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Corona / Covid-19 Virus - General Discussion (politics go to the Off Topic / Politics thread)

IIRC the cholera vaccine only lasted 6 months and many countries demanded a valid stamp back in the 60’s and 70’s.

France

gallois wrote:

IIRC the cholera vaccine only lasted 6 months and many countries demanded a valid stamp back in the 60’s and 70’s.

There are and were some countries which demand a yellow fever vaccination for entry for decades. Almost all long haul flight attendants have a yellow WHO pass with the yellow fever vaccination.

@Malibuflyer, thanks for that concise explanation.

LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland

Yellow Fever was I think a 10year vacc like tetanus. But certainly there was several countries that demanded that stamp on your health card. Hepatitis, there are several types and tou got one in the arm and the other in the bum. I found my old British Airways vaccination card the other day. I was surprised at how many vaccines I had.

France

I just noticed this morning that Bulgaria and Romania are now post-peak – in the case of Romania down nearly to pre-wave figures. I wish I could understand why…

LFMD, France

Mooney_Driver wrote:

Looking at where we are going, those who so far have snubbed to be part of the solution rather than the problem have won out in the sense that it’s back to masks, back to social distancing and in some countries lockdowns. So their freedom has brought upon the rest of us that most of the freedoms won are gone again, health pass non-withstanding.

Not correct, I’m afraid.

Even if the highest practical levels of vaccination across European populations had been achieved, the virus would still circulate freely, the media would continue to dramatise it and governments would continue to use the perceived crisis as an excuse to expand their powers.

The vaccines dramatically lessen infection severity and shorten the time during which an infection is contagious, but unfortunately they seem to have very little effect on the black-and-white question of whether an individual person can actually become infected. It is so incredibly infectious that, even crippled in this way, it can still continue to circulate freely.

The sooner we get used to the idea that we’re all going to get it eventually, the better.

EGLM & EGTN

johnh wrote:

I just noticed this morning that Bulgaria and Romania are now post-peak – in the case of Romania down nearly to pre-wave figures. I wish I could understand why…

If you don’t test, you won’t find too many cases, just the most obvious ones. That’s how it works around here.

tmo
EPKP - Kraków, Poland

Graham wrote:

but unfortunately they seem to have very little effect on the black-and-white question of whether an individual person can actually become infected.

Reason for that might be, that it is all but a black and white question. Medicine is rarely a black and white question (as long as it does not come to death).
If you regard protection against a disease as black and white question, then you can go back to Stone Age and simply forget medicine at all.
No vaccination against no disease prevents infection in a black and white way.
No treatment against no disease prevents death in a black and white way.

It is always about reducing odds of bad outcome. And yes: Covid vaccination has a huge impact on the question if an individual person catches the infection in a specific situation at a specific virus exposure level.

Germany

Malibuflyer wrote:

Reason for that might be, that it is all but a black and white question. Medicine is rarely a black and white question (as long as it does not come to death).
If you regard protection against a disease as black and white question, then you can go back to Stone Age and simply forget medicine at all.

I said nothing about protection against disease and of course do not wish to cast medicine back to the stone age. The question of individual infection is of course black and white. One is either infected with the virus, or not. You cannot be a bit pregnant.

What I mean, and perhaps could express it better, is that the vaccines seem to have very little, if any, direct preventative effect in terms of stopping an individual becoming infected.

There is an indirect effect since most of the people one could catch it from are now infectious for a shorter period of time, but at an individual single-case level if you are exposed to the virus then you still become infected, just as surely as if you were not vaccinated.

The hope and expectation had been that a vaccinated individual, whilst infected, would have a viral load so low as to be basically non-contagious and the virus would start to die out in majority-vaccinated populations because only some very tiny fraction of vaccinated infected individuals would actually pass it on to anyone else at all (very low R number.) Sadly this is not the case. Vaccinated infected individuals are infectious for less time, but still highly infectious.

This is why the ‘feeling safe’ idea espoused by @Mooney_Driver in terms of assurance that all around you in enclosed spaces are vaccinated is a complete fallacy. If you come close to an infectious person then you are probably going to be infected, irrespective of your or their vaccination status. Given it is still thought that some 50% of infections are completely asymptomatic and go undetected by testing networks, there are always going to be a sizeable number of infectious people unwittingly moving around in the population and passing it on.

You can look at your cafe or restaurant, safe behind the paper-checker at the door, and think to yourself that it’s totally safe because everyone in there is vaccinated and they’re all good citizens who would isolate and test if they had symptoms. But you’re probably wrong. There are probably still infectious people in there, asymptomatic and untested.

Asymptomatic infection is what makes control impossible.

Last Edited by Graham at 02 Dec 10:36
EGLM & EGTN

Graham wrote:

What I mean, and perhaps could express it better, is that the vaccines seem to have very little, if any, direct preventative effect in terms of stopping an individual becoming infected.

This is not true: If you put one vaccinated and one unvaccinated person in the same room with an infected virus spreader (so that both have the same exposure), the risk of becoming infected is order of magnitude higher for the non vaccinated than for the vaccinated.

It’s not zero for the vaccinated, but very significantly lower. The “indirect side effect” is just a bonus to that.

Germany

Malibuflyer wrote:

This is not true: If you put one vaccinated and one unvaccinated person in the same room with an infected virus spreader (so that both have the same exposure), the risk of becoming infected is order of magnitude higher for the non vaccinated than for the vaccinated.

I do not believe that is true for infection and I’m not aware of any data to support it. The kind of trials required to get the data – individually exposing people – would be unethical in any case. Macro population-level studies cannot really measure it in a way that isolates it from all other factors, e.g. the way people behave, other preventative measures, degrees of exposure, etc.

In any case, continued high infection rates – often as high as they ever were pre-vaccines – among vaccinated populations, do not support your hypothesis.

Last Edited by Graham at 02 Dec 10:42
EGLM & EGTN
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