Thread by @enn_nafnlaus

With a mild Saturday decline to 37578, UK doubling times drop down to 39,5d, just over a month. Hospitalization and mortality trends continue their unending upslope.

In self-inflicted chaos news, the JCVI's recommendation against vaccinating 12-15 year olds - a decision that...

sets them apart from expert groups around the world - has now gotten a rebuke from a member of SAGE, the government's *other* pandemic advisory group. While JCVI portrayed *vaccination* as disrupting schools, Sage's Prof. Edmunds warns COVID will do that:

standard.co.uk/news/uk/covid-…

Johnson looks to plan to push ahead on vaccinations for 12-15yos regardless of the JCVI's statement, but will now face more parliamentary opposition. In a twist, JCVI's Prof. Harden is publicly saying that parents should be given an option to vaccinate:

theguardian.com/world/2021/sep…

What's the latest science on how serious acute infection is in hospitalized children (~1% of child cases)? CDC to the rescue with a new paper:

cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/7…

Alpha: 26,6% ICU, 6,1% need ventilation, 0,7% fatal
Delta: 23,2% ICU, 9,8% need ventilation, 1,8% fatal

The ventilation and mortality numbers, while higher for Delta, lacked statistical significance due to an insufficient number of cases. In age groups where vaccines were available, there was a 10x greater risk of hospitalization among the unvaccinated.

In adults, the...

... severity difference between variants is very much statistically significant. A new study from Denmark finds a 2,83x higher risk of hospitalization from Delta vs. Alpha

thelancet.com/journals/lanin…

The greatest difference is in young people vs. old (3,26x vs 1,39x) and in ...

unvaccinated people vs. fully vaccinated (3,01x vs. 1,25x)

Back to the news, in keeping with the plans to try to keep deaths below 1k per week, the UK is readying to impose "vaccine passports" on sports, conferences & concerts (facing Tory opposition):

dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9…

Across the ocean, there are anecdotal reports of hospitals in rural Oklahoma being severely backed up by ivermectin poisoning cases, even delaying beds for gunshot victims.

yahoo.com/news/oklahomas…

At the federal level, the debate over boosters is still in flux. The US seems...

to mass-utilize boosters where there's insufficient data on people who've received them - bulk data which at this point only exists for Pfizer. Some are arguing that only Pfizer recipients should get boosters initially, and perhaps only subsets.

nytimes.com/2021/09/03/us/…

Former world champion boxer, 48 year old Oscar de la Hoya, faced a knockout blow from COVID - announcing recently that he's been hospitalized and will be forced to miss his planned comback next weekend.

https://twitter.com/OscarDeLaHoya/status/1433857153433944069

In research news: Sinovac continues to be terrible, but esp. in old people.

arca.fiocruz.br/bitstream/icic…

Hospitalization protection:
80-89yo: AZ = 91,2%; Sinovac = 67,3%
90+yo: AZ = 70,5%; Sinovac = 35,4%

While loss of smell is a hallmark of COVID, not much attention gets paid to parosmia and phantosmia post-recovery, where smells become altered or hallucinated. A new study parosmia in 47% and phantosmia in 25% of long-term afflicted patients.

medrxiv.org/content/10.110…

Probably not a shock, but SARS-CoV-2 infection - after controlling for risk factors - is a risk factor for worsening kidney function, risk factors for new significant decline in kidney function ranging from 1,25 to 2,96x vs controls.

jasn.asnjournals.org/content/early/…

Backing away from research for a second, in response to video of antivax protesters trying to break into a vaccination centre in the UK:

https://twitter.com/NHSMillion/status/1433792953865183235

A clever Twitter user shot back:

https://twitter.com/Jod1e1992/status/1433794772754440192

Lastly - and I should have done this ages ago - but for all of the people who say "Other coronaviruses are colds, therefore SARS-CoV-2 isn't serious": here's the family tree of both Coronaviridae and Picornaviridae (which contains Rhinoviruses, the largest source of colds)

It should be noted that SARS-CoV-2 is on a branch of Coronaviridae that in humans is only associated with severe disease. Picornaviridae shows what a massive grab bag a virus family can be (symptoms, seriousness), with rhinoviruses even closely related to polioviruses.