You can tell I'm back in the office because my comment productivity has increased so dramatically.
Tonight James Taylor is playing an arena show in Pittsburgh. They're recommending masks for two reasons.
I was very unproductive today. There's no good reason and I can't blame it on any one thing specifically, I just had a few distractions and didn't fight them harder. I guess I should be glad working from home makes it easier to get away with?
If you have an 11 year + 10 month old who is big for his age would it be wrong to lie about his birthday to get him the vaccine now?
I was going to do that back when the cut-off was 16, but I didn't because ethics and because what happens if they need to show they have been vaccinated and it doesn't get in the medical record because it's the wrong info.
I am so frustrated this week without ADHD meds. The worst of all worlds for me is trying to get important household one-off tasks done while kids are around. When I go back to work, I'll be in an office with a door I can shut, and tasks that I need to get done will be more easily categorized and organized, and I can function way better at work than at home. Trying to get shit done at home feels like I'm aimlessly clicking between 40 open tabs in my brain.
I do have a doctor's appt on Friday. But I'm pessimistic that there is no solution for me, and this is just my life.
I mean, doctors have their uses too.
I have never been able to figure out how to make myself concentrate. I just have to keep plugging away until it either clicks or I give up.
I just need to be able to remember the thought I had ten seconds ago. I'm not kidding. I know it's the type of thing everyone says, and one thing that's so galling is that I have no way of knowing if I'm being a big crybaby over the type of thing that happens to everyone or not. But ambient noise just completely trashes my ability to complete a thought, and uh, this is a very noisy house.
The nice thing about working from home is that I don't have to imagine the squirrel to do "look, a squirrel."
I will be able to go back to the office in two weeks. At that point, I will close the door, spend 4 hours waiting for my mind to finally become blank after 18 months of ambient noise, and then finally have a new thought.
Going blank, starting with the commenter information boxes.
13 is me. Yes, I no longer remember my own name.
In our office, four people have desks in a large shared room (which also has the water cooler). They are spread out enough that it isn't too bad but, apparently, there's some tension right now because one person just wants quiet and another (who had been working from home in a house with significant ambient noise) is chatty and social.
the guests at los angeles fancy hotels, at least in beverly hills, have generally decided they are entitled to not mask indoors. the locals are nearly as makes up as in san francisco. conclusions: 1 - wealthy travelers are once again confirmed as assholes, 2 - if you mask and treat staff with respect you get outstanding service.
Damn! My invitation to the Obama birthday bash was rescinded at the last moment!
This is the last time a Democrat will betray my trust. From now on, I'm voting Republican.
We flew to Malta (mostly Gozo) for a holiday last week with friends. It felt ... strange. Malta is on the UK's green list, and we did everything by the book: PCR tests before and after flying, testing in Malta before we fly back, and a _shit ton_ of paperwork at every stage. It still felt slightly irresponsible.
Malta was pretty great, although I found the relentless desert environment on Gozo pretty draining after a while. First time we've ever had a holiday place with a pool, which the kids went mental for.
According to the internet, Pittsburgh now has a "No Human Pooping" sign downtown. So I guess the city is getting spruced up for post-covid convention guests.
20: Reverse-speciesism is getting out of hand.
I think a dog is still allowed to poop out a human, but a human can't poop anything.
Alive and well. My wife's mother (and husband) are planning on visiting our area the last week of the month, so we're working through arrangements. They're looking at a week, which will probably be a mistake -- 2 to 3 days is the normal "can deal with her mom" capacity before the slights pile up into something that my wife can no longer ignore. Fortunately, we're talking about a few days local and a few days at the coast -- and her mom suggested that we'll probably want to wander independently for a day on the coast, which might help recharge batteries.
11. I have a friend who says "Every time I am interrupted I have to redo a half hour of thinking." Also, a relative who has a piece of paper on his office door that says "Do not knock unless someone is bleeding out."
not very humble at all brag: my mother just got a page on the GCHQ site.
Went to Stratford to see The Comedy of Errors at the RSC's open-air theatre. Worth it, although the production relied too much on physical action and slapstick. Takeaways:
1) The RSC actors are *so good*. It's easily forgotten, but their skill in speaking Shakespearian verse so the sense flows out of it naturally, is remarkable. Their ability to conjure a door out of thin air (and two mike stands) on an empty stage -- no sets, in the round, in the open air -- is awe-inspiring.
2) The way in which Roman society took slavery entirely for granted. The start of the plot is a man saying "ooh, my wife's just had identical twins! What can I do for her? I know: I'll buy a pair of identical twin slaves to match our boys. There's a poor woman just had them, by a happy coincidence."
And all through, when the laughs are flagging, the reliable standby is either for a slave to be beaten or -- even funnier -- for a slave to complain about being beaten.
Shakespear adapted the plot from the original Latin comedy and he did so, obviously, into a society where formal slavery was unknown. But it wasn't entirely alien, otherwise the play would have made no sense. I wonder at what stage did it come to seem shocking. When did the comic servant become human?
23 I find very relatable. My wife is eager to have us visit my mother, or to have her visit us. I'm anxious about how many days I'll be able to stay mellow before the slights pile up and I seemingly inevitably lose my shit. The pandemic has so far provided an excuse for not organizing a visit, as my mother lives overseas. Having to deal with my mother in person is going to be the opposite of a silver lining whenever the pandemic is finally really over. If that ever happens. Is antivax fuckwittery just going to allow new variants to circulate every few months for the rest of our lives now?
It keeps not working for me. Says to try later because of maintenance.
Maybe she's in charge of website maintenance.
The canonical form is "your mother".
But, since it works for me, I suspect the problem is that Moby just hasn't got the security clearance.
Not working for me, either. I suspect anti-Americanism.
I'm getting on a plane with my family in a week. Bought tickets a couple of weeks ago, just before everybody figured out that air travel probably isn't a great idea right now. Oh well. Have ordered the N-95s, and the flight is pretty short.
Just be sure to look up Emily Post on when you can punch a flight attendant. The rules are in flux.
I've cleared my cache and gone in through the US VPN I use to read CharleyCarp's Montana paper stories. Still works. It has to be your security clearances.
I have participated in parades to celebrate people who attacked U.K. military forces in ways regarded as illegal by the U.K.
I often assume anti-Americanism, but I might just be projecting my own feelings onto others.
re: 25
That is very cool, NW.
re: 26
I used to find the same thing going to the Globe. Pre-child, my wife and I used to go and see most things, most years. There were always a few dubious productions but, for the best ones, the verse speaking just flowed to the level that even for a second language speaker like my wife the content was completely clear, and not just clear, you could immerse yourself in it completely.
Also a reminder, when they had the odd cast member who was a well known TV actor, that a lot of people who make their bread and butter in TV sitcoms are also top notch Shakespearean actors, when they want to be.
The doctor is now going to try me out on wellbutrin for ADHD stuff. Apparently it's an off-label use.
Just start smoking and then you can get it to help quit.
25: How cool!
26: When did the comic servant become human?
Certainly by the time you get to She Stoops to Conquer. Maybe Restoration drama is the pivot?
When did the comic servant become human?
Petronius certainly. Giton's suffering still is a source of humor in some places, but he's not just there for grimaces and pratfalls. Don't know enough about how Roman drama was performed to comment on differences in attitude between Roman writers.
41: This is instead of stimulants? I missed why you stopped those, but at any rate I'm curious to hear if this works for you. I tried aderal last summer for like 3 days and hated everything about it and stopped it, but do still feel like my ADHD is putting a damper on my life in these times.
In these trying times, we should turn to natural methods of keeping our brains functioning. Nothing but alcohol, pot, and poppy tea.
Is antivax fuckwittery just going to allow new variants to circulate every few months for the rest of our lives now?
Yes, but over time (on the order of years to decades) they'll most likely gradually become more transmissible but less virulent as we approach an evolutionary equilibrium. There's no way this virus is going away in our lifetimes, but it'll eventually not be a big deal.
Maybe Restoration drama is the pivot?
Interesting. I wonder if there's a connection to the ascendance of plantation slavery in the British Caribbean. Maybe the development of a new type of slavery changed attitudes toward traditional stock portrayals of household slaves/servants?
46: yep, the stimulants each eventually give me headaches. The most recent one lasted the better part of a year, but eventually the headaches became constant and intense. So we're looking for a non-stimulant options.
I haven't taken any meds over the past month, and it was fine while we were on vacation, more or less, but I've been extremely miserable this past week back in the house.
Yes, I was wondering about that. Too many years since I have read, or seen, She Stoops to Conquer; but domestic servants as part of the family certainly became a recognised pattern at some stage. We discount here Karl Marx's method of putting the servants in the family way.
I think Teo is probably right. Perhaps the existence of "far" servants, of doubtful or denied humanity, made it easier to recognise the humanity of "near" ones.
Just got back from that Last Trip the the Vet.
Dogs love us with their whole hearts, and we take on the burden of letting them go when they need to go.
Yes. My sister had to do that last month.
How does Baldrick in Blackadder fit into this progression? I feel like it comes with an acknowledgment with he's human but at the same time all the jokes at his expense rely on that discomfort.
Condolences, Charley.
58: I don't know, because I think Blackadder is appealing to a cultural stereotype rather than a live experience. I mean, up until say 1918, perhaps 1945, anyone rich enough to go to the theatre regularly would have had servants in their own households. This was not true of the audience for television comedy in Eighties.
How does Baldrick in Blackadder fit into this progression?
Interesting question. He gets progressively dumber and more a figure of ridicule over the course of the different series; in the medieval one he's a canny servant whose "cunning plans" are often genuinely smart (though they don't always work), whereas by WWI he's just a working-class dullard. In between he fills the servant role in various ways but is usually the butt of the jokes.
In one of the Regency episodes Edmund, who thinks he's about to flee to Barbados with a beautiful highwaywoman, tells Baldrick that once they're established he'll send for him, and that he'll really stand out there because all the other slaves will be black. Not sure how this fits in either but I think it's the only explicit reference to slavery anywhere in the series.
Of course in the Regency series Blackadder himself is also a servant, which changes the dynamic a bit.
I never did get Blackadder. The worst was the modern one where he's really clumsy.
41: I was taking Wellbutrin for other reasons last year and it is *amazing* for ADHD, which I didn't know I apparently have. (Still working this out but the ability to concentrate was fantastic.)
52: I had the worst headache I'd had in years during the three days I was on it, which was one of the main reasons I gave up on it. So maybe this is something I should look in to.
50: Arguably it's already not a big deal if you're vaccinated (death and hospitalization rates comparable to flu). Even putting aside evolution, even when immune response isn't perfect it tends to be much better when it's not a totally novel virus. People getting covid for the second time (which is surely happening now) is similarly much less dangerous than the first time. Current endemic coronaviruses are estimated to have R_0 around 5, but have effective R only 2 during the winter when they're spreading most rapidly. Delta is a little more contagious than that, and a little more dangerous than that for people with partial immunity, but it's not wildly different. Once everyone has been vaccinated or has gotten it, then it really just shouldn't be like a slightly worse version of OC43.
Er, should.
55: I'm so sorry, Charlie. It's so tough.
My condolences Charley.
52: Heebie - You may want to ask about modafinil (Provigil) if you haven't tried that one yet. It's a stimulant (or "wake promoting agent") but different than the usual ADHD stimulants.
55: So sorry to hear about your dog! But I love the sentiment about taking on the burden. So true.
Arguably it's already not a big deal if you're vaccinated (death and hospitalization rates comparable to flu).
Yeah, agreed. It still is a big deal only because so many people are still unvaccinated and the disease can be quite bad among them, plus the continued circulation in large populations means a lot of potential for new variants to emerge.
Follow-up to 71, Heebie. Headaches are a common side effect of modafinil (so this could have been a terrible suggestion!), but starting on a lower dose can help. I really only mentioned it because it's chemically different than meds like adderall or ritalin
If birthdays weren't enough to mark the passage of time I sat down wrong two days ago and my back still hurts.
Sorry, Charley.
Maybe adding milk helps? Works for coffee.
Norman Truman, longtime Minneapolis punk and activist has died. He was shot in the head last year outside the Third Precinct, spent a long time in hospital, and had made a great deal of progress on his recovery, being up and about for months. However, his brain swelled earlier this week and he was in a coma until his death Wednesday. I wasn't a close friend, but I've known him for quite a while, and his reputation was impeccable. This is a wrenching loss for many, many people in this town.
Norman was featured in that coffee table book about people with the classic Black Flag tattoo. I had a copy due to my PM Press subscription, and I am not really into Black Flag, so I passed it on to him one night when I saw him at the Triple Rock, many years ago. The FB encomiums to him really made me wish I had gotten to know him better.
But the MPD has foreclosed on that opportunity forever.
Off. The. Pig.
71: I saw that as an option online. It's a narcolepsy drug?
They say that wellbutrin takes 1-3 weeks for you to feel it, but I swear I felt a difference today. Like someone cleaned the windshield off in my brain and things are a bit clearer. I'm cautiously optimistic.
The doc explained it like there are (roughly) two kinds of depression: sluggish can't get off the couch or get out of bed, and anxiety-ridden can't calm your brain down and go to sleep. She said wellbutrin is better for the first type than the second, and can actually increase anxiety in people as a side effect. So alleviating sluggishness can also overlap with ADHD symptoms and help.
78.1: Narcolepsy is at least one of its uses. My son has been on it for quite a while.
Condolences for your loss, Charley.
Not sure how this fits in either but I think it's the only explicit reference to slavery anywhere in the series.
I was minded to watch some Blackadder as this reminded me it had been a while since my last watch. I started with the third series, and its first episode actually has a bit on slavery, if coming from some throwaway characters.
Has anyone found any data on the proportions of people who are vaccinated but getting long covid symptoms (especially without hospitalization) from delta? That's the main thing I'm worried about at this point.
83: The data aren't really available yet. We don't have great data on long COVID to begin with (rates vary by age, decrease with time post-infection, and the highest instance is about 30% in adults 30-45ish for symptoms persisting 6 weeks post-infection). Breakthrough cases are pretty rare (I'm seeing numbers like 30-40 breakthrough cases per 1000 cases) that it's going to take large studies or many months to accumulate numbers of breakthrough cases that could be analyzed in any meaningful way. The small, not reliable numbers suggest it may be similar, but it'a not useful to look at instances of 10 people and extrapolate to a population.
To the worry itself, your odds of getting COVID post-vaccination are something like 1/900 in the most recent data I've seen, so your odds of long COVID might be something like 1/4500. (Figuring 20% odds of symptoms lasting more than 3 months.) So, it's a bad thing but at the moment, really, really unlikely.
BTW, for the Pfizer vaccine snobs, NIH/Moderna is showing some advantages:
The three Covid vaccines available in the U.S., from Moderna, Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE, and Johnson & Johnson, have proven very effective at preventing severe Covid infections thus far. Moderna reported Thursday that its vaccine was 93 percent effective six months after its second dose, while Pfizer's vaccine was 84 percent effective after six months, both far higher than the 45 percent effectiveness of last season's slate of flu vaccines.
Serially commenting, but I'm sorry, Charley. Hope you're both holding up OK.
Thank you for going over the numbers, ydnew. That does provide some degree of relief, but I want to work through this a bit more.
your odds of getting COVID post-vaccination are something like 1/900 in the most recent data I've seen
Could you clarify what the priors are in this? Is it mostly US national statistics, or something else? Is a lot of that data from pre-delta strains? Presumably these numbers are pretty heavily affected by local conditions: to what degree delta is already endemic, what the local caseloads are (most of England is at 30-40 cases/100k/day), and to what degree people are practicing social distancing. My real goal is figuring out to what degree I can relax the latter, and also determine how irresponsible it would be to consider a transatlantic flight later this year (and if I do it, to what degree I should try to time it around the US delta wave peaking).
In the absolute worst case--where I'm in a poorly-ventilated environment with someone delta-positive for a significant period of time--my base assumption would be that my odds of long covid would be something like (expected pre-vaccine natural immunity)*(1-vaccine effectiveness against infection)*(long covid given infected). The latest numbers here for the vaccine effectiveness against delta infection (including asymptomatic) are not that great (but much more effective at protecting against symptomatic/hospitalization/death). Since I'm not sure if you were conditioning off of all infections or symptomatic infections, I'll use their symptomatic infection number, 88%. Figure, ex posterior, that I only had a 10% chance of being infected to begin with, and using your number of 20% long covid, that gives 10%*(1-88%)*20% = 0.24 ~= 1/417. Which I think might be high enough that, while I've relaxed some of my behaviors, I'm still going to continue being quite careful.
Are there tests required to fly internationally? I'd worry most about the plane. Obviously, Pennsylvania is a dystopia, but it's not one where people I know are getting sick.
Yes, tests are required, both ways. And we'd bring extra lateral flow tests with us. As for PA, your delta surge has barely started. Handy UK/PA comparison, but to be generous I bet far more asymptomatic people in the UK get tested than in the US. We might also be visiting relatives in other states who aren't all vaccinated (although they have had covid, so that's useful, I guess), which has been a contentious issue for us.
I wouldn't be in any hurry to visit unvaccinated adults.
Apparently, my family is really good at guilting other parts of the family. Or lying about vaccination status.
It's complicated by my wife having family members in the same location being old and vaccinated but not in good health generally. We've already had one family funeral since the last time we were in North America. When we discuss this what usually happens is we weigh a lot of statistics and counterfactuals and it ends with one of us saying "god why can't your/my sister get her fucking vaccine, this would be so easy if she did." But it's also a very white rural place and their circle is largely anti-science and anti-authority. I think my side of the family is good, because we're either liberals or I-got-mine conservatives, who are racists that hate the poor but care about their own well-being.
your odds of getting COVID post-vaccination are something like 1/900 in the most recent data I've seen
Could you clarify what the priors are in this? Is it mostly US national statistics, or something else? Is a lot of that data from pre-delta strains?
I had the same questions. This is the most recent data I've seen. Looking at WA state, for example, the number of breakthrough cases is ~1/1200 the number of people vaccinated. But, even setting aside concerns about Delta variant, let's say the average vaccinated person has been vaccinated for 2.5 of the 6 month period. That implies that the rate of infection would be ~1/3000/mo or 1/250/yr which isn't high but isn't completely reassuring (particularly considering that's before Delta).
As far as the frequency of long covid among breakthrough infections, the only thing I've seen with hard numbers is this (which has a tiny sample size) which reports 19%: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/07/28/1021888033/breakthrough-infections-may-cause-long-covid-symptoms-small-study-suggests
But other stories suggest that risk is greatly reduced, without providing any specifics. I'm hoping that we'll see better data on that in the next couple of months: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/can-vaccinated-people-get-long-covid-doctors-say-risk-very-n1273970
Cite for that particular stat:
https://www.nbcnews.com/specials/data-shows-how-rare-severe-breakthrough-covid-infections-are/index.html
Data collected Jan-July 2021, 34 US states, by Kaiser, I think. So, pre-Delta, but the reporting on Delta and vaccine escape has been awful.
The general thing about Delta is that it replicates better in nose and throat than prior strains. Your immune response won't clear that particularly well, but it will keep it from getting to be the serious systemic infection that causes hospitalization or death. If you're looking at nasal swabs for diagnosis, your numbers are going to make vaccines look less effective at preventing infection. But a vaccine isn't a barrier. The reliable numbers I am seeing are 88-93% efficacy against Delta - the low numbers are either math errors (the Israeli study that originally reported 64%) or continuous monitoring regardless of symptoms.
There are two small studies that I have seen with real numbers for long COVID, one of which NickS is referencing. It seems reasonable that these will bear out at least somewhat, but it's just not possible to say at this point.
That said, I am no mathematician or statistician, but I don't think the odds math works like that. Putting in 1/3000 risk into the cumulative incidence rate calculator gets me odds of 4/1000 of infection. Same if you use "survival" odds (so each month, you have 2999/3000 odds of not getting covid, take to the 12th power, and you have 99.6% odds.
https://sphweb.bumc.bu.edu/otlt/mph-modules/ep/ep713_diseasefrequency/ep713_diseasefrequency_print.html
85: Do you think that's due to (1.) slight differences in the mRNA (2.) higher dose - 100mcg vs 30 mcg or (3.) standard interval is a week longer in the US? I'd be really curious to see what it would look like if everybody did a six-week interval between the 2 doses.
87.last: Math looks good to me, but 10% odds of infection is the value I'm not sure is realistic. Seems pretty high to me unless you're thinking in years. Is UK at 10% overall, 20 months in? What might the distribution look like across demographics? I just don't know. And in general, planes seem pretty OK, airports much less so. Indoor, unmasked, low vaccination rate gatherings continue to be the most risky.
I keep saying I'm fairly risk-averse on this, but we're varying our response based on local caseload and our best guess at vaccination status of folks around us. AJ's traveling on a plane for fun next week. We're not doing restaurants again, still going to the gym (back to masks there). My work and his just re-established their mask mandates, mostly because sitewide vax rates are only about 50%, as far as we can gather. No vax mandates yet.
95: I can't really say, honestly. I would guess it's (2), but it's really, really not my area of expertise. I'm also not entirely sure the comparison of efficacy is apples-to-apples in design and was mostly kidding since the Pfizer one seems to have become the most high status.
The general thing about Delta is that it replicates better in nose and throat than prior strains.
That's why I'm always careful to let people see me keeping my nose clean when I'm in public.
92: Yes, the problem is that the lines run through households. My mom's funeral was fortunately at what turned out to be about the safest time. We did ask people wear masks if not vaccinated, but there's really no way to have grilled everybody.
And if you don't grill them fast enough the convection might just disperse the particles faster than the heat kills them.
Anyway, I'm embracing the excuse not to see any relatives for another couple of years at least.
In other news, I take it back, The Wire is absolutely a Great American Telenovela, though S5 is a bit of a shitshow. S2-3 the best for my money.
96: Huh, I was thinking it was probably much too low (and FWIW there have been about 6 million reported cases total in 68 million population here, so just under 10% over the entire time frame). That was meant to be in the context of a single, extremely risky event where I'm certain to be exposed, of the sort that most(?) people have done their best to avoid throughout the pandemic but was normal before hand. We've heard of pre-vaccine house parties where everybody walks away infected, and the Provincetown outbreak had a higher rate among vaccinated people than that (over 900 infected, I'm having trouble finding numbers on how many people were there but I had seen numbers around 5,000 thrown around; there are confounding factors both ways). My admittedly fallacious reasoning is that any statistic that takes into account a large population's risk-adverse behavior is not particularly useful for me judging when it's safe to engage in additional risky behavior, as the low-risky-behavior people just increase the denominator without telling me anything about actual risk from the virus. If I could have a good idea on what the plausible worst case risk is, then that gives a ceiling for risk; it might be possible to take that number and then apply the risk reduction from various ameliorating effects.
The fallacious bit coming in that all the stats we're using, including stats about the effective of vaccine, have rolled up in them a confusing jumble of people moderating their behavior and those who aren't, so they're all a weighted average of effectiveness relative to the entire population's behaviors. So that's a bit of a lost cause. And anyway I admit it's not even sure how to interpret these effectiveness probabilities--they've had to be over some time frame, not relative to infective events (which would be quite hard to quantify), right? Not to say that reactions to potential infection events are independent.
We have changed our behaviors a bit: we've started taking the tube for fun again, and will take an interurban train in a few weeks. But we're sticking to outside dining.
Anyway, thanks for going over this. I appreciate having the perspective of someone who thinks about stuff close to this professionally.
My comments didn't post, but I'm hoping that the boosters we get once the world has been vaccinated are nasal sprays or oral vaccines that will give mucosal immunity.
102: would love to know how to reach those people. My uncle is an "I got mine conservative", so I'm sure he's vaccinated, but because of his beliefs and his not being a real stand-up caring kind of guy, I don't have any plans to visit him any time soon.
102: All those Friday afternoon journal clubs analyzing hazard rations and clinical trial data are paying off. Thanks for the window into how other smart, numerate folks are analyzing risk. I'd say that the P'town data (which are great, the community was awesome and did everyone a huge favor by being so open about contacts, etc.) are non-representative. I'd call it a stress test of sorts. Most people attended multiple events, indoors, in extremely close proximity. About half the infections were symptomatic (I think long COVID stats are symptomatic only since the questions ask about persistence of symptoms but am not sure). So, you're looking at 274 symptomatic cases, which isn't a crazy amount of breakthrough given the number of close contacts. Here are some comments about how the risk may be non-representative.
https://twitter.com/peterstaley/status/1421215604481142785?lang=en
Here's an excellent version of risk March 1-July 12 (so maybe 2 months of Delta):
All Delta here in July.
— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) August 1, 2021
The 8:1 odds are pretty good. pic.twitter.com/XU0T7hUXB2
Re: efficacy data, remember the trial participants for initial efficacy data were in identical conditions, double-blinded. The efficacy is not over a specific time interval. Vaccinated people are always 98% (or 95% or 88%) less likely to get COVID when all other variables are constant. So, you could run the same study in an environment with masks and distance and get an overall lower incidence rate, but the same efficacy. You could run it where no one masks and no one distances and have a higher incidence rate (so you'll see more breakthrough cases in terms of numbers) but maintain efficacy.
The data on the efficacy vs delta variant requires some differences, but here's what one study did:
We used two approaches to estimate the effect of vaccination on the delta variant. First, we used a test-negative case-control design to estimate vaccine effectiveness against symptomatic disease caused by the delta variant, as compared with the alpha variant, over the period that the delta variant has been circulating. This approach has been described in detail elsewhere.10 In brief, we compared vaccination status in persons with symptomatic Covid-19 with vaccination status in persons who reported symptoms but had a negative test. This approach helps to control for biases related to health-seeking behavior, access to testing, and case ascertainment.
I'm not really very worried as a vaccinated person in a household that is all vaccinated. But I have gone back to wearing a mask indoors except in my own house or if I'm swimming. The only symptom of minor-covid that I don't usually have anyway is loss of taste/smell. I could be sick and not know it pretty easily.
I'm wondering about Sturgis because lots of bikers look like bears, but I'm guessing there's less vaccination.
I took a tube across London in the Rush hour, or what would have been the rush hour, last week, and there were maybe twenty seats free in the carriage. It was so open I took a photograph to remind myself. Two years ago we'd all have been standing crammed in each others' armpits. The trains are similarly empty. I'm fairly confident about risk here.
Went to bed and woke up with what feels like a sore tonsil and a headache on that side of my head. Lateral flow was negative, for whatever that's worth. Yay hypochondria. But we also took the Underground; on the one hand, a great place to get infected (would guess 20-30% of people unmasked, mostly on the younger side), covid or otherwise, on the other, I've only taken it a few times this year and I'm probably not acclimated to the gross air and pressure changes.
104: I was most concerned about how delta efficacy is determined. (But thanks for reminding me that previous numbers were from randomized controlled trials; I did't quite understand that process, and that's obviously quite important.) I think I see now why time-frame doesn't matter, thank you. My assumption was that, for determining efficacy in the non-RCT case, vaccinated people would be more careful than unvaccinated (but less careful than they had been *before* they were vaccinated), but I don't yet understand why that testing procedure would overestimate efficiency if the other way held. But I'll leave that for me to puzzle out when I've had more coffee.
So I think I'm back to where I was with the formula I was using above: that was meant to be my risk assuming I've been exposed, where exposure is coming into contact with sufficient viral load that it's up to my immune system to sort it out--treating this as a binary is an oversimplification, but not doing so seems too difficult, and to some degree that can be modeled by controlling the parameters for exposure. But then exposure can be handled on an event level, e.g. if there's two exposure events A and B, they can be treated as independent giving probability of exposure of 1-(1-P(A))*(1-P(B)). So it's (cumulative probability of exposure)*(base immunity)*(1 - vaccine effectiveness)*(relative long covid risk). And maybe that base immunity term isn't useful because whatever data I can get for risk of exposure has that as an implicit factor anyway? That might be why we looked at it so differently. Nobody's doing a study where they blow air with viral particles up unvaccinated people's noses. (I hope.)
Completely agree that Provincetown is non-representative, only brought it up as an extreme event to get a better feel for the order of magnitude of that base immunity term that's probably not helpful anyway. And thanks for clarifying that the relative long covid risk is probably relative to symptomatic infections; that makes me feel a lot better, actually.
105: That seems like a good reason to do regular testing.
107: Not my experience riding the tube at all. The lines I took (Victoria and Central this weekend, Piccadilly and Northern last) were not crammed-in-armpits tight but I think all but one of the six or seven rides we took were standing room only (the one exception was on an end carriage). Oxford Street Station's platform was completely packed. Most Inner London Boroughs have only 40-50% of adults fully vaccinated. 30-40% of adults are completely unvaccinated.
108.last isn't a thing here. At least not an encouraged thing. I'd get tested if I had a fever or something more definite.
109: how very strange. I was riding the Victoria Line out of Kings Cross at about 5:30 on a Thursday evening. Is there something no one's telling me about my breath?
I think COVID is over because Pokemon Go has ended the thing where you don't need to be right there to spin a Pokestop.
111: This was on Friday and Saturday evenings, so it's probably a weekend thing, with most office workers still mostly WFH. Including my wife, who's quite miffed about the Pokemon changes. It was mostly a young crowd on the trains.
We did see the Marble Arch Mound; tremendously uninspiring. I didn't realize it isn't even an actual mound, it's just scaffolding. It's like the Aggro Crag (a digram that is surely an Unfogged hapax legomenon).
I have to go to the Netherlands for a few days at the end on the month. I've been thinking I'd rent a car, rather than ride trains, to minimize exposure. I haven't priced it yet -- did the same crazy shit go on with European rental cars as US cars?
108.4 That is logical, but is it correct (probably, but not certain). I can't read past the paywall, but it looks like this says that 32% of people with long covid symptoms had no or minimal symptoms initially: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/08/health/long-covid-asymptomatic.html
[Side note, Athena Scalzi is an interesting example of someone with minimal symptoms initially and long term effects: https://whatever.scalzi.com/2021/04/28/corona-leaves-a-bad-aftertaste/ ]
116.last: Was there any update to Athena's taste-smell Covid side-effect? Better? Same? Worse? (I ask because I couldn't find anything on Scalzi's blog.) I know several people who had a similar side-effect but it was short-term for them: a month or so in both cases.
117: Not that I am aware of. I hope it's improved.
Well hell, last night, drunk of course, I fell down in the shower and shattered some of the porcelain on the right side of a permanent bridge. Stupid me, I was fine having come back from the bar and decided I wasn't drunk enough so I poured myself way to much vodka.
My brother is starting a new career in IT and could really use help with his CV and any cover letters he'd write. Does anyone know of any reputable professional service for this?
116: To be clear, I just wanted to know what the intended measurement is: is 20% supposed to be the percentage of symptomatic infected who get long haul symptoms, or the percentage of all infected? Anyway, the underlying paper for that article is here. It's interesting. They rank no symptoms in the first ten days as the most important factor in increasing the chance of having long-haul covid. However, this is some fancy factor analysis; "importance" is a unit-less ratio of eigenvalues (I guess?) and I have no intuition on various magnitudes it can take, or even if magnitudes matter absolutely or only relatively.
Actually, this might give enough information to get an idea of the probability of long covid given infection regardless of symptoms. The study says "roughly 32% of those reporting symptoms at day 61+ in our study were initially asymptomatic at the time of SARS-CoV-2 testing." It also (pretty sure I'm reading this right) says "Figure 1 shows distribution of individuals reporting symptoms at days 0-10; approximately 68% of the total group exhibited symptoms, with 32% being asymptomatic" from the wider N=1407 initial population, so I'm going to use that as the probability of symptomatic infection for now. Let's use the 20% number as the probability of long covid given symptoms, and for notational convenience all these probabilities are conditional on being infected:
P(longhaul) = P(longhaul|symptomatic)*P(symptomatic) + P(longhaul|asymptomatic)*P(asymptomatic)
P(longhaul) = P(longhaul|symptomatic)*P(symptomatic) + P(asymptomatic|longhaul)*P(longhaul) (Bayes)
P(longhaul) = P(longhaul|symptomatic)*P(symptomatic)/(1-P(asymptomatic|longhaul))
P(longhaul) = 0.2 * (1 - 0.32) / (1 - 0.32) = 0.2
...well, that's a very boring/convenient answer to my question. In their sample, the prevalence of asymptomatic long-haulers was exactly the same as the prevalence of asymptomatic infected, so 20% is the answer either way. That's a surprising conclusion. I should note that in their sample N=382 were long haulers, so 27% of the infected developed long covid.
(btw, the trick to defeat the NYT paywall is to pause it fairly quickly in loading. Sometimes it takes a few tries. I load it in an incognito window but haven't tested if that's necessary.)
115: If possible, rent a canal boat.
119: I don't even have a shower bridge.
Honestly, I need to redo the bathroom anyway.
It's a small bathroom. I just follow the wall until I get to where I'm going
A friend of mine who had covid last year says he feels like all the brain fog hasn't gone away. Infecting a generation of school children with something that could affect their cognitive abilities seems like a bad idea.
119: I assume that"s dental work. Sorry to hear it, Barry. Take care of yourself.
105 and 108: wish we had at-home lateral flow tests. I read something that with Delta breakthrough infections, they are noticing more sneezing as a symptom. At least according to UCSF. Many people probably chalk it up to allergies.
110: Mobes, you can get them, but they cost $25. I think that gets you 2 tests. Ellie and BinaxNOW.
I'm saving up for a new bathroom with a shower bridge.
61: The Blackadder of Blackadder Goes Forth is also very different from the medieval or Regency Blackadders. The earlier Blackadders are knights and courtiers with cunning Baldrick as their steward. Major Blackadder is a company-level infantry officer and Private Baldrick is a buck private. There are tens of thousands of Blackadders, millions of Baldricks.
BGF slightly awkwardly translates the feudal or aristocratic setting into modernity. Major Blackadder comes across like the realistic New Army company commander, either a prewar territorial or a wartime volunteer (the regulars having been killed or promoted), almost certainly a middle-class man who doesn't have and doesn't claim the earlier Blackadders' status. Part of the bite of BGF is that Captain Darling, who is younger and junior in rank but has a high status General Staff job because he's an upper-class twit, has the earlier Blackadders' social status and influence but he's an incompetent fool.
It makes more sense that Baldrick has been proletarianised or more accurately shoved down into rural poverty - he's still clearly a peasant, not an industrial worker - with the decline of high farming. But Blackadder's social history is harder. He makes a lot of sense as either a middle-class volunteer or maybe Orwell's "service middle class", the very poorest of those who send their kids for posh education, but this doesn't work with the earlier Blackadders' place at court. One way to retcon it would be that the earlier Blackadders are Major Blackadder's social aspirations, but the shows didn't appear and weren't created in that order.
In their sample, the prevalence of asymptomatic long-haulers was exactly the same as the prevalence of asymptomatic infected,
I don't think "asymptomatic long-haulers" exist. What long haul are they experiencing if they don't have symptoms? If they have symptoms they aren't asymptomatic. And seeing as the prodrome for COVID-19 is 2-4 days, everyone who is symptomatic was asymptomatic.
133: Sorry for the confusing shorthand, by that I meant people who tested positive, did not have any symptoms in days 1-10 but do have symptoms in day 61+, which make up 8.7% of their entire sample.
133: either they had antibody tests after an asymptomatic infection or their infection was super mild, but the sequelae have been terrible. Or, their symptoms have all been after the actual infection cleared.
Could that mean they got infected again?
Maybe, but BG's description is also how I was reading it (but I couldn't have expressed it so well). They don't explicitly discuss reinfection at all. The distributions of symptoms for 1-10 and 61+ days are quite different (contrast images 2 and 6 in the study), e.g. almost nobody has alopecia at first but ~5% of 61+ day people do.
136: The symptoms I've read about are things like dysautonomia, brain fog etc. Different from but similar to ME/CFS. Survivor Corps is a grassroots advocacy organization trying work with academics to study it.
There's some weird stuff, like about 1/3 seem to improve after getting vaccinated. I think the Atlantic had an article in March.
This crossed my feed today. Helena was arguing in 1887 with Anaconda about which should be the capital. Helena had stats:
Just how drunk was the average Helena resident anyway?
"Ladies who nurse their own babies" is an interesting indicator of poshness. And correlates with "Ladies who can kick the chandelier".
I am not sure the link in 140 was entirely serious or really serious at all - "patches on conscience" and "skeletons in closet"?
I also wondered about "high fives". Isn't that an anachronism? I thought the high five was invented in living memory by some particular basketball player.
It was slang for a sex act before that.
As was "ladies who rip other ladies up the back."
Of course it wasn't serious. But it's still illuminating about class markers at the time.
The time at which you had "dinner" was a reliable class marker in my town a century later.
