the basis of the CDC's statement are included in the webpage above.

"Key findings are summarized here.

Concentrations of SARS-CoV-2 RNA measured in upper respiratory specimens decline after onset of symptoms (CDC, unpublished data, 2020; Midgley et al., 2020; Young et al., 2020; Zou et al., 2020; Wölfel et al., 2020; van Kampen et al., 2020).

The likelihood of recovering replication-competent virus also declines after onset of symptoms. For patients with mild to moderate COVID-19, replication-competent virus has not been recovered after 10 days following symptom onset (CDC, unpublished data, 2020; Wölfel et al., 2020; Arons et al., 2020; Bullard et al., 2020; Lu et al., 2020; personal communication with Young et al., 2020; Korea CDC, 2020). Recovery of replication-competent virus between 10 and 20 days after symptom onset has been documented in some persons with severe COVID-19 that, in some cases, was complicated by immunocompromised state (van Kampen et al., 2020). However, in this series of patients, it was estimated that 88% and 95% of their specimens no longer yielded replication-competent virus after 10 and 15 days, respectively, following symptom onset.

A large contact tracing study demonstrated that high-risk household and hospital contacts did not develop infection if their exposure to a case patient started 6 days or more after the case patient’s illness onset (Cheng et al., 2020).

Although replication-competent virus was not isolated 3 weeks after symptom onset, recovered patients can continue to have SARS-CoV-2 RNA detected in their upper respiratory specimens for up to 12 weeks (Korea CDC, 2020; Li et al., 2020; Xiao et al, 2020). Investigation of 285 “persistently positive” persons, which included 126 persons who had developed recurrent symptoms, found no secondary infections among 790 contacts attributable to contact with these case patients. Efforts to isolate replication-competent virus from 108 of these case patients were unsuccessful (Korea CDC, 2020).

Specimens from patients who recovered from an initial COVID-19 illness and subsequently developed new symptoms and retested positive by RT-PCR did not have replication-competent virus detected (Korea CDC, 2020; Lu et al., 2020). The risk of reinfection may be lower in the first 3 months after initial infection, based on limited evidence from another betacoronavirus (HCoV-OC43), the genus to which SARS-CoV-2 belongs (Kiyuka et al, 2018).

To date, reports of reinfection have been infrequent. Similar to other human coronaviruses where studies have demonstrated reinfection, the probability of SARS-CoV-2 reinfection is expected to increase with time after recovery from initial infection due to waning immunity and possibly genetic drift. Risk of reinfection depends on the likelihood of re-exposure to infectious cases of COVID-19. As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, we expect to see more cases of reinfection."

 

Oh, but you underlined "Everybody," so what you said must be true. The one thing I will agree with you in this case, is that the vaccine doesn't take in 5% of those who received it. So, it's certainly reasonable to do an antibody test to make sure one isn't in the unlucky 5%. That being said, there still hasn't been a SINGLE case of transmission tied to someone who's received the vaccine, despite tens of thousands of people who've had both doses so far. Nor has there ever been any respiratory-spread illness for which documented immunity from either infection or immunization didn't prevent spread to others. There are no guarantees in medicine, but that's pretty much as close as one will get to one.

[jjkrkwood]

Regardless of the ongoing debate here, I am extremely ANXIOUS to get my vaccine, but cant find it anywhere in NYC , so I hope Biden gets a handle on this and gets the vaccine out to sites for injection. He "seems" to have an intensive plan, so we'll see ?