Weekly Crystallizations #070
Weekly sensemaking update
Hello friends,
Welcome to a new edition of Weekly Crystallizations, a weekly newsletter where I highlight tweets from people making sense of what’s going on in the world today!
In this week’s edition:
Omicron preferentially infects the vaccinated?
COVID risks are exaggerated
Higher risk of myocarditis after 2 jabs, than from COVID
Hypothesis: The Omicron wave will be mild
Epistemic status: Partially crystallized
The picture emerging from Omicron continues to be one of less severe disease than Delta, but this is partly due to the existing immunity in the population. @roby_bhatt shares a first estimate of reduced intrinsic severity: 25%.
Here’s an overall estimate of reduced severity from the UK:
Does natural immunity from Delta protect one against Omicron? Professor Balloux Francois believes it’s likely Omicron will evade neutralizing antibodies, but not T-cell immunity. Which means you’ll get infected, but you’ll be protected against severe disease.
One reason there may be reduced intrinsic severity is that Omicron is showing a reduced ability to infect the lungs when compared to Delta.
More data from Denmark showing a stark divergence between cases and hospitalizations.
Hypothesis: Politicians and academics exaggerated the risks of COVID-19
Epistemic status: Crystallized
Professor Norman Fenton comments on footage showing US parademics refusing to enter a hospital to attend to a man suffering a heart attack because of fear of COVID or fear of reprisal for breaking COVID rules.
A new meta-analysis by Stanford professor John P.A. Ionnidis came out estimating the Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) for COVID-19.
I’d like to compare these figures to influenza figures, but those are hard to come by. One estimate using official data from Germany puts the IFR across all ages at 0.27%. Which would mean that COVID is less deadly than the flu if you’re below 40. Note that the IFR will also have dropped due to the vaccines offering some protection against severe disease.
Hypothesis: Higher risk of myocarditis from mRNA vaccines than COVID-19 for men <40
Epistemic status: Partially crystallized
An addendum to a recent Nature Medicine study shows that dose 2 and 3 of Pfizer and dose 1 and 2 of Moderna are associated with a higher risk of myocarditis for men <40 than from COVID-19 itself.
Hypothesis: Spike vaccines are causing deaths that are not linked to the vaccines
Epistemic status: Partially crystallized
I’ve upgraded this hypothesis from “Not crystallized” to “Partially crystallized”. I still don’t know what to make of this, but this signal has been too pronounced and too consistent to ignore. And I haven’t heard any plausible hypotheses other than that this has something to do with the vaccines.
3 more football/soccer players die due to apparent heart attacks.
@Cernovich asks why we’re not seeing analogous deaths within other sports? (Good question).
A NY times editor dies after getting his Moderna booster.
Although Ben M’s graph of excess deaths has neatly tracked COVID deaths during the pandemic (pointing at a conclusion where excess deaths can be explained by COVID deaths), recently there’s a divergence between the two. What’s more, it seems that the divergence coincides with the uptick in boosters.
I don’t know what to make of this yet.
Theme: Ivermectin
A Nature review article came out covering the possible mechanisms of action of ivermectin against SARS-CoV-2. Ivermectin has been caught in a political maelstrom ever since it was suggested as a possible early treatment / prophylactic for COVID-19, making it near-impossible to ascertain whether there’s any clinical effectiveness to the drug. I can’t comment on the contents on this article, but the fact this was published in a top tier journal such as Nature suggests to me the discussion among reputable scientists has not yet settled.
Hypothesis: Omicron preferentially infects the vaccinated
Epistemic status: Not crystallized
There are some early signals showing that the vaccinated are getting infected at higher rates than the unvaccinated. This might be due to COVID restrictions which allow freedom of movement for the vaccinated, but not the unvaccinated, even though both may get infected and infect others.
@Covid19Crusher shares a screenshot from Ontario, Canada, showing the vaccinated getting infected at higher rates than the unvaccinated.
Good thing he took a screenshot, because the Ontario data portal subsequently mysteriously went offline.
Study out of Denmark showing negative effectiveness against Omicron.
El Gato Malo makes a correction to his independent analysis of Danish data, and finds even worse Vaccine Effectiveness (against infection) against Omicron.
Anecdotal reports from India.
More anecdotal evidence.
Theme: Resistance
Theme: Novavax
A new vaccine, Novavax, has been granted emergency authorization.
Here’s a short video on how it works.
I doubt it will have a significant impact on vaccination rates though.
Misc COVID
I reported on Michael A Osborne, a machine learning professor and amateur runner, last year as he reported suffering from long COVID. I shared it as an example of healthy, fit people getting long COVID. He seems now to have recovered.
Major differences in COVID cases between Japan and South Korea, despite many variables being similar. A humble reminder that we often don’t understand what’s going on.
Hypothesis: The Merck pill will drive viral immune escape
Epistemic status: Not crystallized
It seems that some scientists are blowing the whistle on Merck’s new pill, whose mechanism of action is inducing mutations. It seems that perhaps that’s not such a great idea.
It might even have caused Omicron.
Hypothesis: Omicron was man-made or caused by man
Epistemic status: Not crystallized
Omicron’s mutational profile put it in a league of its own.
According to Yuri, some mutations resemble mutations that were last observed when SARS2 was adapted to mice in labs.
China
While the world is distracted, China quietly exerts its influence.
Crypto
All technology can be used for good and for bad. DAOs ares till nascent, but they’ve proven themselves as uncensorable funding and coordination machines.
There was as little spat in the crypto world between Twitter’s founder, Jack, who recently left the company, and Chris Dixon, a legendary Silicon Valley VC.
Airdops have dominated headlines in the crypto scene as of late. In an attempt to jump start the process of governing themselves, decentralized organizations have been “dropping” voting rights (in the form of tokens) to their users (often based on their activity on the platform).
Misc
