The science guy is back, Covid, it just won’t go away! Several communities, and nations are reaching vaccination levels that were thought to bring herd immunity, but the goalpost keeps moving for the herd. What is going on? I can’t tell you, but I can show you raw statistics, and let you draw your own conclusions. Just a few questions entered my head in the past weeks. 1) Why are children so immune to Covid? If 70% of adults are vaccinated, and no one under 12 is, why isn’t there a boom in covid (even non severe) rates in the youngest of people? 2) What is the role of the thymus gland with Covid? It is a large gland in children. It is often larger than the heart. In the elderly it is the size of a teaspoon. Its main function is to ward off infection, it is the key organ in your immune system, but no one is talking about it. Finally, 3) I am seeing a strange correlation between vaccinations and Delta variant cases. This will take a while to elaborate and include many charts. But first four headlines that caught my eye. They are all out of Israel. They are in the habit of reporting news, facts, and statistics then stopping there. Imagine that!
- What is clear is that “breakthrough” cases are not the rare events the term implies. As of 15 August, 514 Israelis were hospitalized with severe or critical COVID-19, a 31% increase from just 4 days earlier. Of the 514, 59% were fully vaccinated. Of the vaccinated, 87% were 60 or older. “There are so many breakthrough infections that they dominate and most of the hospitalized patients are actually vaccinated,” says Uri Shalit, a bioinformatician at the Israel Institute of Technology (Technion) who has consulted on COVID-19 for the government. 1
- Eighty-eight percent of participants in the survey said that in the days after receiving the third shot, they felt “similar or better” to how they felt after the second shot. Thirty-one percent reported some side effect, the most common being soreness at the injection site. About 0.4% said they suffered from difficulty breathing, and 1% said they sought medical treatment due to one or more side effect. 2
My response, 1% sought medical attention! 70 million people are over 55 in USA, 1% of that is 700,000. Wouldn’t that overwhelm hospitals if that sort of reaction is in the USA for just booster shots? Is it worth it if you are healthy in that demographic?
On the brighter side
- COVID: 90% of patients treated with new Israeli drug discharged in 5 days The Phase II trial for an Israeli COVID drug saw some 29 out of 30 patients, moderate to serious, recover within days. 3 As a footnote to this story, the drug was tested in Greece due to a lack of serious patients in Israel. A new outbreak is over running Israeli hospitals, and the drug has been approved for larger scale usage.
- Israeli scientist says COVID-19 could be treated for under $1/day. Double-blind study shows ivermectin reduces disease’s duration and infectiousness • FDA and WHO caution against its use4
Some charts – Vaccination rates of several countries – from 5 continents, all with good vaccination rates. NOTE THE LATE START FROM URAGUAY
Here is what I see. US, UK, Israel all started mass vaccinations in January. All three rapidly declined in cases. Morocco, and Uaraguay started much later, during the time of Delta. Uraguay then had a massive spike which has thankfully subsided. Israel, US, UK, are the vaccine effectiveness wearing off? Are they recommending booster shots? That is what I am seeing.
Now say I pick a country from each continent with low vaccination rates, lets see if there were spikes there? Again, just two charts side by side.
So, what do I see? Slightly to non-exsistant vaccinatinated countries don’t have spikes? Bulgaria was the least vaccinated country in Europe. Their spike coincided with their vaccine rollout. Similar to Morocco, (one of the most vaccinated African countries with a large population). That 500 cases per milliion, is still small relative to their european neighbors that boast high vaccination rates. Just look on the previous chart.
Now to test my hypothisis. I am going to pick 6 ‘second’ world countries at random. Countries that I suspect have moderte vaccination rates, and a slower roll-out. We shall see if they have spikes just as they started getting vaccinated. This is a legitimate test. I have not looked at the data yet. I am doing this in real time (as a news letter gets). The countries I am picking – Mexico, Chile, Greece, South Africa, Jordan, and Philipines. Some are tourists countries, all large populations, and scattered throughout the world. I do not recall any major headlines about these countries and Covid. So lets make a chart.
So what do I see? Well I expected South Africa to have a higher vaccination rate. I see Jordan was definitely on the downward trend as they started a roll-out, but 20% still is not too much. Looking at Chile, they rolled out in February, and just recently made it through their curve. Greece is having their most cases right now despite a fair vaccination rate. The Philipines have never had a spike, but never really had a roll-out, but is it starting? Mexico, a steady increase in vaccinations, matches a steady increase in cases. My final conclusion, the very first chart with 1st world countries. The cases per million are still higher than these second world countries.
So did I prove anything? I think I laid out a case that is worthy to follow-up on in forthcoming weeks. I might be onto a statistacal coorelation. I did this in an hour. I am an engineer, and scientist. I am not in medicine. I feel that I enlighted some. Imagine what real medical professionals could do working their field!
Leave a Reply