Coronavirus

[spork]

New data interactive from the CDC, infections and deaths by vaccine status: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#rates-by-vaccine-status
No surprise but striking visuals-- this is now truly a pandemic of the unvaccinated.

This data isn't as good as it looks. In many locales, "Covid-19 hospitalizations" are counts of people who are hospitalized who test positive for Covid, not people hospitalized because of Covid. The best measure is excess deaths. I would love to see a chart on excess deaths of vaccinated vs. unvaccinated.

[Puget]

New data interactive from the CDC, infections and deaths by vaccine status: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#rates-by-vaccine-status
No surprise but striking visuals-- this is now truly a pandemic of the unvaccinated.

This data isn't as good as it looks. In many locales, "Covid-19 hospitalizations" are counts of people who are hospitalized who test positive for Covid, not people hospitalized because of Covid. The best measure is excess deaths. I would love to see a chart on excess deaths of vaccinated vs. unvaccinated.

I'm not sure what hospitalizations have to do with it-- the data are for cases and deaths, not hospitalizations. Cases are positive antigen tests, not hospitalizations.

[Stockmann]

Here´s some more info from a week ago:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-51235105

As measured by doses per 100 inhabitants, Cuba is second only to Gibraltar (with the clarification that one of the Cuban schemes is a three-dose scheme), no Western country or territory other than Gibraltar makes the top 8, Cambodia beats almost the entire Western world, the US is below Argentina and Panama, Russia is below hyper-corrupt Paraguay and not much better than narco-state Honduras, and North Korea and Eritrea have officially applied zero doses per hundred inhabitants, below even Haiti at 0.8.

I'd suggest that the term "western world" doesn't have much meaning, nor do discussions about what countries are more or less "corrupt." In the 19th century US, essentially all government jobs (Federal, State, Municipal) were distributed according to patronage and the reason you wanted one of these jobs was mostly for personal gain. We would consider this rank and illegal corruption, but it had some merits as a political system.

Oddly, the system now is basically that the lower level jobs are occupied by career civil servants, but the higher you get the more jobs are filled by allies of the person in charge. Ambassadors are a particularly weird example. The ambassador to Mongolia is usually a career diplomat, but ambassadors to fancy places that are also us allies tend to be people with no particular qualifications at all, other than than that they were big donors to the president's campaign. If you're the ambassador to France, usually that means you're an important donor who also happens to speak pretty good French. There are things you can defend about the system. The UK government might actually prefer having an ambassador who has a relationship with the president outside of State Department channels and can get them on the phone. But that's the point. describing a state as corrupt doesn't actually tell us that much.

What I mean by Western World is Western and Central Europe, the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
By corruption I don't mean appointing as Ambassador someone who isn't a career diplomat but has real political clout in the appointing country. I mean stuff like places in which the outcome of a criminal trial depends on whether the plaintiff or the defendant can give the judge the bigger wad of cash, where you can just "escape" a maximum security prison because you gave a big enough bribe, where the cops are basically goons selling off their services to the higher bidder, the military is just another drugs cartel, etc. A good example is how the Afghan ex-government had tons of soldiers that existed only in the payroll and were just the means by which the higher-ups pocketed the money - the son of the former Afghan Defense Minister recently bought himself a mansion costing over $20 million, I wonder how much of that came from ghosts on the payroll.
For a quantitative comparison of corruption, Transparency International publishes an index. Paraguay is consistently near the bottom, and has been on at least one occasion the worst performer in the Western Hemisphere, so "hyper-corrupt" has an objective basis.

[Caracal]

New data interactive from the CDC, infections and deaths by vaccine status: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#rates-by-vaccine-status
No surprise but striking visuals-- this is now truly a pandemic of the unvaccinated.

This data isn't as good as it looks. In many locales, "Covid-19 hospitalizations" are counts of people who are hospitalized who test positive for Covid, not people hospitalized because of Covid. The best measure is excess deaths. I would love to see a chart on excess deaths of vaccinated vs. unvaccinated.

Yeah, not sure what that would add. If anything, I would say the underlying numbers are better than the top line numbers.

For example, an unvaccinated person 30-49 is 28 times more likely to die of covid than a vaccinated person. Even for 65-79 years olds, you are 16 times more likely to die of covid if you are unvaccinated. The overall numbers get a bit skewed because covid is still pretty dangerous for vaccinated people over 80.

[spork]

New data interactive from the CDC, infections and deaths by vaccine status: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#rates-by-vaccine-status
No surprise but striking visuals-- this is now truly a pandemic of the unvaccinated.

This data isn't as good as it looks. In many locales, "Covid-19 hospitalizations" are counts of people who are hospitalized who test positive for Covid, not people hospitalized because of Covid. The best measure is excess deaths. I would love to see a chart on excess deaths of vaccinated vs. unvaccinated.

I'm not sure what hospitalizations have to do with it-- the data are for cases and deaths, not hospitalizations. Cases are positive antigen tests, not hospitalizations.

For some reason clicking on that link took me to a page with hospitalization data. I see the vaccinated vs. unvaccinated death rates now.

[Puget]

I just signed up for a booster next Friday, just after my six month mark. I decided I qualified as an "educator" even though during the initial role out my state explicitly excluded higher ed from this category and made us wait until it was opened to all adults. But now there is no shortage, Pfizer has asked the FDA to expand booster eligibility to all adults and they probably will, and the data are pretty clear on waning immunity, so I feel justified in going ahead with it. I'll be visiting my 93 year old grandmother over winter break and will take all the extra protection for her I can (she is already boosted of course, but more immunity around her is good).

As a bonus, I realized I could get a tetanus booster at the same time, which my mom has been bugging me about neglecting. (Already got flu shot at work).

[kaysixteen]

Just got my Moderna booster today, qualified as a 50+ dude with various med conditions (and also as an essential worker).   Harmless, and just makes me even less sympathetic to vaccinidiots.

[sinenomine]

I'm getting my booster today — I listed myself as a teacher for the first two, so I got the alert that I was qualified. I'm hearing that some folks are getting similar after effects to the second shot, while others don't feel them as severely. Time will tell for me...

[Caracal]

I'm getting my booster today — I listed myself as a teacher for the first two, so I got the alert that I was qualified. I'm hearing that some folks are getting similar after effects to the second shot, while others don't feel them as severely. Time will tell for me...

I had a much milder version of the second shot. 101 degree fever instead of 103. Felt a little cold, instead of uncontrollable shivering. Did seem to feel cruddy and tired for longer, but perhaps that was just because I really didn't want to deal with rearranging four classes and just pushed through.  I got Moderna the first time and the Pfizer booster so who knows.

[apl68]

I'm getting my booster today — I listed myself as a teacher for the first two, so I got the alert that I was qualified. I'm hearing that some folks are getting similar after effects to the second shot, while others don't feel them as severely. Time will tell for me...

My parents had the same reactions to their boosters last week as they did to the original.  Dad had no reaction, Mom felt sick for a day or two.

[EdnaMode]

I had the Pfizer booster last week and had no side effects except for a sore spot on my arm the next day.

[Harlow2]

Had the Moderna booster 2 and a half weeks ago on the 8 month anniversary of the second shot. Woke up next day really tired and a bit achy but by lunch was pretty much back to normal. This was a milder reaction than back in February and no itch rash this time. Flu shot a week later actually left my arm with a bit more soreness, but nothing of real interest

[namazu]

I had a Moderna booster a couple of weeks ago, following 2 Pfizer shots, and had a sore arm for about a day and a half (nothing at all with the first 2 shots).  I feel lucky (and happy to have some token reaction just to remind me that my immune system is still there).

A friend of mine is feeling achy and fluey after her booster.

Good luck, sinenomine!

[evil_physics_witchcraft]

I got my booster today. I decided to mix and get Pfizer after having two doses of Moderna earlier in the year.

[AmLitHist]

I got my Moderna booster last Sunday, then promptly felt like crap on a cracker all week--a slight fever Sunday night but then gone. I felt seriously rotten on Monday, Tuesday, and then Wednesday (when I had to take off work to ferry ALHS to Alma Mater Hospital for a relatively scary procedure).  I had to drive to work Tuesday and Thursday, plus teach remotely Monday and Friday as well. Let's just say the students did NOT receive outstanding pedagogical product those days.

By Friday morning, I was feeling somewhat better, enough so that I cared if I might actually live through it. I also first developed a huge (golf-ball sized black bruise) at the needle site. Hopefully this will be as sick as I get this winter; we've all had our flu shots already.

ALHS and my BFF colleague keep telling me, "It's better than getting COVID."  Yes, it is--IF I don't get COVID.  That BFF has had three students with confirmed cases within this past week--ALL after both doses of the vaccine. 

Sigh.