Does the coronavirus merit investment, or personal, concern or consideration?

Hope.

Yes. A third of a very high number is still a very high number…

And 1/100 of a very high number is still a high number. But it is still well below 100/100ths. And you still did not define “much”. Rather than the obvious, why not start with your definition of “much”. We can then have a basis for all sorts of statistics.

Walking around with a straw/spoon in his nose? I almost got arrested for that. :blush:
If I can manage a move to Oregon, it is, apparently, no longer arrestable … not that there’s anything wrong with that … or anything else, again, apparently, comma limit reached. :relaxed:

Might I suggest Burgundy and St. Ann, at least as of 1977 … a good time was had by all.

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My thoughts keep coming back to this detail.

In a world where estimates say as many as 90% of infected persons are asymptomatic, what is the practical value of a vaccine proven to yield 95% of recipients as asymptomatic? Are we really supposed to be giddy over a vaccine that merely prevents symptoms in as little as 5% of recipients? Am I misunderstanding this?

Has there been any updated results that indicate the vaccine’s effectiveness in preventing the actual infection itself?

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Citation needed. Not just from agent orange or as part of a wide range estimate back in March when there was little data.

I think so. AFAIK the 95% is vs the “control”. That is, 20 ill in the unvaccinated vs 1 in the vaccinated.

Obviously, estimates vary drastically, depending in part on what the estimate is based on. And there’s no way to truly know how many unconfirmed cases have and do not have that minimum level of symptoms, since they’re never identified as a case in the first place.

I understand what you’re saying about the 95% being relative to the control group, meaning that if the control group was (for example) 90% asymptomatic, the vaccine was effective in 95% of the remaining 10% (I think?).

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Not sure where the headline number came from. If you can figure out what that’s referring to and help me understand, it would be helpful. From context, my reading is maybe the writer left off “severe” on that sentence, as they list the symptoms that are associated with severe cases. And the sentence right before it says “most develop mild and moderate symptoms”. So, it seems to be referring to 14% overall with severe symptoms.

In the body of the article, it has:
“Further, 27 or 23.5 percent were symptomatic, and 88 or 76.5 percent did not manifest symptoms on the day of the test

This seems to indicate that more than 23.5% had symptoms overall.
As symptoms (according to the cdc) can take 14 days to appear, the number seems like it would certainly end up higher than that 23.5%.

The article you just linked seems to indicate symptoms for 23.5% on the day of the test. (The goal of treating is contacts should be tested before symptoms would appear). So, yes, but 10% could be much lower than actual.

Maybe a reason to consider mouthwash in your oral hygiene regime? Very preliminary results suggest that a Betadine or Listerine mouthwash may reduce viral levels and improve patient outcomes if used several times daily. Either way, your dentist won’t hate you for it.

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My standard treatment for a sore throat has always been gargling with mouthwash.

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Nice graphics on excess mortality by country. Click to US, add the box for recent years for comparison. Note, as we did up-thread, that the most recent 1-3 weeks are unreliable due to reporting lags.

https://mpidr.shinyapps.io/stmortality/

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Masks and bad science - a critical perspective.

Among other things, models of “lives saved” through widespread mask wearing were using bad, lowball data on existing masks use by the public so any national mandate ala Biden’s proposal, if it wasn’t too late already given vaccine progress, would be very unlikely to achieve the headline numbers.

Of course, prevented deaths are unfalsifiable - a good mask wearing liberal could always claim more people would have died than did eventually regardless of the outcome. No doubt they would also not credit Trump’s policies with avoiding nearly 90% of the 2.2M predicted US deaths from covid from early models.

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So the US gives more tests. (we know that) If I read your graph, mortality rate is dropping a lot. To me, dropping death rate in US is most important.

Also noticed death of more men than women is noticeable. :thinking:

It is important yes. If you trust the data up thru say week 40-41, the death rate has dropped a lot from the summer in terms of excess mortality falling. It’s not down to normal levels, but it’s much improved. However, the chart is only reliable thru around mid Oct, so it remains to be seen how the currently high case counts and hospitalizations end up playing out. I think deaths will be somewhat higher in Nov and Dec, although given that’s expected anyway due to seasonal patterns, we’ll just have to wait and see if that’s more or less than the currently level of around 3-5k in excess deaths per week. Hopefully with vaccines rolling out in another two weeks to those most at risk and my hope that the vaccines will provide some protection prior to their second shot, we may seen some of these numbers noticeably improving by Jan/Feb.

Also noticed death of more men than women is noticeable.

Yes, it’s been like that the whole time for men for whatever reason. More likely to get a bad case, more likely to die.

South Dakota’s governor encouraged people to go shopping the same day the state reported its highest single-day COVID-19 death total

Does anyone think this is a good idea?

On the rocks with a splash of soda and lime isn’t too bad.
Better yet, mix with quinine water and you should be golden … or toasted.

Disclaimer: For anyone under the age of 50, you should not drink mouthwash. If you’re over 50 and don’t know better, well you’ve already ̶i̶n̶affected the gene pool, so drink away. :frowning:

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Does lower the immune system, though. (Alcohol is literally poison after all).

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