Societal Pressure Mounts: An Example

 A friend was telling me about a Zoom hook up she had with five of her friends all of whom have been vaccinated and plan to vaccinated their kids. Two are in the USA. They encouraged her to do the same. 

Like I predicted, the societal pressure will mount and it will be extremely stressful. While she has not changed her stance, my friend almost wanted to cry when they started on the children.

So I asked what were the reasons given? The three were:

• 1) Kids get very sick.
• 2) Reinfection happens.
• 4) Antibodies and T-cells don't last or are enough.
• 3) Only way to get to herd.

Each of these are not true or tell half a story.. 

The first one I've already posted about. The media and public officials for a period claimed that kids in the 0-19 made up the majority of the hospitalizations. Reports that may have even be exaggerated  Data shows there was an increase but not one to suggest children were in a serous position. Mortality among children remains pretty much at zero (influenza remains the main threat to them) while adults continue to make up the majority of hospitalizations. 

But let's just take one snippet of an example using the fecklessly incoherent and political CDC about children infections.  

More direct, let's consider the American Academy of Pediatrics:

"A smaller subset of states reported on hospitalizations and mortality by age; the available data indicate that COVID-19-associated hospitalization and death is uncommon in children.

At this time, it still appears that severe illness due to COVID-19 is rare among children. However, there is an urgent need to collect more data on longer-term impacts of the pandemic on children, including ways the virus may harm the long-term physical health of infected children, as well as its emotional and mental health effects."

Remember, this can reasonably be assumed the same for Canada. Several other studies from around the world conclude similar findings. 

Stories about children getting very sick remain outliers. It's also worth noting we're still in a fog fear and it's entirely possible we're overstating some statistics. 

Onto the second claim. This has been a concern for some time but 15 months on, it would appear reinfection is very rare like asymptomatic spread. Again, plenty of studies point to this. Still, it's a tricky one. We just don't know for sure.

Once again to the CDC where right there it says reinfection is rare. 

Nonetheless, recent studies have come out looking at reinfection as being serious as this study shows and could help the virus to spread.

However, evidence still points to it being rare. 

Reinfection can mean many things. You will get reinfected....eventually. It's a coronavirus. The time frame matters.

From BMJ:

"Worldwide, 31 confirmed cases of covid-19 reinfection have been recorded, although that could be an underestimate from delays in reporting and resource pressures in the ongoing pandemic."

“We know that reinfections with SARS-CoV-2 can happen,” says Ashleigh Tuite, assistant professor at the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health. “The bigger question is: if reinfections are going to happen, how frequently are they happening?”

"...Since the 1960s, scientists have known that when some patients are infected with a virus for a second time,3antibodies created to fend off the disease in the first instance can end up inadvertently compounding its effectiveness on reinfection—known as antibody dependent enhancement (ADE).

To date, most of the SARS-CoV-2 reinfections that have been reported have been milder than first encounters with the virus, although some have been more harmful—and two people have died as a result.

“Almost certainly, immunity from a mild infection doesn’t last as long,” said Hunter. “But on balance, most second infections are going to be a lot less severe because of a degree of immune memory and T cell mediation.”

The article goes on to ask if it's reinfection or reactivation that's take place. The vaccines seem to be effective at the moment but it was more to weaken symptoms than the stop transmission. 

This is where the role of antibodies and T-cells, the  come into play. Again, studies clearly have revealed antibodies can last and T-cells are key to fighting off the virus. Unfortunately, it would appear we're not paying close enough attention to T-cells.

These are just some of the studies in each of these topics.

And finally, the notion of herd immunity being reached only through vaccines.

This is where things get dirty.

It's widely believed you can only get to herd through a vaccine. This is misleading. What they mean to say is a vaccine accelerates getting to herd because natural immunity would take to long - and potentially cause more deaths along the way (which could be curbed by using early treatments but this is neither here or there). The media and government are making it sound like it's the only way which is unfortunate and has implications for proper informed consent. Natural immunity does happen and vaccines work alongside it to achieve herd.

The main question for the 'hesitant' is there's long term data on the new vaccines. I have no problem with people who have these concerns. 

The way I see it get to you 60%-70% as the WHO believes (for whatever that's worth) is the thresh hold for herd immunity and move on. Not sure why Canada has a target of 70%-75%.