GO-NAD!

GO-NAD!

Audioholic Spartan
I'm a bit surprised no one has commented on my earlier post (#6,627) about white-tailed deer acting as a wild animal reservoir for corona virus.

If this is as widespread as that paper shows, it would explain the curiously rapid spread of the virus, but it would also essentially dash any hopes of eradicating the virus in North America, or the world.

Vaccinations would protect individuals, but it couldn't get us to herd immunity. That herd now includes all humans, all white-tailed deer, and possibly other species as well.
Wildlife experts watching deer population for virus behind COVID-19 | CBC News
It doesn't appear that deer up here have been infected yet. I would assume that it's just a matter of time.
 
D

Danzilla31

Audioholic Spartan
My job just sent a memo out saying they are enforcing the mandates everybody has until Jan 6th I believe to be fully vaccinated. I'm hoping we don't have too many that won't. Psych care is not the place to be short staffed but it is what it is
 
Swerd

Swerd

Audioholic Warlord
What would be the purpose of getting an antibody count? To find out if you've been infected?
That was the original intent of the Covid-19 tests that looked at anti-bodies in blood. They could answer the question "Have I previously been exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus?" in a YES or NO manner.

More recently, people have mistakenly believed that these tests could accurately answer the question "How strong is my immune response to either the virus or one of the vaccines?" And "does my immunity hold up over time, or does it drop?" These tests were never designed to do that. They are a simple YES/NO test, not a quantitative measure of how much immunity is there. With these simple antibody tests, there is a big difference between the two.

The antibody test is like an engine heating warning light on your car's dashboard. It lights up only if the engine is too hot. It doesn't show you what temperature it is.
 
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M

Mr._Clark

Audioholic Samurai
That was the original intent of the Covid-19 tests that looked at blood anti-bodies. They could answer the question "Have I previously been exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus?" in a YES or NO manner.

More recently, people have mistakenly believed that these tests could accurately answer the question "How strong is my immune response to either the virus or one of the vaccines?" And "does my immunity hold up over time, or does it drop?" These test were never designed to do that. They are a simple YES/NO test, not a quantitative measure of how much immunity is there. With these simple antibody tests, there is a big difference between the two.

The antibody test is like an engine heating warning light on your car's dashboard. It lights up only if the engine is too hot. It doesn't show you what temperature it is.
I believe this is the main thing the JAMA editorial (linked to by TLSGuy in a post about a week ago) was getting at. The editorial cites a NYT article that apparently describes very dubious claims being made by some entities that peddling antibody tests (I have not read the NYT article yet, but it seems to me that someone reading their promotional material could easily be misled).

Here are couple snips from the JAMA editorial:

>>>The Flawed Science of Antibody Testing for SARS-CoV-2 Immunity . . . [A]s the pandemic unfolded, the concept of an immunity passport based on having antibodies didn’t pan out. The early consumer tests’ accuracy was unproven, making the results somewhat dubious. More fundamentally, the so-called correlates of protection were unknown. Which specific antibodies guarded against SARS-CoV-2 reinfection? How high did their levels need to be? And how long would they provide a reliable defense? . . .

The SARS-CoV-2 serology tests that eventually received FDA Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) have demonstrated high sensitivity and specificity, but that accuracy is for detecting antibodies. Their ability to predict protection against the virus based on those antibodies hasn’t been proven. Plus, the FDA cautioned that some tests detect antibodies the immune system likely produces only after natural infection with the virus. Depending on the assay, people who weren’t previously infected could test negative for antibodies despite having vaccine-induced immunity.

Therefore, the agency in its May 19 communication stated that “results from currently authorized SARS-CoV-2 antibody tests should not be used to evaluate a person’s level of immunity or protection from COVID-19 at any time, and especially after the person received a COVID-19 vaccination.”

The problem isn’t simply that the tests weren’t designed to assess immunity, experts told JAMA. It’s also that the protective antibodies and their thresholds still haven’t been fully worked out.

In an email, Nicole Doria-Rose, PhD, a staff scientist and chief of the Humoral Immunology Core at the National Institutes of Health’s Vaccine Research Center, noted that antibodies that bind to the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein—particularly neutralizing antibodies—“do correlate with protection.” For example, higher titers were associated with increased protection in 2 phase 3 studies: one not yet peer-reviewed of the mRNA-1273 (Moderna) vaccine and another of the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 (Oxford/AstraZeneca) vaccine. Still, she wrote, “it’s not a simple relationship—there is no clear titer at which you can say whether a particular person is protected.” What’s more, different neutralizing antibody thresholds, or even different immune responses altogether, may correlate with protection against asymptomatic, symptomatic, or severe disease.<<<


 
GO-NAD!

GO-NAD!

Audioholic Spartan
That was the original intent of the Covid-19 tests that looked at blood anti-bodies. They could answer the question "Have I previously been exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus?" in a YES or NO manner.

More recently, people have mistakenly believed that these tests could accurately answer the question "How strong is my immune response to either the virus or one of the vaccines?" And "does my immunity hold up over time, or does it drop?" These test were never designed to do that. They are a simple YES/NO test, not a quantitative measure of how much immunity is there. With these simple antibody tests, there is a big difference between the two.

The antibody test is like an engine heating warning light on your car's dashboard. It lights up only if the engine is too hot. It doesn't show you what temperature it is.
I figured as much, but your response summed it up nicely. This isn't my area of expertise, but with so many factors to be considered, I can't see how some specific degree of immunity could be calculated from such a test.
 
M

Mr._Clark

Audioholic Samurai
Here's a somewhat sobering take on the prospects for achieving herd immunity.

I might be wrong, but my impression is that a high percentage of the population actually agreed that herd immunity was the goal, and the disagreements primarily concerned 1) whether or not it was necessary to slow transmission via lockdowns/masks etc., and 2) whether or not high vaccination rates vs natural immunity was the best way to get to herd immunity (I'm greatly simplifying the various views, of course).

>>>Since the earliest days of the pandemic, there has been one collective goal for bringing it to an end: achieving herd immunity. That’s when so many people are immune to a virus that it runs out of potential hosts to infect, causing an outbreak to sputter out. . . . Now the herd is restless. And experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have set aside herd immunity as a national goal. . . .

“It’s a science-communications problem,” said Dr. John Brooks, chief medical officer for the CDC’s COVID-19 response.

“We said, based on our experience with other diseases, that when you get up to 70% to 80%, you often get herd immunity,” he said.
But the SARS-CoV-2 virus didn’t get the memo.

“It has a lot of tricks up its sleeve, and it’s repeatedly challenged us,” he said. “It’s impossible to predict what herd immunity will be in a new pathogen until you reach herd immunity.”<<<

 
davidscott

davidscott

Audioholic Spartan
My sister and her husband had both their Monderna shots but still got infected while visiting their grandkids in Colorado a couple of months ago. Luckily being vaccinated and taking the available meds kept them out of the hospital and they had relatively mild cases. Unlike my other sister and her husband who each spent a week in the hospital last year before the vaccines were available. I just don't get why any sane person wouldn't want the vaccine unless they had a physical reason not to.
 
Swerd

Swerd

Audioholic Warlord
“We said, based on our experience with other diseases, that when you get up to 70% to 80%, you often get herd immunity,” he said.

But the SARS-CoV-2 virus didn’t get the memo.

“It has a lot of tricks up its sleeve, and it’s repeatedly challenged us,” he said. “It’s impossible to predict what herd immunity will be in a new pathogen until you reach herd immunity.”
That pretty much sums it up.
 
panteragstk

panteragstk

Audioholic Warlord
My sister and her husband had both their Monderna shots but still got infected while visiting their grandkids in Colorado a couple of months ago. Luckily being vaccinated and taking the available meds kept them out of the hospital and they had relatively mild cases. Unlike my other sister and her husband who each spent a week in the hospital last year before the vaccines were available. I just don't get why any sane person wouldn't want the vaccine unless they had a physical reason not to.
Cause the man on the TV told them not to.

Or the people of Facebook told them not to.

People aren't coming to this conclusion without outside influence.
 
M

Mr._Clark

Audioholic Samurai
This is anecdotal, but a friend who works in health care told me he heard about two people who had COVID, were later fully vaccinated, and yet recently got COVID a second time. I don't know how sick these people were the second time around with COVID. I trust my friend in that he wouldn't lie about having heard this, but I'm not sure what his source was and I didn't cross examine him on the topic. In other words, this is 2nd or 3rd hand information so take it with a grain of salt.

For what it's worth, my friend is pro-vaccine and he's had his booster. Every time I've talked to him his knowledge of the effectiveness of vaccines and the local infection rates have been spot on (I've detected no bias in his statements concerning facts). Despite being fully vaccinated including a booster, he wears a mask almost everywhere because he doesn't want to have to deal with an infection if at all possible.

Unfortunately, as far as the virus is concerned, we are all just pieces of meat.
 
panteragstk

panteragstk

Audioholic Warlord
But first of all, they have to be naive and stupid!
Sometimes, yes. At the same time a lot of people just want to be told what to think, and that coupled with the mass amount of misinformation, you get the situation we're dealing with now.
 
Mikado463

Mikado463

Audioholic Spartan
Just got my booster(Moderna) and flu shot yesterday, feel a tad bit 'punky' today. Good excuse to take a nap !
 
cpp

cpp

Audioholic Ninja
Read an interesting article about Florida's covid numbers today. It only includes full time Florida residents. So condo owners who spend some time here aren't counted even if they contract and are hospitalized in Florida. Nice way for Florida to fudge the numbers...
Not totally true, maybe the report you read, but this state report shows :. This report list residents and non-residents that have been infected and died in Fla. But its Fla and here in my state the Gov changes everything to suit his goals.
.http://ww11.doh.state.fl.us/comm/_partners/covid19_report_archive/cases-monitoring-and-pui-information/state-report/state_reports_latest.pdf
 
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