OT: Coronavirus 4 - or is that thread 2.75?

[Cardiac Jerks]

I just received notification last night that someone working on my site tested positive so we’re all at home today while we figure out the next steps with the customer.

Honestly surprised that it took this long as this project has lots of people involved from all over the world. I really do suspect there have been other cases that people just didn’t report. We might get lucky and only have to send specific people to quarantine but worst case scenario is the entire site gets shut down.

 

[Sens1Canes2]

I just received notification last night that someone working on my site tested positive so we’re all at home today while we figure out the next steps with the customer.

Honestly surprised that it took this long as this project has lots of people involved from all over the world. I really do suspect there have been other cases that people just didn’t report. We might get lucky and only have to send specific people to quarantine but worst case scenario is the entire site gets shut down.

I really do wonder what the end game is going to look like in 1/2/3 years ...

We know the vaccine mitigates symptoms, but we also know that it does not prevent you from getting Covid, nor does it prevent you from transmitting Covid to other people.

So I’m curious: next year, are we still doing testing? Are we quarantining for 10 days if positive? Will a school close if it has a few positive tests? Are we still wearing masks....everywhere?

i feel like this is being glossed over a little bit. The vaccine is being made out to be some life saver...I have questions.

Someone smarter than me can answer, if they feel like it.

 

[MinJaBen]

We know the vaccine mitigates symptoms, but we also know that it does not prevent you from getting Covid, nor does it prevent you from transmitting Covid to other people.

Do you have any sources for those two things? I've not heard that these two statements are proven yet. Last I heard is that all we know is that it is 95% effective at drastically reducing symptoms, especially serious symptoms that lead to hospitalizations and death. No studies I've seen have proven that it does or does not prevent COVID transmission.

 

[MinJaBen]

I really do wonder what the end game is going to look like in 1/2/3 years ...

We know the vaccine mitigates symptoms, but we also know that it does not prevent you from getting Covid, nor does it prevent you from transmitting Covid to other people.

So I’m curious: next year, are we still doing testing? Are we quarantining for 10 days if positive? Will a school close if it has a few positive tests? Are we still wearing masks....everywhere?

i feel like this is being glossed over a little bit. The vaccine is being made out to be some life saver...I have questions.

Someone smarter than me can answer, if they feel like it.

As for your other questions, I don't think anyone knows the answers to these things. They are, of course, dependent on how many of us actually get a vaccine and how timely that takes place. If we all get it in the next 6 months (I'd be shocked) then we might be able to put this to bed. If the rollout remains very slow, we might just cook ourselves up an escape mutation and we will have to start the vaccine development all over again (obviously, not from the very beginning, but a major setback as we look for better targets on the mutations).

I was originally thinking it might be a full year from the start of vaccine administration before we feel pretty normal here, but after seeing the mess of the rollout and the mutation rate in the spike proteins picking up, I'm now less optimistic we get through this first vaccine rollout before an escape mutation emerges that needs a new vaccine developed. If that happens, I'd guess another 2 or 3 years of this current environment will be the norm.

That is just my very slightly educated guess.

 

[Sens1Canes2]

Do you have any sources for those two things? I've not heard that these two statements are proven yet. Last I heard is that all we know is that it is 95% effective at drastically reducing symptoms, especially serious symptoms that lead to hospitalizations and death. No studies I've seen have proven that it does or does not prevent COVID transmission.

So this is from a few days ago ... basically, they didn’t test for it. It’s undergoing further study. But thinking logically, if they give trial patients the vaccine *and it’s 95% effective at mitigating severe symptoms* then obviously those patients got Covid. As far as transmission...I’ll keep looking. But again thinking logically, and this is just my memory kicking in, the ability to transmit depends on viral load (I think?). So it sounds like the most likely scenario is, it does help in preventing transmission but not 100% effective.

Fact check: Scientists do not yet know whether the COVID-19 vaccine reduces transmission of the virus

all this to say...if what you posted is the case (mutations, 2-3 years, etc), oh boy.

 

[MinJaBen]

So this is from a few days ago ... basically, they didn’t test for it. It’s undergoing further study. But thinking logically, if they give trial patients the vaccine *and it’s 95% effective at mitigating severe symptoms* then obviously those patients got Covid. As far as transmission...I’ll keep looking. But again thinking logically, and this is just my memory kicking in, the ability to transmit depends on viral load (I think?). So it sounds like the most likely scenario is, it does help in preventing transmission but not 100% effective.

Fact check: Scientists do not yet know whether the COVID-19 vaccine reduces transmission of the virus

all this to say...if what you posted is the case (mutations, 2-3 years, etc), oh boy.

So the bolded portion of this is completely wrong. That is just not how clinical trials work. They gave two populations of people injections. Some with the vaccine and some with placebo. Then they watch both populations and monitor symptoms. In both populations, the symptom monitoring is done by patient reports mostly, very little (if any) would have gone through a surveillance testing protocol. Only if symptoms are reported does a COVID test take place. So the statement that "it's 95% effective at mitigating severe symptoms" is the only thing they can say because it is all that was monitored in the trial. The vaccine might block symptoms because it completely blocks infection, but we don't know that because the clinical trials weren't designed that way.

As far as the transmission angle, this is from the article you linked and is the current state of understanding as far as I know (bolded part my emphasis):

Meanwhile, there is currently no conclusive evidence to claim the COVID-19 vaccine stops people spreading the virus that causes the disease – nor is there for the opposite. Early findings from Oxford/AstraZeneca revealed its vaccine could have some effect on transmitting the virus (here), while similar results have also been reported by Pfizer/BioNTech (here).

 

[hblueridgegal]

Moderna CEO says the world will have to live with Covid ‘forever’

Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel appeared to agree Wednesday that Covid-19 will become endemic, saying “SARS-CoV-2 is not going away.”
“We are going to live with this virus, we think, forever,” he said during a panel discussion at the JPMorgan Healthcare Conference.

U.S. officials are racing to distribute doses of both vaccines, but it will likely take months before the U.S. can vaccinate enough people to achieve herd immunity, meaning the virus won’t have enough new hosts to spread. Still, Bancel said Wednesday he expects the U.S. will be one of the first large countries to achieve “sufficient protection” against the virus.
There are already four coronaviruses that are endemic across the world, but they aren’t as contagious or deadly as Covid-19, according to the World Health Organization.

 

[Sens1Canes2]

So the bolded portion of this is completely wrong. That is just not how clinical trials work. They gave two populations of people injections. Some with the vaccine and some with placebo. Then they watch both populations and monitor symptoms. In both populations, the symptom monitoring is done by patient reports mostly, very little (if any) would have gone through a surveillance testing protocol. Only if symptoms are reported does a COVID test take place. So the statement that "it's 95% effective at mitigating severe symptoms" is the only thing they can say because it is all that was monitored in the trial. The vaccine might block symptoms because it completely blocks infection, but we don't know that because the clinical trials weren't designed that way.

As far as the transmission angle, this is from the article you linked and is the current state of understanding as far as I know (bolded part my emphasis):

Alright. I don’t get it...but I’ll trust you. (Laughing emoji)

 

[MinJaBen]

Moderna CEO says the world will have to live with Covid ‘forever’

That is my thinking as well. Hopefully the scenario is one similar to the seasonal flu with yearly vaccines. Another possible and tolerable outcome would be a comparison to chicken pox, where most adults (the most at risk population) have had it as kids (or a vaccine for it now) and then it becomes just one of those annoying childhood diseases that you get as a kid and move on with your life. However, I doubt it is stable enough for that. My money would be on the seasonal flu model.

 

[the halleJOKEL]

Alright. I don’t get it...but I’ll trust you. (Laughing emoji)

not sure if this helps or not, but this is the comparison of covid infection rate between the placebo and vaccinated arms of the pfizer vaccine trial, so it shows the drastic difference in rate of infection among the two groups:

these were two populations of ~21.6k people each, so this is the source of the 95% number greater than 7 days after the second dose in the bottom right of the table (i.e. 21 days out from the from the first dose including the 14 days between doses)

 

[LakeLivin]

Yeah, most people misconstrue what the 95% efficacy rate we hear quoted actually means. It sounds like it means that the vaccine will give you a 95% chance of not becoming infected if exposed to the virus, but that's not the case. When you think about it, it wouldn't even be possible to determine that since there is no way to know how many of the study subjects were actually exposed to the virus.

To simplify vaccine study designs just a bit: they enroll a bunch of subjects and blindly randomize them to either placebo or vaccine. Once a predetermined number of study subjects contract the virus (still don't know which group they're in at this point) they break the blind and compare the proportion of all placebo subjects who became infected to the proportion of all vaccinated patients that became infected. In the Pfizer study the groups were the same size and only 5% of all subjects who became infected were from the vaccine group, hence the 95% efficacy rate we hear quoted.

 

[LakeLivin]

Back on the official Canes board our regulars included a county coroner and the head of a local hospital emergency department, so we got some really good info on covid. I don't believe either has found their way over here as of yet, but it wouldn't surprise me to see them pop up at some point; both were avid Canes fans.

 

[Derailed75]

Back on the official Canes board our regulars included a county coroner and the head of a local hospital emergency department, so we got some really good info on covid. I don't believe either has found their way over here as of yet, but it wouldn't surprise me to see them pop up at some point; both were avid Canes fans.

There were some very informative threads over there because of them.

 

[raynman]

The manufacturing facility I work at currently has 7 positive tests. This is through the grape vine as they aren’t telling anyone what’s going on. Many people on the plant floor and several in the offices, myself included, have underlying health conditions. Not to mention all the folks we all live with. Should I be angry about the lack of a response or announcement or is this just “the world we live in” now?

 

[RibFrabcus]

The manufacturing facility I work at currently has 7 positive tests. This is through the grape vine as they aren’t telling anyone what’s going on. Many people on the plant floor and several in the offices, myself included, have underlying health conditions. Not to mention all the folks we all live with. Should I be angry about the lack of a response or announcement or is this just “the world we live in” now?

It's the world we live in and it's probably right to be angry about it. I have a buddy in a similar situation where people are testing positive but there is no official word letting them know they were exposed. It's a shit show.

 

[WreckingCrew]

The manufacturing facility I work at currently has 7 positive tests. This is through the grape vine as they aren’t telling anyone what’s going on. Many people on the plant floor and several in the offices, myself included, have underlying health conditions. Not to mention all the folks we all live with. Should I be angry about the lack of a response or announcement or is this just “the world we live in” now?

I have a friend who works for a company very similar to this...their covid restrictions are minimal, poorly enforced, and they pretty much treat everyone like pawns and sweep it under the rug when someone tests positive. It's not a great work environment during a pandemic (or probably any other time). The place I work is VERY strict - temp check, masks/sheilds all day, "sneeze guards" between workstations - and if you have been in contact with someone who tested positive or are not feeling well you are not to come in until you test negative and/or quarantine for 10 days. It can be almost over-bearing and micro-managing at times ("you are within 6 feet, back up"), but they are at least making our safety a priority.

 

[SENSARMY18]

The manufacturing facility I work at currently has 7 positive tests. This is through the grape vine as they aren’t telling anyone what’s going on. Many people on the plant floor and several in the offices, myself included, have underlying health conditions. Not to mention all the folks we all live with. Should I be angry about the lack of a response or announcement or is this just “the world we live in” now?

Here in Canada there would be absolute outrage/media attention with that situation.

 

[raynman]

Well as of this evening they are closing the plant on Monday and Tuesday for a company to come in and do a deep clean/disinfection type thing. 14 confirmed cases, so far. All asymptomatic which explains why the temperature checks in the morning didn’t catch anyone. Luckily I didn’t have any direct contact with anyone that’s been rumored to have a positive test result.

 

[Bridgeburner96]

The manufacturing facility I work at currently has 7 positive tests. This is through the grape vine as they aren’t telling anyone what’s going on. Many people on the plant floor and several in the offices, myself included, have underlying health conditions. Not to mention all the folks we all live with. Should I be angry about the lack of a response or announcement or is this just “the world we live in” now?

I'm a teacher and we were being informed (poorly) about positive testing teachers when it was just teachers in the building. I say poorly because I knew of a quarantining teacher 2 weeks before they informed us about the positive case and because the numbers of positive cases and quarantining staff was not being reported/updated on the district page that was used to inform the public about cases. The only reason I knew was because they were teachers on my hall and grade level and when they were absent we texted them to check in.

Now that the students are back they are only informing those in direct contact with the people that test positive. The lack of transparency is very frustrating not to mention the fact that students should be learning remotely and teachers teaching remotely until this thing is under control and things are safe again.

 

[raynman]

I'm a teacher and we were being informed (poorly) about positive testing teachers when it was just teachers in the building. I say poorly because I knew of a quarantining teacher 2 weeks before they informed us about the positive case and because the numbers of positive cases and quarantining staff was not being reported/updated on the district page that was used to inform the public about cases. The only reason I knew was because they were teachers on my hall and grade level and when they were absent we texted them to check in.

Now that the students are back they are only informing those in direct contact with the people that test positive. The lack of transparency is very frustrating not to mention the fact that students should be learning remotely and teachers teaching remotely until this thing is under control and things are safe again.

Agreed. My mom is a school nurse so I’ve heard all about it.

 

[Navin R Slavin]

Here in Canada there would be absolute outrage/media attention with that situation.

That's because Canada hasn't just given up yet.

 

[MinJaBen]

Welp, the B.1.1.7 variant (UK) has been found in Mecklenburg county.

 

[Cardiac Jerks]

The manufacturing facility I work at currently has 7 positive tests. This is through the grape vine as they aren’t telling anyone what’s going on. Many people on the plant floor and several in the offices, myself included, have underlying health conditions. Not to mention all the folks we all live with. Should I be angry about the lack of a response or announcement or is this just “the world we live in” now?

That’s some bs. I shut my site down and advised everyone to isolate at home while we investigated. Got cleaners in to disinfect everything in the meantime and we’re able to get almost everyone back to work the next day. Only 6 workers were exposed and they all tested negative, thankfully. Kept everyone informed - it’s really not that hard.

 

[The S5]

Moderna CEO says the world will have to live with Covid ‘forever’

Kind of like the flu.

 

[Lempo]

Small woe in comparison, but I've been going through some stressful stuff as of lately and looks like it's getting onto me so that every now and then my body can't quite literally hold its shit together. These being the times, ensue full Covid protocol and me taking diarrhea sick leave slips to my employer.

Maybe next time I just say I got cough and don't mention at which end.

@Roboturner913, come and take your mantle back, I don't want to live this life!