When they analyzed the data, the researchers found wide variations in viral load within both vaccinated and unvaccinated groups, but not between them. There was no significant difference in viral load between vaccinated and unvaccinated, or between asymptomatic and symptomatic groups.
Dr. Strangelove v.2019
“How I quit worrying and learned to love the virus”
.
PING
Has there ever been so many studies done about one virus? Is there any way to tell which ones are credible?
“...wide variations in viral load within both vaccinated and unvaccinated groups, but not between them”.
Interesting. Leads me to believe that Covid causes significantly different immune response between individuals than the average flu.
There’s no test for Detla. The Covid test is inaccurate and doesn’t identify Covid. The ‘disease’ is whatever they want to pretend it is - a mixture of illnesses including pneumonia, flu etc.
Was just talking to my neighbor who was caught in an outbreak at his job. 16 employees, 6 caught it, including (unvaxxed) him. 3 were unvaxxed, 3 were vaxxed. He says he feels tired and throat is weird, but not too bad so far.
The above would seem to contradict this from the study:
The findings underscore the continuing need for masking and regular testing alongside vaccination
If there is no difference between vax & unvax, then what is the point of sticking the experimental garbage in your arm?
“…The findings underscore the continuing need for masking and regular testing alongside vaccination, especially in areas of high prevalence, the authors wrote. The study is currently available online as a preprint from MedRxiv.…”
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Nope to the “continuing need for masking and regular testing”! These folks are fearful of their rationale for continuing controls and mandates SLIP SLIDING AWAY.
No matter what the data says, it's still the same old, same old.
According to this new study, it is anti-science and anti-scientific to ban unvaxxed people from public venues & workplaces for the purpose of stopping the spread of the virus. There is NO basis in science for doing so and the virus still spreads among vaxxed people as much as it does among unvaxed people in public venues & workplaces. (Which of course means that vaxed people can spread the virus to others just as much as unvaxed people can).
The real purpose of vax mandates are to inflict enough punishment on otherwise law-abiding citizens to force them to get the vax on pain of losing their jobs and participate in normal educational, business, religious and social life & activities.
It is unconstitutional for the federal government to force private organizations and businesses to act as their “agents” in violating citizen’s constitutional rights. (In United States constitutional law, a state actor is a person who is acting on behalf of a governmental body, and is therefore subject to limitations imposed on government by the United States Constitution, including the First, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments, which prohibit the federal and state governments from violating certain rights and freedoms.)
Second one today from a study down by a university in Kalifonia:
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/4001546/posts
Similar? Sort of.
The viral load is higher among those who are vaccinated.
And the immunity is more narrow with those who took the Covid shots.
Those who took no shots and contracted the virus and recovered have much broader immunity to the virus including the new strains.
They are not alike.
Saw this a week ago.
Junk study with non-sequitur title.
There is nothing in this study merits thus title: “Survey Underscores Importance of Masks and Testing Along With Vaccines.”
Different study, same outcome:
“Unfortunately, the vaccine’s beneficial effect on Delta transmission waned to almost negligible levels over time. In people infected 2 weeks after receiving the vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca, both in the UK, the chance that an unvaccinated close contact would test positive was 57%, but 3 months later, that chance rose to 67%. The latter figure is on par with the likelihood that an unvaccinated person will spread the virus.”
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/4001546/posts
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.09.28.21264262v1.full-text
That’s the paper. Used spit, not snot for testing. That’s interesting....
Say it ain’t so......
Yes, while sick, but sick vaccinated people only have viral load for 4 days max, vs unvaccinated who have viral load 10 days. If you are sick longer, you have a greater chance to spread the disease.
I would be interested to see the viral loads as they occurred over time in infected patients.
from cached version. btw The Economist doesn’t list writers - probably a good idea!
22 Sept for 25 Sept edition: The Economist UK: Measures to prevent the spread of covid-19 have also fended off flu
As the world begins to reopen, will it see a resurgence of influenza?
(This article appeared in the International section of the print edition under the headline “Northern exposure”)
In september 2020 doctors and public-health officials in the northern hemisphere were on high alert. They did not know how covid-19 would behave in the first winter of the pandemic. Respiratory viruses tend to surge during cold weather. And there were the usual concerns about influenza, the shape-shifting virus that sickens and kills many people every year.
At worst, doctors feared they would see simultaneous outbreaks of covid-19 and flu which would overwhelm hospitals and send deaths soaring — a “twindemic”.
It never materialised. Covid-19 cases continued to rise in much of the world in late 2020 and early 2021 but the wave of influenza never struck. And yet today those same experts are worried once again. Flu’s absence in 2020-21 has probably made the prospects for 2021-22 worse: outbreaks could occur sooner, last longer and affect many more people than usual...
The flu season in the northern hemisphere — loosely defined for this purpose as North America, Europe, north Africa and West Asia—usually starts around October each year and peaks the following January or February...
What explains such low levels of flu? Because of covid-19, people were wearing face masks, social distancing, washing their hands, avoiding public transport and staying at home. This also helped limit the spread of other respiratory viruses, including influenza...
Vaccines for influenza are generally less effective than those for covid-19; they prevent about 70% of detectable infections in healthy adults and about 50% in the elderly...
The mild or non-existent influenza season of 2020-21 was probably welcome at a time when covid-19 was killing tens of thousands of people and putting many more in hospitals. But it also means that many fewer people will have been exposed to the circulating flu viruses in the past year so the levels of natural immunity in populations will be relatively low. A wave of influenza in such an environment “could be problematic”, warned the AMS...
GRAPH: The shape of things to come?
Even those who have previously been exposed are at risk. Immunity diminishes over time. Worse, flu viruses change rapidly, so the immune system’s memory of one season’s flu may be of limited use against new viruses. Some have little or no protection against flu — babies and young children who have never been exposed to it...
A study in 2013 examined what happened after mild winters, when rates of influenza transmission tended to be lower than usual and therefore resulted in lower-intensity epidemics. The researchers found that 72% of the subsequent epidemics were more severe than average. They started 11 days sooner and the epidemic growth rate was 40% higher. Their severity was probably exacerbated by their earlier onset because fewer people would have been vaccinated at that point.
Modelling by the AMS has shown that, if Britons returned to their pre-pandemic way of life, the country could at worst face a winter influenza epidemic 2.2 times more deadly than normal...
Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) provides more clues as to what could be in store for the northern hemisphere. RSV is a major cause of hospitalisation and death in young children, particularly those less than a year old. Reports from around the world showed a 98% reduction in cases of RSV during the pandemic. But researchers in Australia also found that, after physical distancing restrictions had been relaxed in the last few months of 2021, RSV cases shot up. They peaked in December (the country’s summer), instead of the usual June or July (its autumn/winter). The peak itself was almost three times higher than usual and there were many more cases of infection in older children. Doctors in New York City found similar results after March 2021.
If influenza or RSV surge when covid-19 levels are high, some doctors worry that people could be struck by several respiratory viruses at once. Around a fifth of children who end up in hospitals with bad lung disease are infected with multiple viruses, says Stephen Holgate, a pharmacologist at the University of Southampton. Growing evidence suggests that influenza and SARS-COV-2 can coexist and that they interact negatively, he explains. The AMS reckons that being infected with influenza A makes people more susceptible to SARS-COV-2. It also worries that the wider circulation of other respiratory viruses could lead to more dangerous variants of SARS-COV-2.
Preventing a “twindemic” in 2021-22 will take three steps, argues Dame Anne Johnson, an epidemiologist at University College London and president of the AMS.
***First, a concerted effort to get more vaccines — for both covid-19 and influenza — into arms. Since natural immunity to flu is probably at its lowest for years around the world, immunity via vaccines will need to make up the shortfall. That will mean jabbing those normally at high risk, such as the elderly, pregnant women and health-care workers, but also children, who are prodigious spreaders of infection.
Second, since the symptoms of various respiratory illnesses including covid-19 are similar, doctors and clinicians need routine access to multiplex testing, where throat swabs are tested for different viruses at the same time. Rapid tests for influenza should readily be available in hospitals, clinics, care homes and pharmacies, says Professor Johnson. Identifying infections is useful — the timely use of antivirals can shorten an episode of flu.
The third way to fend off the bug is for ordinary people to practise what Professor Johnson calls “respiratory hygiene”. Social-distancing rules may no longer be in force in much of the world, but people should still wear masks in crowded indoor environments. They should also work from home where possible and socialise outdoors, she says.
***Scientists will face the coming flu season using the tools they know work. But the current process for making flu vaccines is slow — it takes six months and involves incubating viruses in chickens’ eggs or mammalian cells before carefully extracting and purifying proteins that go on to make the building blocks of the vaccines.
***The success of messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines for covid-19 has spurred scientists to investigate how to use the same technology against flu. mRNA should speed up the process, leaving less time between concocting the vaccine and the viruses mutating. And mRNA vaccines should be easier to tweak if new strains emerge.
In July Moderna, an American firm that developed a successful mrna covid-19 jab, began a trial of its mRNA flu jab, which targets all four virus strains recommended by the WHO. Pfizer, the other American mRNA covid-19 vaccine-maker, has also adapted its technology to make a candidate flu vaccine. Seqirus, a British drug firm, has announced plans to begin clinical trials of its mRNA flu vaccine in late 2022. It wants to use self-amplifying messenger RNA (sa-mRNA). A typical mRNA vaccine tells a person’s cells to make an antigen (against which their immune system can then make antibodies). sa-mRNA vaccines also instruct the body’s cells to replicate the mRNA itself. That should mean a much smaller vaccine dose can elicit the same immunological result, useful if you need to vaccinate people against multiple flu viruses at once — or keep boosting immunity for covid-19, which is set to join influenza as a regular visitor every winter.
https://www.economist.com/international/measures-to-prevent-the-spread-of-covid-19-have-also-fended-off-flu/21804978