On 2020-06-21 12:03:07, user Isaac Nault wrote:

I'd be interested to see this methodology applied to estimating the hospitalization rate.

On 2020-06-21 13:21:31, user OxImmuno Literature Initiative wrote:

https://www.immunology.ox.a...

On 2020-04-19 10:43:00, user n1oftheabove wrote:

Would you share the curated data publicly, e.g. via github?

On 2020-05-20 09:31:25, user Reks wrote:

Two comments and one question:<br /> 1. I think your reference 26 got mixed up? ( here: In a recent systematic review we concluded that the evidence in favour of face mask use outside of hospital was weak. 26)<br /> 2. The measures data are not entirely accurate: face masks were made mandatory in Poland on April 16th<br /> 3. Assume that countries tended to close down schools at roughly same epi stages. Your models, however sophisticated, would not be able to tease out the effects of school closures and any limiting factors that are inherent in the course of this epidemic, let's call them "natural" factors for want of a better term. Or would they? If not, should you mention that in the limitations? Can you perhaps check if this is likely to be the case (i.e. closures or other measures tending to be introduced at similar stages across quite a few countries)?

On 2020-05-20 12:50:05, user Neil Oxtoby wrote:

Minor correction to your text on page 5 "subtyping studies using longitudinal sMRI...": SuStaIn (PMID:30323170) uses cross-sectional sMRI.

On 2020-05-20 19:25:43, user Christian Gibbs wrote:

Please note the dislaimer at the top of the article:

This article is a preprint and has not been peer-reviewed. It reports new medical research that has yet to be evaluated and so should not be used to guide clinical practice.

On 2020-05-22 22:54:11, user Snap wrote:

An updated version of this paper with 8 countries can be found here https://www.medrxiv.org/con...

On 2020-05-23 23:03:15, user Hilda Bastian wrote:

I have written a post that includes some criticisms of this preprint after brief review: http://hildabastian.net/ind...

On 2020-04-23 23:47:11, user Tesla Coil wrote:

In addition to the criticisms raised in other comments, I see a fatal flaw in the study's "Statistical Analysis" that I believe has not been raised (apologies if I have missed it).

The authors appear to first re-weight the sample by demographic factors, and only then adjust for test sensitivity and specificity. This appears to me to be the obviously incorrect order.

If, say, in the unweighted sample, true false positives of the test were 1.5% (which is within the 95% confidence interval of 0.1% to 1.7% calculated by the authors), and the authors only found 1.5% positive samples, the actual true positives would be 0%. So for the unweighted sample, the lower bound for prevalence of antibodies should be 0% true positives. Any further re-weighting of the sample cannot change this and the lower bound must remain 0%.

However, as the authors re-weight the sample first, they apply the false positive rate of 0.1% to 1.7% to their re-weighted estimate of 2.8% positive samples.

On 2020-04-24 16:22:33, user gfrenke wrote:

According to the CDC website their flu statistics are based solely on people who were symptomatic. The CDC doesn’t’ do antibody tests after the flu season to see how many were infected with a flu virus but never had symptoms.

On 2020-04-26 15:47:52, user DaveSezThings wrote:

The analysis has made a significant, basic error in handling the uncertainty associated with the specificity of the test. Leaving aside concerns regarding the applicability of the delta method, the mistake arises in that computing the standard error the values for Var(s) and Var(r) should be divided by the sample numbers used in the studies to establish these values, not the main study sample size n=3,330, which is used across all terms in the relevant equation in the appendix (it's on the middle of page 3). We can see this as the range of specificity (95% CI 98.3% to 100%) is sufficient to explain the observed data with zero genuinely positive cases.

Basically this destroys the conclusions which should now be along the lines of "unfortunately the test used for this study was not specific enough to support any conclusions beyond setting a maximum level of infection."

Stuff happens, time is short etc... the authors should just issue a correction. It'll be quick and easy and save a lot of irrelevant speculation,

On 2020-04-17 23:54:51, user David Hasenford wrote:

A lot of misguided comments here. 2.49% to 4.16% population prevalence is not "herd immunity"

On 2020-04-28 04:37:59, user Choplifter wrote:

I applaud the authors for publishing this study. It is not without its flaws, obviously you can pick apart whether the sample was reprsentative of the community given the limited way testing candidates were solicited, but it is important to get tests like this out to the public quickly rather than wait months to get statistically perfect data. I suspect the estimate of fatality rate they give is a little low, but the scale is consistent with similar studies out of NYC and elsewhere, all suggesting that the fatality rate from COVID-19 is far, far, far less than the terrifying 5% that continues to be touted on the CDC website and by people who support contined lockdowns. The real rate is likely well under 0.4%, making it worse then seasonal flu (even the historically virulent 2017-2018 flu season) but still orders of magnitude less than the 5% Armageddon numbers that were used to scare the public into accepting complete lockdowns and the widespread ruin to economies and livelihoods, that they caused.

On 2020-05-01 10:16:00, user mendel wrote:

The specificity trials on page 19 are not normal.<br /> 7 trials show 100%, with N=30,70,1102,300,311,500,99, sum 2412.<br /> The 6 remaining trials:

368/371 = 99.2% (97.7-99.8)<br /> 198/200 = 99.0% (96.4-99.9)<br /> 29/31 = 93.6% (78.6-99.2)<br /> 146/150 = 97.3% (93.3-99.3)<br /> 105/108 = 97.2% (92.1-99.4)<br /> 50/52 = 96.2% (86.8-99.5)

Pooling these, I get 896/912=98.3% (97.2-99.0).

"We use the pooled test performance based on the available information:<br /> Sensitivity: 82.8% (exact binomial 95CI 76.0-88.4%)<br /> Specificity: 99.5% (exact binomial 95CI 99.2-99.7%)"

There is no trial that has exactly 1 false positive. There are 3 <br /> trials that don’t have 99.5% in the 95% CI (4 trials if you include <br /> 1102/1102). There is no trial that falls inside the 99.2-99.7 range (one<br /> straddles it). The specifity range they’re using is an empty space <br /> between the values that the trials are actually at. This is not a normal distribution.

187 samples had loss of smell and taste in <br /> the past 2 months. This is a very specific indicator for Covid-19, ~70% <br /> of patients (well, 33,9–85,6%, depending on the study, e.g. <br /> Mons/Belgium, Heinsberg/Germany) have that, and I don’t think this kind <br /> of nerve affliction has been reported for any other common illness. Yet <br /> only 11% of these samples test positive. For the 59 more recent samples,<br /> it’s 22%.

This looks like the prevalence this study should have measured is <br /> 267/3330 = 8%, and the test failed to pick up on that. It would fail to <br /> pick up on recent infections, because they wouldn’t have seroconverted <br /> (created enough antibodies) yet, and it would fail to pick up on <br /> infections that happened too long ago (because the antibody levels would<br /> have fallen off below the sensitivity of this test). This study really <br /> needed a more sensitive test, like an ELISA, which is actually available<br /> at Standford, and is able to detect much lower levels of antibodies.

This kit has not been validated against people who had the infection a month ago.

The presence of false positives is an indication that cross-reativity <br /> with outher cold viruses exists. If you test a sample with few people <br /> who haven’t had a severe cold recently, which probably includes most <br /> samples taken of people who check into the hospital for elective <br /> surgery, or samples taken in the summer months, you get an optmistic <br /> sensitivity that does not apply to the general population in early <br /> spring.

The WHO Early investigation protocol (Unity protocol) for the <br /> investigation of population prevalence mandates the use of an ELISA <br /> test, or the freezing of samples until a time when such a test becomes <br /> available. The WHO does not endorse the use of lateral flow assays for <br /> this kind of testing.<br /> —-<br /> P.S.: No study that does not measure prevalence in the older <br /> population where the majority of deaths occurs should speak on fatality <br /> rates. This study had 2/167 positives in the age 65+ population, that’s <br /> 0.1-4.3% (95% CI), a 30-fold spread, and hardly a representative sample,<br /> since I don’t expect residents from care homes were able to attend the <br /> drive-through testing.

On 2020-04-24 07:15:48, user Rajendra Kings Rayudoo wrote:

TO <br /> Yoann Madec,Rebecca Grant,

I have gone through your paper above <br /> i had a doubt that<br /> 1) the antibodies that are transferred from one person to another ,can have long-term effect on the fighting with the antigen.and

2) do the donor can increase the anti-sars antibodies continuously after donation.

thanking u <br /> with regards <br /> rajendra

On 2020-04-26 21:01:22, user reuns wrote:

Important study because it proves the outbreak came from the Highschool (15-18yr plus the teachers and workers)

On 2020-04-24 09:51:12, user Rajendra Kings Rayudoo wrote:

TO<br /> Kamalini Lokuge, Emily Banks, Stephanie Davis, Leslee Roberts, Tatum Street, Declan O'Donovan, Grazia Caleo, Kathryn Glass

I rea the above paper very happy to listen the decline of carona in Australia but as you mentioned the measures to take in the populous country likeindia which is 70 times bigger than Australia but the mathematical models and the way of finding asymptomatic carriers are fascinating

i request you to please explain the methods of conducting the efficient way to eradicate the asymptomatic carriers

thanking you <br /> with regards <br /> rajendra

On 2020-04-24 14:50:11, user BR wrote:

This study compares a group of patients with "more severe disease" that needed medication ("many times as a last resort"-VA) and where they "expected, increased mortality"----with a group with milder forms of the illness that didn't need medication. I'm not sure what the value is in making such a study.

On 2020-04-24 15:57:17, user Rajendra Kings Rayudoo wrote:

To<br /> Manisha mandal , shyamapada mandal

Every thing is ok but how come the analytics of asymptomatic carriers and presymptomatic carriers which are grave fmdanherous to spread

More over in india this is a stage which entering into community transmission

Regards<br /> ............................................. Rajendra

On 2020-04-25 14:04:04, user Rosemary TATE wrote:

Hi, I dont see the STROBE guidelines checklist (for observational studies) uploaded, although you ticked yes to this<br /> "I have followed all appropriate research reporting guidelines and uploaded the relevant EQUATOR Network research reporting checklist(s) and other pertinent material as supplementary files, if applicable. "<br /> A lot of people seem to ignore these but they are important and any good journal will require them.<br /> Can you please upload? Many thanks.

On 2020-04-27 17:01:13, user Paul Floto wrote:

It should be worthy of research to examine whether copper compounds are as toxic to the virus causing COVID-19 as they are to poliovirus. Since the toxicity level of copper to humans is already well established, if a lower level is effective against viral protease, then drug development could be quite rapid.

A letter that appeared online recently in the New England Journal of Medicine demonstrated that the COVID-19 virus had a shorter life span on a copper surface than on many other materials.

Since copper has an essential role in human health, it might be possible that the growth of the COVID-19 virus is impacted by the copper level in the host organism. Copper levels vary significantly by diet, and are significantly reduced by even small quantities of molybdenum in the diet.

Widely varying rates of infection and death might be explained by variation in typical copper levels in the diet which would influence serum level of copper in blood and tissue. Has any measurement of serum copper level been made in patients with differing response to COVID-19 infection?

On 2020-04-25 20:17:25, user Pasquale Valente wrote:

The study show also extraordinary good news. Too bad that the <br /> authors do not underline them. So it is good, while we thank them for <br /> the work done, we make clear the positive numbers that can be glimpsed <br /> between the lines. So, as far as I intend to report, the study is based <br /> on two surveys conducted between 21 February and 7 March, which affected<br /> 85% (2812 people) and 71.5% (2343 people) of the population of Vo ' <br /> Euganeo (PD), the town of 3300 inhabitants where, on February 21, the <br /> first death from pneumonia occurred, which was attributed (by whom and <br /> on what basis?) to the SARS CoV-2 infection in Italy. The study not <br /> reported as a case of pneumonia has been defined, nothing regarding the <br /> clinical picture, nor anatomo-pathological disorders. It refers to the <br /> basis of a news item learned in the press (a man 78 years old, <br /> cardiopathic, who went through several shelters in intensive care died <br /> in that sad day. The study seems interested to elucidate, interestingly,<br /> the mechanisms of transmission of the virus and in particular the <br /> dynamics of its onward transmission, between symptomatic and <br /> asymptomatic subjects. The study produces also some useful data. The <br /> prevalence of Sars CoV-2 positive cases was 2.6% (73 positive tests / <br /> 2812 tests) in the first survey and 1.2% (29 positive tests / 2343 <br /> tests) in the second survey on 7 March. How many symptomatic cases with <br /> positive tests? The table show n. 43 symptomatic subjects/ 2812 subjects<br /> tested, equivalent to 0.015%. In the second survey 16/2343 symptomatic <br /> cases were found, that is equal to 0.0068%. Isn't this good news? Only 7<br /> -15 per 1000 inhabitants of Vo' Euganeo manifested fever or cough in <br /> the winter period in a town of Veneto. Meanwhile, the Schiavonia <br /> Hospital, where the man died, was first closed and then reopened as<br /> a COVID hospital. May be this is also a good new. We are preparing at <br /> the best, for the next pandemia. The study claims to have also collected<br /> data on the progression of symptoms and hospitalization of some <br /> subjects. Well, we will look forward to seeing them on a new <br /> paper. <br /> Best Regards

On 2020-04-26 00:39:15, user tsuyomiyakawa wrote:

There are two major issues that make the design of this study inappropriate for examining the BCG hypothesis.

1. The efficacy of the BCG is supposed to wane over time and so the most of the protective effects of BCG in aged people, is any, is supposed to be mediated largely by herd immunity. Herd immunity would occlude the discontinuity.

2. BCG is a weakened version of tuberculosis (TB) and TB infection would exert equivalent or even stronger protective effects with the BCG hypothesis. Before implementation of BCG policy, most of the countries were high tuberculosis burden countries. So aged people in those countries are expected to be protected by their experience of TB infection in a similar way BCG protects, under the BCG hypothesis. Note that Vietnam and Thailand are still high TB burden countries.

Also, there are a few minor issues that I'd like to point out.

1. In Czech, it is interesting that there are some children under 10 years old who were tested positive and are not covered by BCG. In other countries, few children, who are covered by BCG, were tested positive.

2. In Figure 1 or in Supp. Figures, similar panels for the other analyzed countries should be also shown.

3. The raw data on which Fig 2 should be made available. Apparent positive correlation between BCG coverage and "the log cases per thousands" is interesting but it is likely to be a spurious correlation. Trying to identify the factor underlying such correlation would be important.

On 2021-05-29 03:44:48, user You Know you thought the same. wrote:

But the CDC has known this for years.<br /> https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/a...

On 2021-01-24 19:40:01, user Han-Kwang Nienhuys wrote:

I have further analyzed the data in fig. 2; the odds ratios (frequency ratio B.1.1.7 / other) grow exponentially with daily growth factors between 1.06 and 1.09 between 6 weeks and 1 week before the of the data (only considering the UK regions where the error bars in Fig. 4 were reasonably small: EE, EMid, London, NEE, SEE, SWE, WMid). For this I need to assume that a fraction of the SGTF cases are 'false positive', since most regions show a constant SGTF rate in October, before taking off with exponential growth.

Also notable, genomic analysis in UK SEE, Denmark, Netherlands, and Portugal show consistently growth rates between 7 %/d and 9.4 %/d with only Denmark showing a slowdown (from 12 %/d to 7 %/d).

Also, one would expect the odds ratio to grow exponentially over time if there are just two competing variants, each with their own transmissibility or reproduction number. However, the other strains that make up everything else than B.1.1.7 are likely to have slightly different transmissibilities. Over time, one would expect the transmissibility to drift to higher values, also among those other strains. The fact that the odds ratio growth rate is decreasing does not necessarily mean that the B.1.1.7 is getting less infectious; rather, the mixture of other strains could be getting more infectious over time, just because the contributions of the less infectious ones in the mix gradually decreases.

Summarizing: I believe that 6 %/d is an estimate that is significantly too low.

For graphs of my analysis, please see https://twitter.com/hk_nien... .

On 2021-01-25 14:58:28, user ad4 wrote:

There is also a study by Simon Wood that also suggests that lighter NPIs were having a noticeable impact on R before lockdown. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2005....

On 2021-01-26 07:48:38, user Oliver Kumpf wrote:

This is an interesting study. Regarding some analyses I would be interested in the distribution of organ dysfunction. Were vasopressor-free days and pulmonary-support-free days equally distributed in the therapy vs control cohorts? What were the age groups who profited most? Younger patients were much more likely to survive as is represented in the suplementary material. The Kaplan-Meier curves were without statiscal analysis. Was there a statistically significant difference between pooled IL-6Ra treated patients and controls? What is the number needed to treat. This therapy is expensive and especially in countries with restricted ressources it would almost be impossible to use such treatment.

On 2021-01-27 06:24:26, user Michael wrote:

DL+DiReCT including the trained model of DeepSCAN is also available on github: https://github.com/SCAN-NRA...

This method for cortical thickness estimation is mentioned in the manuscript and refers to https://doi.org/10.1002/hbm...

On 2021-01-29 18:20:06, user Neal wrote:

I think it's worth looking at institutional conflict-the possibility that the institution that they work for has received major donations from interests that have some potential financial gain possible from negative results for Ivermectin. That would explain the strange results and methodologies of this study, such as 1. Including large studies as having "no data" 2. Selective negative individual outcomes from trials which did have positive results 3. Meta-analysis showing the exact opposite conclusion.

In an age when medical science may be highly corrupted by financial inducements, this needs to be scrutinized carefully. There are all too many "studies" or "Meta-analyses" that seem to have strange data, especially when an inexpensive treatment or prophylaxis threatens an expensive one.

On 2021-02-24 19:02:08, user George Orwell wrote:

The findings of this review are an outlier, in stark contrast to the rest - those produced by the WHO, FLCCC, EBM-C, and @CovidAnalysis. This pre-print says the studies considered had "7412 participants" but only reported mortality data on under two hundred of them. Even then, it shows Ivermectin reduced mortality (logRR: 0.89, 95% CI 0.09 to 1.70, p = 0.04), but reported Ivermectin was "not associated" with reduced mortality.<br /> It excluded the vast majority of the FORTY-ONE clinical trials with results, 18 published, the rest in preprint, .<br /> So even though the authors reported on a small fraction of a small fraction of the results, they still found significant improvement in the most important and elusive metric of all to show improvement in, mortality. But nonetheless, they reported this as a negative finding.<br /> As is widely reported, "The probability that an ineffective treatment generated results as positive as the 41 studies to date is estimated to be 1 in 2 trillion (p = 0.00000000000045)."

On 2021-01-29 22:05:04, user José Raymond Herrera wrote:

It's about the predictable anti-inflammatory effect of Colchicine. I don't know if it's better than Dexamethasone already proved useful in those cases. In any event, we're talking about cheap drugs not promoted by big pharma...

On 2021-01-30 17:36:26, user Olga Rebrova wrote:

For the primary outcome P=0.0492 (Yates corrected Chi-sq.), authors do not mention which Chi-sq. test they used. Odds ratio is unappropriate measure for RCT. RR have to be used instead, and it's upper limit of 95% CI is 0.999. Adding 1 patient dramatically changes the conclusion.

On 2021-01-29 22:20:14, user Britt-Marie Halvarsson wrote:

Hi!

Very interesting paper and I am very grateful of your transparency with code and data!

However, I find it a bit problematic that the corrected R0's are not very normally distributed. Do you have a comment on that?

Best Regards,<br /> Britt-Marie Halvarsson

On 2021-01-31 17:34:25, user Paul Hunter wrote:

Very misleading analyses in this paper and the conclusions and recommendations that the authors make are not supprted by their data. How can the say “The decrement in<br /> incidence was evident from day 18 after first dose” and then estimate efficacy using data from days when they know that vaccine was not yet working. What they have shown is by three weeks after injection a single dose of Pfizer gives about 80 to 90% protection

On 2021-06-19 15:42:33, user TB wrote:

The data in Figure one is duplicated. The 'left orbitofrontal cortex (thickness)' data is the exact same at the 'left superior insula' data.

On 2021-02-03 07:20:39, user Bildung Aber Sicher CH wrote:

This study failed to mention school autumn holidays. The data they have is, in reality, from a period of low community transmission (not high as they mention) because the 2 weeks holidays coincide with the start of the second wave in the canton. <br /> The sampling starts a week after school resumed, therefore too early to for cluster build up in schools/classes, especially when looking at antibodies which will only appear some weeks after infection.

It also didn't consider any new studies as references, when plenty was available that contradicts their assumptions and conclusions at the time of publication.

On 2021-02-06 06:55:29, user kdrl nakle wrote:

Non-randomized comparison of apples to oranges (dosages, numerous differences in groups etc). Too small samples for so many variables.

On 2021-02-09 15:58:51, user David Curtis wrote:

I don't get it. Mendelian randomisation is supposed to test a causal relationship between two phenotypes. Here, you seem to be saying that your results demonstrate that smoking has a causal effect on depression and that depression has a causal effect on smoking. I don't see how you distinguish this from the alternative explanation - that there are genetic variants which increase risk of both smoking and depression. How do you distinguish causal effects from a simple genetic correlation?

On 2021-02-11 03:05:16, user Another Concerned Resident wrote:

Interesting study! Where can we find the supplementary materials? I'd like to check the ITT Table 1 because the PP Table 1 shows significant baseline differences.

A few questions:<br /> - Could you explain why you did not opt for placebo control and double blind?<br /> - What were the serology results performed at day 28?<br /> - You mention "COVID-19 infection occurred in 94% measured by RT-PCR". How were the extra 6% diagnosed?<br /> - Do you have any data on adverse events?<br /> - For the primary outcome: do you have any information on the reasons for admission?

Thanks

On 2021-02-11 19:05:46, user Dr John Tal wrote:

Eagerly awaiting the results of the trials using ciclesonide. Has been shown to slow down SARS CoV2 replication in vitro and seemed to be effective in a couple of case studies. https://jvi.asm.org/content...

On 2021-02-11 15:28:29, user Robert Olinski wrote:

You are speaking about Ct values that are not part of clinical diagnostics. What were clinical symptoms of people post-vaccination with decreased viral load? Does it mean that the vaccination did not prevent infection?

On 2021-02-20 15:56:24, user Howard Gu wrote:

It is surprising that vaccination only reduces the viral load by 4 folds. However, this could be due to the research design. Only the high viral loads are detectable and thus included in the calculation of viral load reduction. Vaccinated people might get infected but have good immune responses effectively suppressing the viral replication. This could result in 400 or 4000 folds lower viral loads which may not be detectable and thus considered not infected and not included in the calculation of viral load reduction.

On 2021-02-13 17:35:22, user Scott Aberegg wrote:

Where is the supplementary appendix? I would like to see the prior distributions upon which this analysis was based

On 2021-02-14 11:49:33, user Rafael Green wrote:

Hi,<br /> I looked at world_mortality.csv, summed the deaths by year and got this result:<br /> 2015 15747474<br /> 2016 17246133<br /> 2017 17689889<br /> 2018 16674370<br /> 2019 18004246<br /> 2020 20926842<br /> How are you explaining the decreasing in the number of deaths in 2018?<br /> Thanks,

On 2021-02-15 16:30:09, user Vana Sypsa wrote:

The paper appears now in Emerging Infectious Diseases

https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/a...

On 2021-02-15 20:44:04, user Ro H wrote:

South Asians as a group, especially first generation (citizens or immigrants), regardless of income level, are less likely to voluntarily get tested or go to the doctor unless theyre really sick. People with mild to moderate disease are unlikely to get tested but will self isolate and quarantine. This is a cultural thing observed in great Britain also. This means that their positivity rates will be higher as only the really sick get tested and a higher percentage will be hospitalized. Its interesting that their death rates are lower though. Im a part of this south Asian community in New York and this is what I've experienced with family and friends.

On 2021-03-26 15:52:44, user MHR wrote:

Has this paper been published???

On 2021-02-16 09:06:27, user Raul Sanchez-Lopez wrote:

An updated version of this preprint has been accepted for publication in mdpi Audiology Research<br /> https://doi.org/10.3390/aud...

On 2021-02-17 17:12:29, user Tim Pollington wrote:

Dear Epke and colleagues,

I would like to share some comments following reading your (v. relevant) paper on impact of COVID on VL in India at the country level. This is the second time I've commented on a preprint like this on medrxiv, and shared an 'open review' so I hope you receive it in the spirit it was intended. As I'm interested in doing similar studies your manuscript was relevant to me. And since I am funded by BMGF I thought it would be a waste of my funded time if I do not share these thoughts with you too, especially since you're at the preprint/pre-accepted stage.

I thought the paper could benefit from an additional author who has field experience of the IRS/ACD activities occurring there to back-up your assumption that "no IRS and ACD take place and that only passive case detection" during an interruption.

Given that the role of Asx in infecting others is still debated (some say recent xeno shows near zero contribution while ours last year did fit estimates consistently when relative Asx infectiousness of 0,1 or 2% were used), your use of the models E1 & E0 is a smart move to err on the cautious side.

Model structure and quantification section<br /> Thanks for much for following best practice and using PRIME-NTD. It is the first time I have seen it and I definitely plan to use it in my next modelling publication and also when initially planning a model re engagement with policymakers.

Given that the model runs for 30 years has population growth been taken into account?

Impact assessment section<br /> Although adding incidence rates in the same period is acceptable, as events share the same 'person time at risk' denominator (and if the events are mutually exclusive), I'm not sure if epidemiologically it's a correct calculation to sum up rates over the 30 years since the population will be changing in this time and thus the denominators are changing. Perhaps one can convert it into absolute cases in each year and then sum those up?

Discussion section - First paragraph<br /> It may help the reader if more emphasis was made on how a 1-year impacted delay by describing how it is amplified. ie How just one year interruption causes growth which needs to be curtailed before it turns over and falls, and the excess cases this generates. This concept of amplification could be strengthened.

Second paragraph<br /> "80% of [VL-endemic???] sub-districts..." Did this cover just Bihar or all 4/5? endemic states.

Third paragraph<br /> I think mortality rates are really relevant but can understand your caution re scant data. I think it's so important now considering the 1%CFR 2021-2030 target. Could this independent review help provide some rough estimates from pages 12-15 & 40? <br /> Even rough estimates from your model on excess VL cases and when they would likely be seen in the coming years, could be a useful starting place for resource planning of drugs.

I think a caveat needs to be noted that this analysis is country-level whereas the threshold targets are at the block-level, to avoid the reader making an ecological fallacy.

I hope that helps and also encourage you to comment on my work if I get to that stage!

All the best, Tim.

On 2021-02-22 23:08:15, user Meg Beller wrote:

HOW do I get a neutralizing antibody titer test post Pfizer vaccine to see how my immune suppressed body responded?

On 2021-02-24 01:18:23, user algebra wrote:

Anecdotes of people who had Covid months ago and got the vaccine are alarming. Acquaintances report the side effects of the second shot were worse than the disease itself. Are these people reporting their reactions? No they just tough it out. They were told to expect side effects. How many of them are out there? Does anybody know? <br /> My own physician has been hearing some of these stories and suggests waiting.

On 2021-02-24 03:55:43, user kdrl nakle wrote:

Your samples are too small and IQR are too much overlapping to derive any conclusions. Go for bigger samples and perhaps you'll get something of it.

On 2021-02-26 11:58:34, user Magda Bucholc wrote:

The published version of the manuscript is available here: https://alz-journals.online...

On 2021-02-28 21:19:31, user Ana Christoff wrote:

Now published in PLOS ONE<br /> Swab pooling: A new method for large-scale RT-qPCR screening of SARS-CoV-2 avoiding sample dilution.<br /> https://doi.org/10.1371/jou...

On 2021-03-02 08:33:10, user Miroslava Zeliznakova wrote:

I am so disgusted how this research was done. The ethical principles were not followed. People didnt know that research is taking place, they were not informed about it. They were forced to test otherwise they have been threatened by government that they can't come out of their house, go to work, post office etc... I am from Slovakia and so many people suffered in hands of the government and i am surprised this study states the participants consent was gained. You should now do another study about how situation is in Slovakia now. Many people had got infected during mass antigen testing actually.

On 2021-03-07 09:48:53, user Pencroft wrote:

• voluntary? Yes, it was voluntary testing. As it is described in the article itself. There were (and there are) restrictions applied regarding the COVID pandemic as they are applied elsewhere in the world. Those who preferred somehow reduced level of them were required to prove that they are not infected. This type of the test or PCR one were accepted.<br /> There was no punishment by law for not taking part in this type of testing.
• written consent?<br /> As long as the researchers evaluate output and other public data and are not the ones who performs the test on their own as a part of their research, what is the base for requiring written consent? Those are 2 separate activities.

On 2021-03-03 22:58:04, user Dan Elton wrote:

The data from Phase, I, II, and III and our prior scientific knowledge on vaccines like this one indicate this vaccine is very safe and effective. It also appears to be our best weapon against the B.1.351 variant. US taxpayers have already footed the bill for 110 million doses and it's very likely millions of doses have already been produced. The US FDA should ask Novavax to submit all the data they have collected so far and their EUA application immediately and then the FDA should work overtime to approve it within a week in order to save lives. The FDA should also allow the vaccine to be pre-distributed to ensure the vaccine gets to at-risk groups as quickly as possibe. With 1,000+ people dying every day, we must act quickly to save lives! The status-quo is dangerous - the vaccine by contrast is very safe and will save lives!

On 2021-03-05 23:06:05, user Minga wrote:

Several authors omitted to declare known links of interest with pharmaceutical firms. <br /> One of them declare not least than 24 pages of links with pharmaceutical firms on this official website : https://transparence.sante...., and nothing here. Such an offense to integrity put serious doubts about this pre-print.

On 2021-03-06 11:40:17, user Patti wrote:

I had Covid back in October 2020, I still hane no smell or little to no taste. The feeling in my nose is driving me nuts - I call it a vortex or the feeling I have when I take a breath is like a upside down tornado - it feels like clean air and yet sometimes burns. I have used nasal saline but doesn’t seem to do anything. Also slight blood when I blow my nose.

On 2021-03-08 08:44:37, user CD wrote:

"Our findings highlight the importance of monitoring how members of these known 501Y lineages, and others still undiscovered, are convergently evolving similar strategies to ensure their persistence in the face of mounting infection and vaccine induced host immune recognition ..."

The statement above makes it appear as if the SARS-cov-2 chooses where to mutate to escape host immunity, which is not the case. The pressure is put on the virus and mutations occur randomly, resulting in escape variants and some resulting in weaker variants

On 2021-03-14 10:34:35, user KalleMP wrote:

There are a number of data errors in this report. Having looked at 5 of the original 25 papers listed here I find that errors that are significant have been made in at least 4 of them.

The Turkey values are 75.5% deficient and 16.61nmol/l median instead of the listed 70nmol/l.

Bosnia reads 24.4% and should be 60.6% (their mean is 48.25nmol/l)

Italy reads 33.3% but a weighted average is closer to 30.7%<br /> Italy has used values from the highest performing Vitamin-D region and compared them to the national CoViD-19 figures which are accepted to be low.

Finland has used the native Finnish values and compared them to the national CoViD-19 figures which include immigrants who are more deficient yet represent a larger portion of the CoViD-19 figures.

On 2021-03-17 10:44:27, user Krisantha Weerasuriya wrote:

If there was the opportunity, a small simultaneous blood sample from the mother to measure the COVID19 antibodies would have provided further useful information.

Would it be possible with covering permission from the Ethical Committee to do a simultaneous blood sample for COVID 19 antibodies from mother and baby at 3 months (or the most appropriate time)?

On 2021-03-17 10:51:20, user D Greenwood wrote:

The trials registry protocol suggests n=507 symptomatic cases would be recruited and followed up, to "characterise prevalence and severity of organ volume change and damage in patients recovering from COVID-19 disease". Yet the preprint appears to focus on n=201 individuals still "symptomatic after recovery" and it is therefore not surprising that nearly 100% of them report symptoms, as this appears to be the eligibility criteria for the paper. Either that, or a substantial deviation from the published protocol. I therefore agree with previous comments on the importance of clarifying the recruitment process and inclusion/exclusion criteria so we know what the denominator is here. There is some benefit in knowing what the % of organ damage is in people with continuing symptoms, but the crucial question that health services and strategic leaders need to know is what this is as a % of all cases, or at least as a % of symptomatic cases. I hope that a revised version of this paper will make that clearer.

On 2021-03-18 09:12:13, user Bernhard Brodowicz wrote:

The summary in the last paragraph of discussion states: 'On the contrary, we found a significant, slightly increased risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection, which, however, was attenuated when taking account of older children in the same household.' The first paragraph of the discussion however is stating 'The risk of infection was amplified with increasing number of young children living in the household, but the overall association was attenuated when excluding households with older children.' and figure one, shows an increased risk associated with increasing number of children and increasing age of children.<br /> The wording in the summary (last paragraph of discussion) might be a bit misleading.

On 2021-03-23 18:30:37, user Moshe Elitzur wrote:

To CL: <br /> Do lockdowns work??

They certainly do, but we could not prove that decisively because lockdowns were implemented, on average, just before "flattening of the curve" was already occuring. So lockdowns were not put to the test during the first wave.

On 2021-03-23 20:14:18, user Gustavo Bellini wrote:

Great article, congratulations to everyone involved in this research!

Could you replicate the tests by adding sufficient levels of vitamin D to these cells? I believe that the behavior of macrophages in this case can be changed from the pro-inflammatory pathway to the anti-inflammatory pathway, thus avoiding the "storm of inflammatory cytokines" and restoring (?) their "normal" phagocytosis behavior.

Vitamin D has an immunomodulatory action that affects both the innate and the adaptive system.

Sufficient levels of vitamin D are needed for immune cells to produce IFN-y:<br /> - Vitamin D Is Required for IFN-? – Mediated Antimicrobial Activity of Human Macrophages<br /> https://stm.sciencemag.org/...

A 2010 study showed that sufficient levels of vitamin D are also necessary for T lymphocytes to be activated correctly:<br /> - Vitamin D crucial to activating immune defenses<br /> https://www.sciencedaily.co...

Macrophages and dentritic cells have the CYP27b1 gene and are able to transform 25OHD into Calcitriol (the active hormone).

All immune cells have VDR and are subject to the biological actions of the active form of vitamin D.

Here are two great recent reviews on the action of vitamin D on immune cells:<br /> - Vitamin D and Immune Regulation: Antibacterial, Antiviral, Anti-Inflammatory<br /> https://doi.org/10.1002/jbm...

• MECHANISMS IN ENDOCRINOLOGY: Vitamin D and COVID-19<br /> https://doi.org/10.1530/eje...

Many studies are showing a significant correlation between vitamin D deficiency and the increased risk for severe symptoms / mortality from Covid. This website lists some of these studies: https://vitamin-d-covid.sho...

I hope this comment is useful in some way.<br /> Thanks.

On 2021-03-29 21:57:10, user Carl Steinbeisser wrote:

Great work. Really minor comment: In the acknowledgement only the Grant Agreement number is mentioned not the name of the project. Many IMI projects (and H2020 projects) do mention the name of the project too. Suggest to add the project name EHDEN.

On 2021-03-30 17:34:43, user Gustavo Bellini wrote:

Dr. Alex Vasquez published a critical analysis in relation to that study. He is demanding a retraction from JAMA:

https://youtu.be/_sfGV_xz0_Q

On 2021-04-06 09:29:36, user gerardencinallamas wrote:

The peer-reviewed published version of this pre-print can be found here: https://www.nature.com/arti...

On 2021-04-09 12:25:07, user Keish Gonzalez Acosta wrote:

Hi. I am a breastfeeding mother. I took the JJ vaccine 4 days ago. I am pumping milk. If your team is interested in collecting milk samples after JJ vaccine I would like to participate.

On 2021-04-14 16:38:58, user Anke Huels wrote:

This work has been published in The Lancet's EClinical Medicine: https://www.thelancet.com/j... (open access)

On 2021-04-20 02:03:34, user Hector Moises Chip / Micro Chi wrote:

By "reasoning" - that is according to Kant's a priori approach - to keep schools open would be a source of virus transmission. Basically because in spite of gathering "in bubbles", it breaks the gold epidemiologic principle of social distancing, particularly difficult in youngsters besides the fact that they wander (usually) in several unchecked other bubbles... Also there are on the empiric side, cases of intra school viral circulation that the present article has not searched . The whole script is therefore incomplete enough to draw firm conclusions. In any case, it would mean to stay in the prudent side, which is do not open school if the sanitary system is on crisis.

On 2021-04-20 11:46:33, user Sahithi Reddy wrote:

may i know where can i get the source code of this article

On 2021-05-10 06:59:28, user Maria Ban wrote:

The 42% protection after first dose is not a very good protection. How about protection from severe Covid after first dose, is it higher? The reason for my question is that I am not allowed to have a second dose (due to severe allergic reaction) and I fear that I will have to avoid other people for ever.

On 2021-05-12 14:47:48, user Rebecca Grant wrote:

This study has now been published in Eurosurveillance: https://www.eurosurveillanc...

On 2021-05-14 10:40:29, user NABIL ABID wrote:

i am really happy to be part of this project, including more than 100 African researchers. Thanks to all collaborators to provide high quality paper.

On 2021-05-14 15:19:36, user Misha Kogan wrote:

First controlled trial! Excellent news. Our real life experience with no funding is not so far off. At GWCIM over last 3 years 15 patients who stayed with program demonstrated 70% response rate with 4 patients showing very significant improvement. Funding is a key. Of 44 patients who came through out clinic most dropped out due to cost and logistics.

On 2021-08-10 16:31:12, user Jeff Brender wrote:

"The 95% confidence interval (CI) of the IRR was calculated using an exact method described previously.(ref.12)"<br /> ref 12 Sahai H, Khurshid A. Statistics in Epidemiology: Methods, Techniques and Applications. CRC Press; 1995

The exact method should probably be specified here

On 2021-08-11 12:11:31, user Truenorth 1960 wrote:

I'm not sure I understand this study. While I understand this is a report that is intended for professionals, the l language is not English, it is "technobable" for lack of a better expression. For covid , these studies should have a translation into something more akin to regular English. Narrative should help understand the results. In this case I find the narrative is not helpful, it is easier to look at the tables.

On 2021-08-11 18:43:00, user questionable02848 wrote:

I am interested in seeing a similar study done on Recovered versus Vaccinated cases over some years. It is **theoretically** possible that Recovery (despite original virus death rate) confers greater defense than Vaccinated (despite lower original virus death rate) because Recovery forms a superior, longer-lasting, or greater-breadth immune response. This is important to consider for coronavirus specifically due to its tendency to mutate. The studies I have seen indicate that the Recovered do have a greater immunity than the Vaccinated, as studied here: https://www.biorxiv.org/con...

And so, if Recovered do in fact fare better when exposed to mutations, we really want to know this before we vaccinate the young, who do not face a statistically significant threat from coronavirus but have many years ahead of them facing its mutations.

On 2021-08-26 14:59:31, user Holger Lundstrom wrote:

So, to summarize:

• COVID-19 cases after dose 2: 77 (vax) vs. 850 (placebo) hinting at 91.3% protection
• no difference in cases for those with prior infection
• deaths during blinded period: 15 (vax) vs. 14 (placebo)
• COVID deaths during blinded period: 1 (vax) vs. 2 (placebo)
• deaths during total period: 20 (vax) vs. 14 (placebo)

Conclusion: <br /> 1.) Vaccine allows for 91.3% relative risk reduction. Total risk reduces from 3,9% (placebo) to 0,35% (vax) within the study timeframe. A decrease of 3% efficacy per month is expected - but is likely to be much larger, according to recent reports from Israel.<br /> https://www.sciencemag.org/...

2.) People with prior infection benefit very little from the vaccination, if at all. No benefit is recorded within study period. According to assumptions made here of about 70% protection (prior infection) vs. 90% protection (vax), a vaccination for people with prior immunity would reduce total risk from about 1% to 0,35%. However, it is more likely that prior immunity awards better protection than a vaccine does, due to the involvement of other aspects of pathogen defense, such as IgA antibodies. Again, no benefit was recorded in the study.<br /> https://stm.sciencemag.org/...

3.) No significant benefit is recorded concerning deaths due to coronavirus (1 vs. 2). Overall deaths are higher in vaccinated group than in placebo group, however total numbers are small (20 vs. 14).

Supplement tables:<br /> htt...

On 2021-08-11 18:35:08, user UGApaul wrote:

So, should we therefore assume that by reducing mutations, that vaccines or immunity in general, reduces the potential for new variants of concern?

Such thinking would run counter to our many decades of understanding of flu.

It is not necessarily important that vaccines might reduce the numberof mutations, what is important, is whether there already exists, variants that can partially escape immunity and/or there exists a sufficient mutation rate within a partially immune population to generate future variants that can escape immunity.

Delta is most likely a classic benefactor of antigenic drift in a partially immune population.

On 2021-08-13 10:22:44, user Javier Mira wrote:

Correlation doesn't mean causality. One can't infere any conclusion from just a correlation between 2 variables because there can be higher order variables governing those 2. If we made that we could conclude that bringing storks to our village would help increase the population growth rate, which is obviously false.

On 2021-08-12 02:48:52, user Johanna wrote:

It would be useful to report the interval between doses - or at least the interval regime in place in the region at the time of the study - due to the significant difference in efficacy for AstraZeneca with a 12-week interval as opposed to a shorter interval. In Australia, the AZ interval regime is 12 weeks, but a lack of data on efficacy with the longer interval, and consequent reporting of the relatively low efficacy with the shorter interval compared to Pfizer, has resulted in AZ being seen as the poor cousin, contributing to vaccine hesitancy. Lack of data means it remains unclear how great the difference in real-world efficacy between the two actually is. Reporting the interval between doses would at least clarify the applicability of results.

On 2021-08-12 16:39:53, user Mika Inki wrote:

I have several questions about the normalization. How precisely are the ages matched? You only mention that the participants’ ages were over 18. There is no normalization on whether the people belong to a risk group? Of course, that latter information may not be easily available. I would assume that older people and people in risk groups (including the immunocompromised) have vaccinated themselves at a much higher rate than younger and presumably healthier people, or at least people that believe themselves to be healthier. And lately there have been more infections in these younger groups, which would bias the probabilities. A young person in a risk group (even after vaccination) may have a much higher risk of severe illness than a typical person of the same age. Therefore, the overall effectiveness of both vaccines would likely seem significantly lower than what their true effectiveness is. Therefore, I would assume that the comparison between the vaccines may very well be valid, but the comparison between the vaccinated and unvaccinated may be significantly distorted.

On 2021-08-12 19:48:21, user Pasco Fearon wrote:

Hi Sean, and colleagues. Fascinating paper, but the scores are so low I worry something might not be right. Could the testing have been affected by the pandemic measures directly - e.g., mask wearing during testing? I could imagine some impacts but these are extreme, which leads me to worry that it's an administration issue. Can this be checked or ruled out somehow? I get asked this question a lot (how much have babies been affected by the pandemic), hence why I'm keen to be pretty confident in what I say.... Thanks!

On 2021-08-13 07:20:28, user Technicus AcityOne wrote:

Where exactly did the first discovery occur? And when ?

On 2021-08-13 10:16:11, user Earth Med Research wrote:

Please break down the PhD's according to what their field is, if it has not been done already. It would be very interesting if the sciences had stronger hesitancy, for example.

On 2021-08-20 02:48:13, user gospace wrote:

I would be willing to wager that if they separated out engineers, real ones, not software engineers, and non-degreed people working in engineering type professions, that they've got the highest rate of dreaded covid vaccine rejection. Not hesitancy, rejection. Maybe the software engineers too, I don't know enough of them to make a call on it.

On 2021-08-16 21:15:27, user Mike Ronnie wrote:

"While vaccines continue to provide outstanding protection against severe

disease and mortality, the durability of this protection cannot be

reliably predicted. Therefore, it is essential for public health policy

to encourage vaccination while also planning for contingencies,

including diminished long-term protection."

--> I strongly recommend deleting these last sentences, as your study did not investigate this issue at all. Therefore, based on yourstudy design, this statement has absolutely no justification.

On 2021-08-18 04:47:32, user Andrew Iannaccone wrote:

Do the authors specify how their samples were obtained? All I can find in the text is that they came from a "single large contract laboratory" "in Wisconsin" "between June 29 2021 and July 30 2021." Does that mean the criterion for inclusion in this study is having had a covid test done during that period?

On 2021-08-03 11:51:04, user cinnamon50 wrote:

Don't we have to know that testing occurs the same for vaxxed and unvaxxed people ?<br /> am I missing something there in how the selection for testing occurs ?<br /> what if unvaxxed people are selected for testing differently ?

thanks

On 2021-08-18 19:00:42, user FABIO LIPIANI wrote:

very interesting, the immune system undergoes a very evident reprogramming of which no long-term effects are known,

On 2021-08-23 09:13:18, user Isatou Sarr wrote:

Hi,

is there any approved, readily available prophylaxis (ready to use existing drugs or re-purposed) that can be taken particularly by children to add up to the set-out plan for reducing/stopping the transmission cycle of the virus? I just don't know how effectively applicable the non-medical preventative measures will be in resource limited settings where classrooms are not usually structured to accommodate the COVID-19 preventative measures and access to clean water supply is a problem for atleast the hand washing aspect to be adhered to as it should be.

Thank you.

On 2021-08-25 16:37:46, user Susana Monge wrote:

This work has been accepted for publication at Emerging Infectious Diseases and is now available on-line at: https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/a...

On 2021-08-25 20:16:42, user Tom wrote:

As all 12-16 year-old teenagers were not vaccinated at the time of the study, could you answer this question please:

Why did the study include 12-16 year-old teenagers in the group : adult/teenager household contacts that were vaccinated but not isolated?

On 2021-08-26 14:47:37, user bbeaird wrote:

The science looks solid. I think the challenge is how to interpret the findings. I did expect antibody concentrations to decline over time, in both vaccinated and convalescent populations. The 'aha moment' revolves around the difference in decay rates. But...my interpretation is not that people should avoid vaccination. The penalty of death or serious illness is too great. Nor can you expect people to take booster shots annually forever. I believe the path out of this misery is to get vaccinated, and then subsequently most vaccinated people will still contract the virus, though the effects will be minimal as compared to being unvaccinated and getting sick. Thus, the vaccination provides a safe bridge to a level of antibodies for which the decay rate is much more gradual and sustainable. One more comment...I believe there is an error in the text, on the percent of vaccinated people who have antibody concentrations below the minimum protection level, listed as 5.8% at 3 months. Yet the accompanying graph shows 5.8% at 1 month and 9.2% at 3 months. This error doesn't change the findings. Just a friendly note that the figures should be changed to match.

On 2021-08-26 19:32:16, user Aubrey Bailey wrote:

A few problems:<br /> 1. The authors count single dose vaccine as "vaccinated". That's not anyone's accepted definition.

1. The authors include naturally infected individuals in the vaccinated group if <br /> they got vaccinated later. Why? Were there not 16K fully (double) vaccinated people<br /> in a giant medical database?

2. This is the big one - <br /> I admit to skimming, but I didn't see any control for time intervals since infection.<br /> This<br /> is absolutely critical because we know that the antibody response <br /> wanes over about 8 months. Since the vaccine has been around for more <br /> than 8 months, it makes sense that more people will be at the tail end <br /> of that. Thankfully many more people get vaccinated than infected.

In light of all of these and in light of the un-reproduced nature of these findings (which should have been observable since Februrary), we should consider the first sentence of the conclusions to be at best, strongly overreaching, and at worst irresponsible phrasing.

On 2021-08-27 10:52:36, user Sock Dollager wrote:

Please follow up on this comparing infectiousness / viral load of someone with two shots who gets breakthrough infected, vs infectiousness / viral load of prev infected/natural immunity patient who gets breakthrough infection.

Thank you.

On 2021-08-27 13:34:21, user Luke Bartelt wrote:

The authors should correct table 1a and 1b where group demographics appear identical.

On 2021-08-28 02:02:31, user Marxtinks wrote:

It is not surprising that natural infection elicits stronger immune responses than the current vaccines. Covid 19 encodes 24 individual proteins. In contrast, only a single protein, the Spike antigen used by both Moderna and Pfizer in their vaccines. Furthermore, it is likely that the large scale S antigen mRNA immunization will lead to development of mutant strains not neutralized by sera or T cells of people vaccinated by the S antigen. It would be wise to develop novel vaccine strategies

On 2021-08-28 08:55:21, user Martijn Weterings wrote:

In table 1a we see that the comorbidity factors correlate strongly with the main factor (vaccinated/natural). For instance the vaccinated group has two and a half times more immunocompromised people (420 Vs 164).

This means that there is high degree of multicollinearity which makes the coefficients of the fitted models meaningless. We see for example in table 2a several negative coeffients for factors like diabetes, COPD and immunosuppression. These coeffients have a large estimated error and are not 'significant' but they *do* influence the other coefficients in the entire model.

Errors that follow from this might also be increased due to the logistic function which 'pushes' coefficients to extreme values when the frequency in certain classes is close to 1 or 0.

https://stats.stackexchange...

https://stats.stackexchange...

Asside from the correlated variables and the influence of this on model coefficients... The correlation is also an indication that the matched groups are still very different from each other, despite the matching. This means that the experiment is prone to selection bias.

Despite these two facts these results are still very interesting. It would be nice if they could be presented in a more raw form such that the pattern may be better seen (e.g. do the cases all occur in the high risk group with comorbidities?), and not just the output of fitted coefficients from models.

On 2021-08-31 00:14:58, user chelsea wrote:

Yes figures and tables would be nice.. they do not provide what extra level of protection you get if you have had sars cov2 and then get vaccinate... is it measured in folds like the actual infected over the vaccinated or is it like 13%?

On 2021-08-27 10:14:26, user Guy André Pelouze wrote:

I have a question: is there any further details about the AU used in this recent paper? Are WHO equivalent mentioned anywhere? <br /> Thank you.

On 2021-08-28 16:03:15, user Grammymidge wrote:

Hate to say but with how the US political machine is working to push the vaccine and affecting the Medical research community and leaders (i.e., the Surgeon General) here I have suspect of any finding produced in a US study that is opposite of findings in other parts of the world (i.e., Isreal). The latest Israeli study is based on a higher population, ~46,000, then what was used in this. The metrics of the study show that natural immunity provides a higher protection then the vaccine. But it does indicate the natural immunity coupled with one does of vaccine provides the individual with slightly higher protection against Delta. I found it very informative and worth a read.

On 2021-08-29 07:53:30, user Swami Ganesh wrote:

It is not clear how the average IFR (e.g. 0.21%) was obtained. Report says it was based on reported Covid fatalities. There is also mention of estimating IFR based on government mortality data for the subject area. How do you derive that? The standard way is to divide the cumulative death for the representative population (on, say, the date the sero survey collection ended), by the infected population (average seroprevalence X population). Of course, if one doesn't believe the reported fatalities, then some use excess mortality data, but that is a can of worms and strains credibility because the baseline mortality from pre-Covid years are equaally unrelaible if one doesn't trust the reported Covid deaths. Will appreciate your clarification. Thanks

Swami Ganesh (PHD, MBA) retired engineering professional, NY, USA

On 2021-08-04 18:58:21, user Ghatotpach Pilandi wrote:

Should correct for risks (comorbidity, genetic predisposition to diabetes, etc) and risk-level of job.

Regression analysis can be used because sample size is sufficient. Or some variant of ANOVA

On 2021-08-06 02:14:00, user Peat Floss BS MS MD wrote:

Assuming the 60 million + people served by this healthcare system are roughly representative of the united states, roughly 5% of them would be expected to be between 12-17. That's roughly 3 million people. CDC estimated infection rate in that age group is about 36%. That's about 1 million covid infections in this cohort if its roughly representative. You can throw some pretty massive error bars on there to account for seeking outside care and the possibility of an unusually old or young sample and never get close to the numbers used in this paper

On 2021-08-07 18:55:51, user Ted Libson wrote:

Here's an idea. COVID is been going around the world since November 2019. Coming up on two years ago.

By now every medical person on the planet could have conducted their own double-blind, random ivermectin study . Twice.

How come we're not reading through thousands of double-blind, random ivermectin studies right now?

On 2021-08-09 10:52:29, user old farmer wrote:

It's my understanding that this study was conducted in the summer of 2020 and that ivermectin has been widely used in several countries like Brazil & India with very serious Coronavirus outbreaks for some extended period. If ivermectin was so effective why hasn't it been widely acknowledged. I can not believe that tens of thousands of doctors would ignore a really effective treatment if it existed in the face of this pandemic.

On 2022-12-08 20:41:52, user Marijana Vujkovic wrote:

this paper has been published

https://www.nature.com/arti...

On 2023-09-27 12:35:32, user Patrick Alexander Wachholz wrote:

This preprint has been published in a peer-reviewed journal at https://www.scielo.br/j/rla...

On 2020-04-28 12:35:10, user Ashutosh wrote:

It is flawed right from start.. A country of population size more than three times of US can't be compared with Cities

On 2022-01-07 15:49:40, user Franciska Ruessink wrote:

The study heavily relies on vaccinated and unvaccinated people being equally eager to be tested. But unvaccinated test less https://covid19danmark.dk/#... so probably they only test with more severe symptoms. If the secondary case for unvaccinated is 28-29 % for both Omicron and Delta, there may be a lot more untested Omicron cases behind that than untested Delta, as Omicron is milder.

On 2022-01-08 03:40:41, user Robyn Chuter wrote:

In Supplemental Table 2, deaths following hospitalisation for myocarditis are differentiated by vaccine dosage status, and SARS-CoV-2 test positivity.<br /> Given the increased rate of system adverse events after vaccination in COVID-recovered individuals, it would be helpful to differentiate between myocarditis deaths that occurred after vaccination in never-infected vs COVID-recovered individuals.

On 2022-01-08 14:44:03, user Jack wrote:

It appears from the opening paragraph and the references to hospitalization and death and death certificates, that these incidents of myocarditis are referring specifically to severe myocarditis. Is anyone able to confirm if this is the case because, if it is, with mortality for severe myocarditis being as high as 50% after 5 years, that would make the vaccine a greater risk than Covid-19 for men under 40 who have no significant comorbidities.

On 2022-01-12 16:00:26, user Robert Nelson wrote:

Regarding the matching based on vaccination status. The percentage of the matched delta having any vaccine was 64% vs 69% of matched Omicron cohort. (no vaccine = 36% and 31% respectively). The percentage of delta (matched) with 2 doses = 54% vs 58% for Omicron. So we're looking at about a 7 to 8% advantage to omicron cohort if we assume less severity or decreased chance of death. But when you apply that differential to the HR it doesn't change the outcome very much.

On 2022-01-13 07:22:11, user Tomer Yona wrote:

What measurement tools did you use to assess depression, anxiety and OCD disorders?

On 2022-01-13 13:55:45, user Kirk Kelln wrote:

IMPORTANT DATA ERROR in "Table 2: Demographic and clinical characteristics of cases tested in outpatient settings with SGTF and non-SGTF SARS-CoV-2 infections", line "Hispanic 7,762 (6.6) 23,894 (45.8) 1.29 (1.24, 1.34) 1.26 (1.21, 1.32)" The percentage of Hispanic is stated as 6.6 but this is incorrect. Should be about 45.9%. Thanks for this interesting report!

On 2021-10-08 15:21:09, user Marco Pellegrini wrote:

This research has been published in a peer-reviewed journal as of October 6th, 2021:

Lucchetta, M., Pellegrini, M. Drug repositioning by merging active subnetworks validated in cancer and COVID-19.

19839 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41...

On 2022-01-20 18:37:15, user Sam Smith wrote:

Why to use EchinaForce 3 times a day? Why not 1 time a day or 5 times a day?

On 2022-01-21 00:18:18, user Myssi Graves wrote:

It's disappointing to see the final published abstract. I have to wonder if the authors had to agree to adding the political 'vaccinate and boost' in order to be published, or if it was fear of backlash. The paper was a warning of possibilities, not a push to continue using a vaccine that fit the very failures the article warned of, or at least it was.

On 2022-01-22 07:07:07, user JanLotvall wrote:

Vaccine equity is certainly important, but does this data really support the conclusion that vaccination rates explain difference in COVID mortality?. If you use the January 2021 rCFR numbers as a baseline, it was 1.83 (95% CI: 1.24-2.43) in highly vaccinated countries, and in rest of the world it was 2.32 (95% CI: 1.86-2.79). This suggests that other factors than vaccination may explain presumed differences in mortality between the different countries, presumably quality of health care, and perhaps other public health variables in the different countries. Tobacco smoking is potentially one factor that could explains differences in trends between countries.

On 2022-01-24 08:12:11, user giu.nanni@tiscali.it wrote:

As the Authors declare, one of the limitations of their study is “the relatively small numbers of tested samples in time groups”. More than this, it seems inappropriate comparing an unknown number of sera of the 31 Sputnik vaccinated individuals with 51 sera of the 17 Pfizer vaccinated. How many sera of the Sputnik group, in the different study times, are compared with the sera of the Pfizer group? Which is the number of Pfizer vaccinated in the three different study times? The 15 Sputnik individuals studied <3 months after the second dose are not the 16 studied 3-6 months later? Moreover, the figures, in particular the number 1, do not show the differences between the two vaccines.<br /> Among the criteria for comparing the changes in the titre of NtAbs determined by two different vaccines is ‘how many fold’ sufficient?<br /> Since several reports underscore the efficacy of the booster of the mRMA vaccines in the protection against Omicron variant, it should be more relevant to compare the third dose of two different vaccines.

On 2020-05-09 15:39:10, user AdamWichura wrote:

How come people in Italy and Spain are vitamin D deficient?

On 2022-01-27 12:00:25, user Steve Winter wrote:

Readers should be aware that these findings are now fully published, doi:10.1001/jamaneurol.2021.5109

On 2021-10-15 08:17:58, user Laura Van Poelvoorde wrote:

This research now has been published in Frontiers in Microbiology (https://www.frontiersin.org... "https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2021.747458/full)")

On 2022-01-28 20:28:06, user Charlie Jones wrote:

Does the background of the person affect their suicidal ideation (ie socioeconomic status, family situation).

On 2022-01-28 20:30:20, user Sarah wrote:

What tool was used to determine suicidal ideation?

On 2021-10-18 09:01:15, user Jan Masleid wrote:

https://www.youtube.com/wat... <br /> Let's Review Novavax Phase III Interim Results (Released on Oct 11th 2021)<br /> Oct 17, 2021<br /> Drbeen Medical Lectures<br /> 420K subscribers<br /> Finally Novavax Phase III Trial Interim Results

On 2022-02-03 11:31:50, user delaxo wrote:

Is there a distinction between "deaths from Covid" and "deaths with Covid"?<br /> Or they are both taken alike?

On 2025-09-15 13:27:23, user Maksim wrote:

The manuscript is now accepted for publication.<br /> DOI: 10.2174/0113816128412495250824132514<br /> Curr Pharm Des 2025

On 2022-02-11 20:36:21, user Lou Edi wrote:

I'm not sure how the conclusions follow. The study does not research incidence of infections among the groups, after all. It researches the incidence of false alarms.

This is worsened by the exclusion criteria. Self-tested positives get excluded, and may then be counted as negative subjects if they had another test. Fervent testers get a lot of false alarms. While hesitant testers (i.e. tests when they had a close contact and got sick) get high positive rates.<br /> Since these behaviors likely correlate to some extent with vaccine uptake and previous infection, this needs to be accounted for.

Additional distortion: by the criteria, someone who got sick before and after the booster, only gets his unboosted positive counted (presumably rare, but most significant).<br /> While someone who got negatively tested before and after the booster, only gets his boosted negatve counted.

Note on the conclusion: waning effects, both for infection and severity, need to be mentioned. However for this, countries that boosted early will be the main indicators. Same for the results of a 2nd booster.

On 2022-02-14 08:23:23, user kdrl nakle wrote:

Poorly written paper that looks like a hodge podge and has diagrams lacking clarifications, one has to search in the main body of paper for relevant references.

On 2022-02-15 04:05:10, user Vijayaprasad Gopichandran wrote:

This is a very important analysis of the role of COVID 19 vaccination on ICU admission and mortality due to COVID 19 in Tamil Nadu. This is a secondary data analysis and it concludes that having two doses of COVID 19 vaccine resulted in significant reduction in severe COVID 19 (ICU admissions) and death due to COVID 19. The strength of the study is that it analyses the effectiveness of the vaccine in reducing severe disease and mortality from real time data. However, some more clarity on some details in the methods, and analysis will help interpret the results better. How was the vaccination status obtained? Was it obtained from the hospital database, which in turn is obtained from self report by the patient or their caregivers? Or was it obtained or confirmed from the Co-Win national COVID 19 vaccination portal? This is important because, self report could be biased (more likely to be overestimate with the various restrictions and penalties sanctioned by the state for not accepting the vaccine). It is important to know whether the researchers confirmed the vaccination status from the CoWin Portal data. Secondly what were the standard criteria recommended by the state for ICU admission? To what extent were these criteria strictly adhered to? What was the ICU bed availability status during this period? Is it likely that some of the severe cases were misclassified due to non-availability of ICU beds? It would have been better to have a more objective criterion for classification of sever disease such as SpO2, PaO2/FiO2 ratio, respiratory rate, arterial blood gases or any such parameters rather than ICU admission rates as the ICU admission rates could be influenced by availability of ICU beds as well as the clinical judgment of the admitting health care provider. Thirdly, conspicuous by its absence in the paper is the odds ratio of admission to health facilities compared to care in CCC or Home Isolation. The data has been captured as described in the methods section, but this analysis is not reported. This is very important data. The researchers themselves start the paper by describing the importance of COVID 19 as a disease which burdened the health system. Prevention of hospitalisation is an important outcome from this perspective. It would be helpful to know this result also. Finally, the researchers should explain why they have limited themselves only to a bivariate analysis and why they have not attempted any multivariable model adjusting for age, sex, comorbidities, time period of admission and other such important variables which are likely to influence the severity of illness as well as mortality. Overall, this is important information. But if given more clarity on these lines, it would add more value to scientific literature on COVID 19 vaccines.

On 2021-10-26 07:55:37, user TheUnderdog wrote:

Why is the 40% and 63% 'effectiveness' solely attributed to the vaccine, and not to the individual's own immunity (including natural immunity)?

I would argue this shows an opposite effect. The vaccinated group only have a 40% effectiveness of not getting infected, whilst the natural immunity group have a 63% effectiveness rate of not being infected.

If it was just the individual's own vaccine that was preventing onward transmission to others, then we'd expect the percentages to both groups to be the same. In-fact, if the vaccines even worked we'd expect the effectiveness percentages to be flipped around, with vaccinated people seeing more effective protection.

This study just appears to reinforce natural immunity as offering better protection, which correlates with the Israel datasets showing natural immunity works better against Delta (see: https://www.timesofisrael.c... "https://www.timesofisrael.com/study-covid-recovery-gave-israelis-longer-lasting-delta-defense-than-vaccines/)").

On 2021-10-26 18:07:58, user Daniel Lidstone wrote:

Hi, very nice paper. Was the anti-correlated DMN-DAN edge showing the mediation effect an anterior or posterior DMN parcel? I didn't see specific labels in the preprint.<br /> -Daniel

On 2022-02-24 03:46:50, user Kevin Kavanagh wrote:

Deaths appear to be spiking in South Africa. It might be the H78Y mutation. Deaths are also spiking in Denmark. The current data in the 4 weeks after this study are not reassuring.

On 2022-04-13 23:10:02, user D.R. wrote:

This study unfortunately missed an opportunity. It purports to have “[ established a Phase 3 pragmatic trial to evaluate the effectiveness of a test-and-treat approach to identification and treatment of vitamin D insufficiency for prevention of COVID-19 and other ARIs in U.K. adults” ].

When the trial failed to determine a statistically significant prevention of ARI with the dosing followed, the authors say that “ultimately, however, this trial was designed to investigate the effectiveness of a pragmatic ‘test-and-treat’ approach to boosting population vitamin D status, rather than biologic efficacy of vitamin D to prevent ARIs, and our findings should be interpreted accordingly,” essentially abandoning the prevention of ARIs.

In any trial there has to be a target serum concentration of the drug under study.<br /> Participants should be determined as having reached it, IF sufficiency for prevention of ARI is to be assessed. This trial did not appear to have a target, other than the presumption that over 75nmol/l was sufficient which has no scientific basis.

As regards the “pragmatic test-and-treat approach to boosting population vitamin D status”, the strategy has to get the participants to a target within a short period of time as it will take many weeks to become effective. A fixed dose across six months and across all BMI types is ill-advised. The approach should at the start reflect current primary care practice to get the participant to a target level within 5 weeks, and confirm that it was reached as a prerequisite for observation of effectiveness at prevention of ARIs. The difference here should have been to then assess whether participants has achieved the required level and not just abandon the effort as currently practiced by primary care in the UK. <br /> More than 50% of participants were over-weight or obese, and would struggle to get to a target within 5 weeks unless calcifidiol was used, or a specifically tailored regimen employed. This absorption challenge was known in advance of design. So not only was the evaluation of a pragmatic approach compromised, but the foundation for the proper assessment of prevention of disease was too.

The data on the effectiveness of the dosing by BMI should be detailed in the paper, and raw data made available.

In any event, the trial found that a mean of 102.9nmol (s.d. 23.6) did not produce a preventive effect. The failure to have a prerequisite specific serum level in a timely fashion for the observation of prevention, when the virus was most prevalent, most likely compromised the outcomes of the trial.

The conclusion would be better worded to state that “Among adults with a high baseline prevalence of apparent vitamin D insufficiency, implementation of a test-and-treat approach to vitamin D replacement using a maximum uniform 3200IU/d over six months for all participants, regardless of BMI type, did not reduce risk of all-cause ARI or Covid-19.”

On 2022-05-04 09:04:40, user helene banoun wrote:

Thank you for your work

Have you considered the possibility that it is not directly the vaccine antibodies that are transferred from vaccinated to non-vaccinated but rather the vaccine mRNA?

There are indeed studies that show that this passage is possible through sweat in both directions.

People not directly vaccinated would thus be indirectly vaccinated by transdermal diffusion of the vaccine.

And indeed, as indicated in the previous comment, the antibodies can come from a previous infection rather than from a vaccination followed by a transfer of antibodies

Bart, Geneviève, Daniel Fischer, Anatoliy Samoylenko, Artem Zhyvolozhnyi, Pavlo Stehantsev, Ilkka Miinalainen, Mika Kaakinen, et al. "Characterization of nucleic acids from extracellular vesicle-enriched human sweat. BMC Genomics 22, no. 1 (June 9, 2021): 425. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12....

https://bmcgenomics.biomedc....

https://www.frontiersin.org....

Karvinen, Sira, Tero Sievänen, Jari E. Karppinen, Pekka Hautasaari, Geneviève Bart, Anatoliy Samoylenko, Seppo J. Vainio, Juha P. Ahtiainen, Eija K. Laakkonen, and Urho M. Kujala. "MicroRNAs in Extracellular Vesicles in Sweat Change in Response to Endurance Exercise". Frontiers in Physiology 11 (2020): 676. https://doi.org/10.3389/fph....

Inhaled RNA Therapy: From Promise to Reality

https://linkinghub.elsevier... October 2020

Outer membrane vesicles derived from E. coli as novel vehicles for transdermal and tumor targeting delivery

http://xlink.rsc.org/?DOI=D...

Recent Advances in Extracellular Vesicles as Drug Delivery Systems and Their Potential in Precision Medicine

Intranasal, oral, intraocular and subconjunctival delivery of extracellular vesicles capable of carrying drugs

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.go...

Plant Exosome-like Nanovesicles: Emerging Therapeutics and Drug Delivery Nanoplatforms

https://www.sciencedirect.c...

RNA Aptamer Delivery through Intact Human Skin

https://www.sciencedirect.c...

Large RNA molecules can penetrate intact skin and retain their biological activity

Passive inhaled mRNA vaccination for SARS-Cov-2

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.go...

https://www.fda.gov/regulat...

virus or bacteria-based gene therapy products (VBGT products)

the term "shedding" means release of VBGT or oncolytic products from the patient through one or all of the following ways: excreta (feces); secreta (urine, saliva, nasopharyngeal fluids etc.); or through the skin (pustules, sores, wounds)

On 2022-05-09 16:36:22, user eduardo quiñelen wrote:

Dear,<br /> Please, we need you to explain the information on true positives, true negatives, false positives and false negatives disaggregated for each test.

On 2021-11-20 19:22:50, user John Tyler wrote:

We’re aren’t statisticians. This is meaningless to the masses unless put into layman’s terms. I have no idea if this studies supports or refutes vaccination.

On 2022-08-21 14:21:09, user Gerard Job wrote:

This article was published in the journal of clinical trials.....Author Info<br /> Gerard Job1,2*, Jennifer Okungbowa-Ikponmwosa1 and Yijia M1<br /> 1Department of Emergency, Jackson Memorial Hospital, Miami, Florida, USA<br /> 2Department of Emergency, Miami Dade Fire, Air and Ocean Rescue, Miami, Florida, USA

Citation: Job G, Okungbowa-Ikponmwosa J, Yijia M (202 1) Feasibility of Establishing a Return-to-Work Protocol Based on COVID-19 Antibodies Testing. J Clin Trials. 11:480.

Received: 22-Jan-2021 Accepted: 05-Feb-2021 Published: 12-Feb-2021 , DOI: 10.35248/2167-0870.21.11.48

On 2020-04-03 12:58:04, user Kate wrote:

How can you find a correlation in an observational study? I'm not even touching on the issue of not controlling for any confounding variable