Sounds like homeopathy

Actually not far off. As mentioned above, it’s the number of dilutions of serum needed before loss of neutralising effect is achieved in growing virus in a dish. Since vaccines make all sorts of antibodies, there isn’t really an assay for the number of milligrams present in your blood (there is for MONOclonal antibodies since they are all the same type – hence “clonal”). Instead there is one assay in “International Units” which is a bit of a benchmark of total amount of immunoglobulin, and then there is a “functional” assessment of how beefy those antibodies are at knocking down the target viral growth (in a dish) as one dilutes them.

As strains escape coverage, you lose neutralisation with fewer half dilutions. One could use much larger dilutions (homeopathy) but that would not have the sensitivity to see changes. But the principle is the same. Homeopathy, however, believes the antibodies would have MORE effect if you dilute them. That’s not how pharmacology and the law of mass action works.

Apologies to @kimbers who does this stuff for real.

The most up to date variant data (as of today) is published by PHE here

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/975742/Variants_of_Concern_VOC_Technical_Briefing_8_England.pdf

It’s worth a read. The most notable (Figure 8) is just how impressive S-gene target failures have replaced all others – essentially there is no difference other than a time lag from the SE to the rest of the country. One might hope that this B.1.1.7 strain is providing some “herd protection” from other invasive strains, despite the vaccination roll-out. All the other strains are really bumping along in the noise at the moment, although Figure 10 shows the SA variant had a modest peak in March. We shall see…

Apologies to kimbers who does this stuff for real.

Tbh, when im diluting a dna library down to picomolar concentration yet it still has millions of copies of a person/cancers genome, I’m still not sure I can get my head round it not being homeopathy

Avagadros number divided by a thousand million million is still a big number 😀

I was wondering how long it takes to get a reasonable level of protection after the first jab. I know 2 weeks is often quoted and a recent study in the US showed 80% protection after 2 weeks with Pfizer/Moderna

But…..given it takes around 5-7 days to develop symptoms and possibly a few days to get a test result does that mean if you work back you actually have 80% protection after a week or so?

No, don’t confuse the how long it takes the immune system to produce antibodies, with how long it takes to show a positive test.

14-21 days to produce effective antibodies. Generally the longer timeframe is associated with the older population.

So if unlucky you could catch CV 20 days post vaccination, with symptoms/positive test not showing until 25 days.

I was wondering how long it takes to get a reasonable level of protection after the first jab.

14 days for protection. PHE analysis of population data is here:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/971017/SP_PH__VE_report_20210317_CC_JLB.pdf

Figure 1 shows your risk of COVID is increased for the first two weeks (>70yo) and Figure 2 is the SIREN study in Healthcare workers (so younger) and that shows protection at about 10 days. Risk compensation is a thing. Who knew? That or vaccination centres are cesspits of COVID transmission (not really).

A lot of the elderly come to my vaccinator centres on the bus or by taxi, so catching it on the day is a definite possibility.

Hopefully staff vaccination, daily LFT’s, mask wearing, ventilation and less than 10 minutes on site per patient means centres are reasonably safe. ( I know you were joking, but just for info.)

Looking at that report it doesn’t look like they are compensating for the incubation period, so if you see a drop in infections at Jab+14 days the symptomatic illness it prevented you getting would have arose from an exposure on jab+7 days (given a 7 day incubation period). Is that not correct?

I might be wrong, but I thought that study was amongst daily tested HC workers, so no incubation period to symptoms required, as PCR tests pick up infection quite early. An expert may be able to confirm?

If you call 5-7 days quite early. Here in France we’re advised to wait 5 days after a suspected contact before going for a test as it probably won’t pick up an infection before that.

Elderly study is observational linking healthcare records to positive PCR tests. The younger study is in daily tested workers at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford. The fact they show similar patterns is interesting. Of course some people may be incubating at time of vaccination and this could explain some of the bump. But it could also be risk compensation. Note it is ratio to unvaccinated based on records and the numbers are large. Being at or below 50% after a few weeks is a good thing since this is the minimum level for an approvable vaccine. Take that as a positive and remain cautious for a couple of weeks.

Sounds like homeopathy

Can you explain your thought process here? As it didn’t sound anything of the sort to me.

It was a joke…

Even independent thinkers can have a sense of humour.

Ah, the Edinburgh defence!

independent thinkers

Is that a joke as well? [that’s a joke]

To be honest, I’d assumed you were joking about the dilution/homeopathy thing anyway.

My default position is everyone refers to it as a joke… unlike Jeremy Corbyn, David Tredinnick and Tim Farron… (I picked examples from three parties to make it clear that homeopathy isn’t a party issue… the magic is supported by many very different MPs).

Wish me luck. Having arrived 20 mins early I’m sat outside the pharmacy killing time as I await my turn for a jab in the arm

Overheard in the shop this morning
“I’m not having that clotty shite one in me”
I missed the whole conversation, but the words pfizer and moderna were mentioned a few sentances afterwards.

Overweight and looked in her 50s, but from context, likely early to mid 40s. Either a hatred of self checkouts, or they were queuing for fags too.

“I’m not having that clotty shite one in me”

makes a change, early on in the vaccine process I had an old boy tell me he wanted the AZ one as he “didn’t want that foreign one” (he meant the pfizer) .

I gave him the pfizer as that what we had. He shrugged and took it…

I’d put a note in my diary 10 weeks after my first jab to chase surgery if I’d not heard anything (as my invite came from there). They were great, no problem at all checking then…. oh… you appear to have fallen off the system. Just waiting for a call back to get it sorted.

They were VERY keen to get me in in the next two weeks. So much as I didn’t want to bother anyone, quite glad I did now!

My wife’s come across through her (unrelated) work an 80 year old, blind, disabled woman who has not been vaccinated. The woman phoned her GP practice and was apparently told that as she never leaves the house she’s not at risk so doesn’t need the vaccine, which is true but not helpful. She’s too scared to sit in the garden and chat to her neighbours over the fence and hasn’t been out at all for a year.

What should be the way of getting vaccinated in such a case? District nurse, GP visit?

Round our way, it would the GP to arrange – who does the vaccination may vary depending on the staff they have.

It’s not mandated for them to so, but GPs who are doing home vaccines are paid twice as much to provide them as clinic based vaccines (don’t get too excited though, it’s twice of a tiny amount).

It’s perhaps a bit early to cry victory but it’s now 11 days since vaccination with AZ and I haven’t used my red inhaler for a week, and I’m just back from my first run without breathing difficulties since the week before the first confinement in March 2020.

I’m an occasional asthmatic. It’s brought on by air pollution and some allergens. I’m naughty, I don’t follow my doctors advice and only use my red inhaler when I feel the need, ie. very rarely. I don’t get effort induced asthma unless I feel asthmatic before the effort. I did all my racing without inhalers, if I felt crap I didn’t start or retired, just once ending up in the red cross tent. All that changed in March last year.

The first week of confinement coincided with the tree pollen start and I started to cough and wheeze, my asthma’s back I thought . Madame was ill with what we now know were Covid symptoms. I just coughed with no other symptoms. I started with red inhaler but it didn’t help much. I’ve been dependant on the red inhaler (and sometimes ventoline on top) for the last year and depite regular use have felt breathless swimming, running and biking and even skiing in pure air with no allergens.

Until four days after AZ. I woke up and instead of groping for my inhaler felt like groping for… . A week without the inhaler right in the middle of the tree pollen season and I can still breathe. Sure my eyes and nose are running, throat is irritated, ears itching, I’ve got hay fever, but my lungs are working.

Coincidence or vaccination? I’m inclined to think that AZ has given me my health back. Fingers crossed, I’ll keep you all posted.

So last Friday a riding acquaintance I follow on Strava was posting pics of how his commute home from work had been via the pub and had taken several hours.

This morning he’s complained of feeling fluey on his commute in but has tested negative on a lateral flow test.

He’s old enough to have been offered a vaccine but suspect he’s the type who is “too busy” to have it. I really hope that it is just man flu he’s passing on to his colleagues

Well then it is your civic duty to report him for the common good.

I work with vulnerable adults and one of them has fallen in with a bad lot (fundamentalists). He now thinks the vaccine is tested on and/or contains aborted foetus’s. Can anyone point me it the direction of some credible sources of information- even just a rough page number in here would get me started.

He’s right though

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/22/vatican-says-getting-covid-vaccine-morally-acceptable

(sort of)

better explanation (edit)

https://fullfact.org/online/foetal-cells-covid-vaccine/

Thats a good start, thanks. If he decides to refuse the vaccine on that basis then that’s fair enough I suppose, he’s being told more than that though.

There are no actual foetal cells in the vaccine. The production process uses cells which were not taken from an aborted foetus, but are part of a cell line grown in the lab and distantly derived from a single aborted foetus in the 1970s.

If you are opposed to any science developed using foetal tissue, then OK, but foetal tissue is not being harvested now and put into the vaccine, or used in its manufacture.

I suppose my next question then is how do I convey it?
It’s all stuff I ‘know’ but I haven’t got any primary evidence so I’m just a random with a theory- just like the fundamentalists, at least as far as he’s concerned.
And as interesting as the full fact link is, and as much as I appreciate Martin putting it so clearly, if he told me he’d ‘done his research on the internet’ I’d have discounted it, so where does the difference lie?

It’s a good question and one I no longer really have the answer to.

I mean, I do, it’s reliability, accuracy, integrity, etc., of the sources where the information is coming from. As a scientist, peer review and referees of publications and trust in the scientists that write them. Versus someone with an opinion and internet connection. To me the balance is clear, but if you are of that persuasion, want to believe that we are being misled, lost trust in ‘the authorities’ (haven’t we all, but the Gov does not control scientists) or just being contrary for shits and giggles it’s dead easy to just throw in the ‘well of course you’d say that’ or ‘that’s what they want you to believe’ card which in the end is hard to counter. Because it’s a belief and in those minds belief trumps evidence.

So you go round and round, where you have to not only prove everything you say but also do their work and disprove their theory, only to have it ignored anyway. Which frankly half the time is all they’re after anyway, to waste your time.

Just dipping my toes in the thread again.

As per a rule I set myself, it’s to separate facts (informed opinions at least) from the noise of other sources out there.

How are we feeling about the Indian Variant?

To early to say?

As always, thanks guys and I hope you and yours are doing ok at the mo.

To early to say?

Yes.

Having said that, put in controls and then learn more… not the other way around.

How are we feeling about the Indian Variant?

To early to say?

I’m surprised we don’t know more about its ability to evade vaccines, or not, by now. I’ll guess we’ll find out soon enough.

I think we’ve got about 200 cases here currently, up from 77 (detected). I’d expect that to continue rising quickly if it has the ability to to evade vaccines, or to outcompete ‘our’ variant in the unvaccinated.

I’ve not checked but I assume the Kent variant is chesney hawks here by now? Again I feel myself hoping our variant is a world beater.

Indian variant is rapidly becoming the only variant there I think.

How are we feeling about the Indian Variant?

To early to say?

I wouldn’t worry too much about that. Looks like out of 100M People who had the AZ jab in India only 17K got infected, which is pretty incredible. Also India has a huge population so the number of deaths/Million is still around 14X less than in the U.K.

Although India looks to be in a very difficult situation, their vaccine efficacy figures are looking decent. "Covishield" is Ox/AZ. 100 million doses and 17,145 positive cases. https://t.co/kytMrEHrlo

— Steve Brown (@stevebrown2856) April 21, 2021

Most reports saying the number of cases/deaths in India is hugely under reported. I dread to think what the real numbers are.

We need to hope the vaccines prevent hospitalisation/death in the new variants until boosters arrive later this year.

I’m still amazed India got off so lightly first time.

Cardiff is now programming in the under 30’s. My partner and I both had our letters yesterday, both of us are 29 with no pre-existing conditions. What a relief to know we’re not being passed over as an age group.

My colleagues in Pune, India are all very scared. It’s a major centre of this outbreak – 7 day average of new cases is a quarter of a million in a population of just over 3 million.

Whether it will be a problem in the UK is a different matter – let’s hope not.

I’m still amazed India got off so lightly first time.

I seem to recall that when the virus first hit developing nations there was talk that their relatively young population (by average age) meant that there were fewer old and vulnerable people to be affected, compared to the older population in Western countries that got badly hit. Sorry that reads really harsh but couldn’t think of a better way to phrase it.

Seems that some of the newer variants affect the younger age groups more? Hopefully the rapid vaccine rollout here will mean that if this is the case, then more will be protected from serious illness.

I’m encouraged that no one seems to be saying that these variants completely evades the vaccine, they just seem to be a little less effective. So far.