[SSilver2k2]

For a brief while after getting vaccinated, before Delta and Omicron, my friends, coworkers, and I felt we were out of the woods. We are actively going out together to our favorite hangouts and being normal. I didn't think we would need this site.

Finding out that my Governor let a million tests expire rather than give them out, make me happy this site is available. I'm glad I can rely on the federal government to fix what my state government is ruining.

[nradov]

You're out of the woods. If you're vaccinated then unless you have some high risk condition your real risk is extremely low.

More tests aren't going to solve anything. At best they might slow the spread down only slightly. In the long run everyone will be exposed regardless of whether they go to their favorite hangouts or not. That is our reality.

https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/vinay-prasad/94646

[hooande]

> In the long run everyone will be exposed regardless of whether they go to their favorite hangouts or not. That is our reality.

This can be said of every cold and flu season. Yet people still go out of their way to avoid those who are sick, and people who have symptoms stay home. You probably wouldn't want someone with the flu to cough in your face, even though the symptoms are mild and the mortality is low.

covid is much more infectious than the flu. it makes sense to test and quarantine if you are positive.

[clairity]

> "If you're vaccinated... your real risk is extremely low."

in the interest of precision: the risk of serious sickness/death is low for anyone without comorbidities (like age) regardless of vaccination status; vaccination just makes a small chance smaller, with the diminishing returns that that implies.

vaccination really matters for anyone with comorbidities (age, obesity, hypertension, diabetes, autoimmune diseases, etc.), where risk reduction is significant (whole percentages to fractional ones).

totally agree that testing doesn't change long-run exposure, especially given omicron. the big win for testing though, is knowing how many folks have natural immunity (with or without synthetic immunity), which likely offers broader spectrum immunological memory, imbuing a more durable herd immunity into the future. also, tests might help at the margin for those who have comorbidities, to perhaps allow the pursuit of treatments like monoclonal antibodies earlier.

[nradov]

The government is distributing antigen tests. They don't directly indicate anything about natural immunity, although of course most patients who recover from infection will retain a significant level of cellular immunity.

Doctors don't prescribe monoclonal antibodies or other anti-viral drugs based on a home test. That usually requires a clinical test, as well as some significant symptoms or risk factors.

[clairity]

yes, i wasn't trying to imply that monoclonals would be prescribed based on a home test, just that testing early would provide someone the opportunity to get more aggressive treatments if need be during the critical window of effectiveness.

not sure why the tests being antigen-based matters with regard to indicating natural/cellular immunity, since a positive test result still implies a covid infection in the recent past, which implies a conferral of natural immunity?

[wrycoder]

A quick positive test could get you a Paxlovid prescription, while it's still early enough in the course of infection to have maximal benefit.

[nradov]

Physicians will generally not prescribe Paxlovid based on a home test, they want to see the results of a real clinical test. And Paxlovid supplies are very limited; it will typically only be given to symptomatic patients in high risk groups.

[wonnage]

It still sucks to get Covid, based on my small sample size of a few breakthrough infected friends even "mild" omicron is on par with a bad flu. It's also about 10x as contagious. Most people don't want to infect all their friends if they can help it, so they test.

Also we all have friends and family members with high-risk conditions and don't want to give it to them either.

[nradov]

I understand that people don't want to get infected, but that doesn't change the reality that everyone will be exposed.

https://www.npr.org/2022/01/12/1072548446/public-health-expe...

The virus isn't going away. No one will be able to avoid it without living as a hermit. The CDC estimated that about 44% of Americans had already been infected as of October 2021 and with the more contagious Omicron variant now circulating we're probably well over 50%.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd...

Additional home testing is largely a feel-good measure. It might ease some people's anxiety but won't significantly change the course of the pandemic.

[SSilver2k2]

I have an under 5 year old offspring that isn't eligible to get the shot yet. Once he gets them this year I will definitely be breathing easier.

[nradov]

Fortunately the CDC data shows that the risk to young children is very low. Probably less than other common viruses like RSV.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd...

https://emergency.cdc.gov/han/2021/han00443.asp

[frereubu]

If it's any consolation it's doing the rounds in my 7-year-old's class and none of them have had much worse than feeling a bit achy with a bit of a temperature. They've all had much worse from the usual bugs that do the rounds at school. Of course this is anecdata, and most people have family or friends who are vulnerable and need to be protected, but if it's just about your child then it's very unlikely to be a problem if they have no underlying conditions.

[hammock]

>If it's any consolation it's doing the rounds in my 7-year-old's class and none of them have had much worse than feeling a bit achy with a bit of a temperature. They've all had much worse from the usual bugs that do the rounds at school. Of course this is anecdata

You aren't crazy. Here's some actual data from the CDC: a child is at least 25 times less likely to be covid hospitalized than an adult under age 50, and 74 times less likely than an someone over age 50. Important caveat that this data is pre-omicron. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6915e3.htm

>most people have family or friends who are vulnerable and need to be protected

Couldn't agree more.

[acdha]

Are these kids vaccinated? One of the challenges we have now is making sure to make sure to correct for that since vaccination's protection against severe outcomes has been quite durable even in the face of Omicron's improved evasion.

[hammock]

>vaccination's protection against severe outcomes has been quite durable even in the face of Omicron's improved evasion.

Very interested if you have a source for this claim, as I have been looking for one.

[acdha]

The data is still incomplete since hospitalization is a lagging indicator but here's some data from the UK earlier today. See Table 2:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

44% reduction after 6 months is not great but that's still significantly better than under 20% for preventing symptomatic cases which you have for a 2 dose vaccinated person facing Omicron half a year later.

[frereubu]

No, none of them are vaccinated.

[JohnTHaller]

For the curious, Florida Gov Desantis revealed they'd let 800,000 to 1 million tests expire sitting in a warehouse. The federal govt granted an exception and they're being sent out to be used at testing sites. These aren't at-home tests.

[jjcon]

Wouldn't over-ordering be better than under ordering?

[toomuchtodo]

They weren't over ordered. The evidence strongly supports that they were purposely held back by the DeSantis administration and the Florida Department of Health while pushing monoclonal antibodies [2].

> Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said last week that the tests weren't distributed because of "low demand." [1]

> Florida residents have also described months of difficulty getting tests, with long lines and few testing appointment available. [1]

I haven't filed the relevant FOIA requests myself, but Florida open government and transparency laws are fairly robust for those who are inquiring in this specific matter.

[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-tests-expired-florida-fda...

[2] https://www.palmbeachpost.com/story/news/coronavirus/2022/01...

[dillondoyle]

There's also a lot of evidence desantis 'hacked' test result reporting and nursing home deaths too.

It's more complicated than a headline, but it's a really bad look to raid someone who was trying to get info out - even if their goal was political it should have been public information and that just intimidates future whistleblowers.

https://www.sun-sentinel.com/opinion/editorials/fl-op-edit-r...

https://wusfnews.wusf.usf.edu/health-news-florida/2021-07-29...

[throw_nbvc1234]

How would they know to use the antibodies if they didn't test people first? The [2] article you linked refer to vaccines not tests. I think you're missing something in your explanation here.

[JohnTHaller]

Desantis et al have been actively discouraging testing of asymptomatic people with confirmed exposures.

[hammock]

>For a brief while after getting vaccinated, before Delta and Omicron, my friends, coworkers, and I felt we were out of the woods. We are actively going out together to our favorite hangouts and being normal. I didn't think we would need this site.

You seem to be describing what journalist Alex Berenson has coined the "happy vaccine valley":

>the three-to four-month period following the second dose when antibodies are high enough that the vaccines actually appear to work. (For those of you keeping score at home, that’s two weeks of negative efficacy after the first shot, a month of maybe 50% efficacy, three months of near-complete protection, and then a rapid fall to what looks like 0% protection within three months. https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/so-you-understand-whats-...

Of course that description was written in Sept 2021 based on pre-Omicron data, and the picture is different now. The latest data: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.07.22268919v...

See Figures 1 and 2 above. This study from California in December shows much lower protection from the current vaccines against Omicron compared to Delta: 0% effectiveness of a 2-dose regimen at 6+ months, and 49% effectiveness of a 3-dose regimen at ~2+ months.

[acdha]

Alex Berenson is not a journalist but a conspiracy theorist with no relevant training or experience. He is not a good source of advice on vaccination.

The Kaiser-Permanente study you linked is by actual medical experts and it paints a more nuanced perspective which is why it contradicts his claims — for example, they have the two dose effectiveness at preventing infection by Delta over 50% even a year out.

Most importantly, and the main reason I'm replying to this, is that it's _really_ important to also remember that there are two reasons to get vaccinated. One is to prevent infection entirely (largely a product of neutralizing antibodies, which fade relatively quickly) but the other is to lower the severity of an infection (a product of T cells, which is longer lasting) and the data continues to show that vaccines remain highly effective considerably longer than 3 months:

https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2022/01/studies-...

Promoting the voices of antivaxers like Alex Berenson is the single most effective way to prolong the pandemic since the thing which will allow us to return to normal will be high levels of vaccination reducing the severity of an infection to manageable levels.

[hammock]

Berenson did a turn on the pharmaceutical and healthcare beat at the New York Times, that has to count for something. However I will remember to censor myself better in the future. bows reverently to a shrine of the approved narrative

Thanks for at least looking at the data and not dismissing it out of hand.

The article you link above to support vaccine effectiveness refers to three studies, all of which are pre-Omicron (the first looks at Jul '21 to Oct '21, the second specifically at Alpha and Delta variants, and the third from Dec '20 to Sep '21). A key point of my comment was do show that, with the advent of Omicron, the playing field has changed substantially, which your data do not address - but my data did.

I didn't and wasn't telling people not to get vaccinated. I believe, though, that there is a world where we can simultaneously talk about how the vaccine doesn't work as well as it should or could, and look to better solutions, including a new or improved vaccine.

[acdha]

> Berenson did a turn on the pharmaceutical and healthcare beat at the New York Times, that has to count for something.

Not really, he was a business reporter with no medical training — he came to the NYT from The Street, and after he left to become a novelist his only subsequent non-fiction (kind of) work was a book alleging that cannabis usage causes psychosis, which got him considerable criticism from actual scientists.

> However I will remember to censor myself better in the future. bows reverently to a shrine of the approved narrative

It's not censorship to suggest being less credulous and finding people who know what they're talking about to get advice from. It's not hard to find scientists who disagree with each other — it's a defining characteristic! — but he's not a scientist or even amplifying a significant group of scientists, and the ones who mention him do so to say that he's dangerously wrong. The most obvious giveaway is that he started with a paranoid conclusion rather than a falsifiable theory and when whatever he's saying is debunked he switches to something else which conveniently still supports the same conclusion. Even Fox News backed away from giving him a pulpit!

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/04/pandemics-...

[nradov]

Measuring vaccine effectiveness in terms of protection against infection (as in the article you linked) is pointless. We expect almost everyone to get infected. What actually matters is protection against severe symptoms, and even with the Omicron variant the vaccines are still pretty good at that.

https://www.npr.org/2022/01/12/1072548446/public-health-expe...

[hammock]

I was responding to a specific comment, which seemed to be referring to rising case counts. I agree it's likely that almost everyone will get infected, many have been saying this for two years.

As for "what actually matters," that entirely depends on the problem you are trying to solve, the solutions you are putting on the table, and the human value systems at play.

Omicron has been strikingly mild, regardless of vaccination status. A new study of over 52,000 infected found "zero cases with Omicron variant infection received mechanical ventilation." https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.11.22269045v...

[drocer88]

From the paper: Conclusions: VE of 3 mRNA-1273 doses against infection with delta was high and durable, but VE against omicron infection was lower. VE against omicron infection was particularly low among immunocompromised individuals. No 3-dose recipients were hospitalized for COVID-19.

[djanogo]

Did people who wanted to get vaccinated not find doses in stock?, just because tests in some warehouse expired doesn't mean they were hidden to stop their usage.