(12-12-2021, 10:58 PM)madbluboy date Wrote:I read an article discussing boosters that said the moderna booster worked better than pfizer or astra but the Novavax as a booster smashed them both especially after two shots of astra.

(12-12-2021, 10:59 PM)Lods date Wrote:The fact that the majority of eligible folks in the country are now double vaccinated means that most of the ongoing transmission will come from vaccinated folks.

Quote:Johnson’s announcement came hours after the government raised the country’s official coronavirus threat level, warning the rapid spread of the omicron variant had pushed the U.K. into risky territory.

The chief medical officers of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland said the 1of the highly transmissible new strain “adds additional and rapidly increasing risk to the public and health care services” at a time when COVID-19 is already widespread. They recommended raising the alert level from 3 to 4 on a 5-point scale. The top level, 5, indicates authorities think the health care system is about to be overwhelmed.

The doctors said early evidence shows omicron is spreading much faster than the currently dominant delta variant, and that vaccines offer less protection against it. British officials say omicron is likely to replace delta as the dominant strain in the U.K. within days.

“Data on severity will become clearer over the coming weeks but hospitalizations from omicron are already occurring and these are likely to increase rapidly,” they said.

Concerns about the new variant led Johnson’s Conservative government to reintroduce restrictions that were lifted almost six months ago. Masks must be worn in most indoor settings, COVID-19 certificates must be shown to enter nightclubs and people are being urged to work from home if possible.

Many scientists say that’s unlikely to be enough, however, and are calling for tougher measures, which the government so far has resisted.

(12-12-2021, 10:58 PM)madbluboy link Wrote:I read an article discussing boosters that said the moderna booster worked better than pfizer or astra but the Novavax as a booster smashed them both especially after two shots of astra.

(12-12-2021, 11:10 PM)LP link Wrote:[member=906]Lods[/member]  That might not be correct, viral load and shedding determines how infectious someone might be, while there may be more vaccinated people roaming around it still appears that they shed less virus, have lower viral loads and remain less likely to transmit by about an order of magnitude. Based on uptake that probably means if you get Sars-CoV-2 it's still more likely you get it from someone unvaccinated.

(12-13-2021, 02:40 AM)Lods date Wrote:I can get my head around the fact that you're a lot less likely to get it from a vaccinated person due to the lesser impact of the  virus on their system and the load they carry but surely that's countered by the number of folks vaccinated and still passing it on.

(12-13-2021, 04:23 AM)Mav link Wrote:It's nonsense to try to aggregate the risk of vaccinated people passing on Covid in order to say unvaccinated people are no longer a problem.

Forget about aggregation. If the average unvaccinated person is more likely to catch and infect others with Covid than the average vaccinated person (and yes, a lot of work has to be done in assessing those risks), that's a reasonable basis to impose mandates and the like.

The CDC reports that only 28% of fatal accidents in the US involve alcohol impairment. As sober drivers are 3 times more likely to be involved in fatal accidents, does that mean we shouldn't try to keep drunk drivers off the road? Maybe it would be better to concentrate on the increased risk of an alcohol-affected driver being involved in a collision compared to a sober driver rather than the aggregate statistics. 

Quote:"There is no evidence to suggest, at the moment, that an earlier booster does of the current covid-19 vaccines, will augment the protection against the omicron variant," Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly said on December 3.

But much more has been learned about the Omicron variant since then, including its transmissibility, and the advice has now been changed.