This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at The Conversation.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1460750
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1460750
FRIST!!! I am one of those with single source immunity - I’ve been vaccinated but managed to avoid the real thing. That said, I’m one of those that is in a bind on the vaccine front - I got vaccinated early on but proved allergic to the Pfizer mRNA vaccine, so I can’t have any more of those. I haven’t been boosted since 2021. I keep waiting for a new Novavax or similar vaccine that doesn’t use the same ingredients as Pfizer and Moderna, but, so far, no luck.
ETA No cats (I’m allergic to them) but here’s my Dad’s rescue dog.
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Millions of Americans face similar issues making them absolutely dependent on the rest of us not acting like selfish children.
I have a family member who’s been battling cancer since the pandemic began: chemo, radiation, even clinical trials, for months on end. The cancer, along with the ravages of these therapies, devastate their immune system. Even a common cold virus could lead to hospitalization – or worse – let alone COVID.
And yet, everyone seems to think (as I’m sure you know only too well) that everyone is exactly like them. The idea that every family is different, with its own health needs and challenges, never even crosses their minds.
(Maskless strangers have confronted family members in public, demanding – demanding! – that they remove their masks, because “There’s no pandemic! It’s all a hoax! Sheeple!”)
It wasn’t until COVID that I fully appreciated the struggle faced by those for whom the ADA was passed. Most people, in their unbelievable fortune, just haven’t a clue that others might be less fortunate, in health, money, gender and color privilege, etc.
Sorry to hear it’s a genuine problem for you too, especially knowing how a selfish and petty minority (and a clueless majority) make it even more challenging.
Stay safe!
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One individual (Individual One?) made this situation much worse than it would have been otherwise. It’s too bad he can’t be prosecuted for that.
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This is science. Science & research & study is good … vital in fact!
This speaks to a colossal piece of malevolent Luddite level ignorant destructiveness advances by theformer president - back in the days of grappling with defining & characterizing COVID-19 …back when it was known that it was entirely possible to have sub-clinical cases … and so the true incidence & prevalence (mighty damn important for grappling with communicable diseases) as an unknown!
Yeah … it was at this point that Trump barfed out one of the STUPIDIST and most reckless things of his regime … “Don’t Test - because if you keep testing … you find more positive cases”
Truly an imbecile - a dangerous, willfully stupid evil opportunistic self-serving psychopath.
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Wife & I have had the Pvizer vaccine with all the boosters available; no ill effects. Agree wholeheartedly that the former President’s response to the pandemic was unspeakable. Given that, because today is Saturday, because I’ve had 3 cups of coffee, and because I’m relaxing on the patio enjoying nearly the last cool morning before summer in all its rage hits sunny Mesa, I find myself musing that it would be good for all of us were someone with talent to compose a Gilbert & Sullivan-ish musical comedy, similar to Pirates of Penzance, about the entire Trump debacle. We really need to laugh. And Mr. Trump really must hear us turning his farcical tragedy into a comedy.
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Well, glad I got that out of the way, twice. Also wonderfully thankful for the vaccines and boosters that made the second time around lessen the symptoms and severity of it, was genuinely happy to get out from under the first infection alive and well.
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I have the inestimable good fortune of living in an area where most people care enough to protect their friends and neighbors. Very few in our cohort have had COVID and most of the people I encounter are careful when around others because you just can’t know what that person’s needs or vulnerabilities might be.
I worry most about those folks with cancers and other health issues. I am lucky to be basically healthy. I hope the best for your family.
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I still wear a mask in enclosed places away from home because my spouse is very ill and extremely vulnerable. I cannot bring anything home to him. No one seems to bat an eye when they see me with a mask and there are always a few others out there wearing them in the grocery store, post office, etc.
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My husband is similarly careful not to bring COVID home. So when his grandkids are sick, he waits until they’re well to visit. Same with his friends. 
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Up until last week, I was in that 3.6% ( I think). Grrr.
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“Gilbert and Sullivan-ish”
I am the very model of a modern major asshole.
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You only know that you haven’t had COVID infection if you have had the serologic testing this article discusses.
Serology isn’t helpful in deciding how to treat individual patients, so it’s not used in clinical practice.
If, for example, a patient comes in with symptoms suggestive of COVID, serologic testing doesn’t help you decide whether the symptoms are due to COVID or not, because they won’t produce detectable levels of antibodies right away if by chance they were seronegative a week ago before they developed symptoms. A negative today, when you have to make the decision on treatment and isolation, might mean they have COVID, and they will be seropositive a week from now, but it doesn’t help you decide not to treat today. A week from now is too late to implement either oseltamivir or isolation. Seropositive today means they have most likely had prior exposure, from getting a vaccine or from prior infection.
PCR-testing is helpful, because it reflects current presence of viral RNA in your oro- or naso-pharynx. The results guide treatment.
You only know from your experience of never having a COVID-like set of symptoms that PCR-tested positive for COVID, that you haven’t had symptomatic COVID. Or, to express it more cautiously, that you haven’t had COVID symptomatic enough to prompt PCR-testing. The status of never having had asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic COVID infection is only determinable by serology, which is only used in studies such as the one discussed here, not clinically.
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Problem is Trump would take the play as something good. He can’t admit he is wrong about anything. Whether it was his response to Faucci calling for wearing masks or his son-in-law bidding up states for limited COVID resources (because the Strategic Stockpile BELONGED to the Feds, not the American people).
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Somewhere I heard or read the legend that what the devil hates most in humans is good humored laughter. How that might affect Trump is of little to no import relative to our capacities to express good humor with belly laughs, in my view. But I do fantasize him not enjoying a good laugh with us.
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This item is based on a study conducted on blood samples from blood donors.
It’s relatively easy to adjust the results based on the age and gender of the donors, as compared to the general population, so I assume they did that. Socioeconomic status (SES) is presumably not defined for individual donors, but I imagine that a broad-brush profile of what SES tends to donate would allow for reasonable adjustment there as well, which I presume the authors have done.
One factor that could be an important difference between the population of blood donors compared to the general population, is health status. You’re not allowed to donate if you have certain defined illnesses. That defined status allows adjustment as well, so is not likely to have gone unadjusted, and is possibly not a big factor anyway. The real problem is the interaction between undefinable states of health and history of exposure to COVID. Part of this would be diagnoses that the blood donation people don’t document because they are not relevant to the safety of the blood product or the safety of taking some blood from the donor. Probably the bigger concern is that people who don’t feel generally well might be less inclined to donate, but also more inclined to have been infected and/or vaccinated, than most people. Long COVID would seem to be a particular problem, as a non-specific malaise is its most common symptom, and that would probably tend to make this group of people who are defined by having had the infection, less likely to donate.
The good news is that these factors contributing to a probable inaccuracy point in one direction. The population of blood donors is more likely than the general population to have a higher percentage of people never exposed to vaccine or natural infection. The percentage of people in the general population who have had one or more of these exposures is likely to be even higher than the 96.4% that this study demonstrates in the donor population.
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A lot of interesting information can be interpreted from these numbers:
- About one in four Americans got COVID without having been vaccinated. That’s a little over 80 million people. We had just over 1 million deaths from COVID so, if you assume the vaccine provides at least 90% protection against death (which is conservative) then the mortality rate from COVID was about 1% if you weren’t vaccinated.
- Since at least five to ten times as many people were hospitalized as died, and about three in four Americans eventually got infected with COVID in spite of wide spread vaccination, hospitals would likely have been completely overwhelmed had there not been a vaccine available less than a year after the outbreak had begun.
- It’s a safe bet that at least twice as many people who contracted COVID suffered a severe illness that lasted several weeks, but didn’t require hospitalization as those who required hospitalization.
- Again, if you assume that the vaccine reduced all of these factors by about 90%, you can assume that, without the vaccine, as many as 60-70 million people might have required hospitalization (in a country with roughly 700 thousand available hospital beds) and at least 100-130 million people might have suffered an illness which would have confined them to there beds for up to several weeks.
In short, as bad as it was, it could have been much worse.
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Hell yeah! That makes me one of the 3.6%. Took until January 2023 for Covid to finally get me.
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I’ve information bigoted, self-flattering, and conscienceless. . .
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