THE PSYCHOLOGIST : Covid breakthrough Infections and the elderly

Covid breakthrough Infections and the elderly

A breakthrough infection is when a vaccinated person still gets the disease. Study suggests that the elderly are LESS affected by breakthrough infections. The study authors were Chinese but their data was international, not Chinese

Published in the journal of Infectious Disease by Jing et al., “SARS-CoV-2 vaccine breakthrough infection in the older adults: a meta-analysis and systematic review,” as the durability challenges of the COVID-19 vaccines lead to waning vaccine effectiveness, associated breakthrough infections tend to rise.

The study authors, affiliated with the Tianjin University of Traditional Chinese Medicine in the northern coastal metropolis of about 14 million people, come to the bombshell conclusion contrary to popular understanding: elderly persons face far less risk for breakthrough infection than is popularly understood, and that the risk of severe COVID-19, hospitalization and death due to breakthrough infection remains perhaps even lower risk than for breakthrough infection alone.

Do these findings alter the risk-benefit calculus for vaccination? Could these results be because of vaccination or natural Immunity? These are important questions. While TrialSite doesn’t anticipate that this important meta-analysis will be picked up by mainstream press in the West the outcomes, limitations aside, are important for further consideration.

The study, published in BMC infectious Diseases and represented by corresponding author Xiaohui Jing with the Tianjin University of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Tianjin, China raises significant questions. Much of the data generated by U.S. public health sources points to far more COVID-19 risk associated with older individuals. Yet this study out of China points to an opposite conclusion.

The Study

Designed as a systematic review or meta-analysis, from November 2, 2022, the study team reviewed 30 studies published across English language journal platforms from PubMed and Embase to Cochrane Library and Web of Science. Employing the use of a random-effects model the team calculated pooled estimates of the prevalence and occurrences of COVID-19 breakthrough infections in elderly persons.

Mindful of the influence of bias, the study team employed use of funnel plots, Egger’s regression test, as well as sensitivity analyses while following standard guidelines for this class of study-- Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA).

The Results

The study authors report across 30 publications reveals a pool prevalence of COVID-19 breakthrough infection among the elderly at 7.7 per 1,000 individuals (95% CI, 4.0-15.0), with pooled incidence equaling 29.1 per 1000 person-years (95%CI 15.2–55.7).

The China-based researchers take away from their meta-analysis that the prevalence and incidence of SARS-CoV-19 breakthrough infection in older adults was low. But more eye opening was the finding associated with the risk of hospitalization, severe disease and death associated with the elderly and breakthrough infections, which was even lower than the risk of breakthrough infection.

Study Limitations

Jing and colleagues disclosure a handful of limitations including 1) study data restricted to publications in English, 2) the inclusion of studies with a sample size greater than 500 may result in the loss of small eligible studies; 3) Lots of heterogeneity was observed in the included studies; 4) most of the studies included in this study were observed within six months of vaccination; 5) some studies provided little information about the potential influencing factors such as vaccine type, vaccine dose, gender, prior infection, time from vaccination to breakthrough infection, comorbidity, and lifestyle of the included older adults on the prevalence and incidence of COVID-19 breakthrough infection and finally 6) It was also impossible to conduct meta-analyses among some groups due to the less information from studies assessing those factors. Clearly more research is required.

https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/bombshell-study-from-china-covid-19-breakthrough-infection-cases-severity-among-elderly-low-b096ac51

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Background

The essence of conservatism is caution. The essence of Leftism is anger

This blog is written solely by John Ray, who has a Ph.D. degree in psychology and 200+ papers published in the academic journals of the social sciences. It does occasionally comment on issues in psychology but is mainly aimed at giving a conservative psychologist's view on a broad range of topics. There are very few conservative psychologists.

The blog originated in Australia and many (but not most) posts discuss Australian matters. Australians have an unusually good awareness of events outside their own country. Australian newspapers feature news from Britain and the USA not as an afterthought but as a major part of their coverage. So Australians do tend to have a truly Western heart, which is the reason behind the old name for this blog. So events in Australia, Britain and the USA all feature frequently here, plus occasional coverage of other places, particularly Israel.

A primer in American politics for non-Americans:

SCOTUS is the Supreme Court of the United States, the highest court in the land

The "GOP" stands for "Grand Old Party" and refers to the Republican party. The GOP is at present center/Right, while the Democrats have been undergoing a steady drift Leftwards and now have policies similar to mainstream European Leftist parties.

The ideological identity of both parties has however been very fluid -- almost reversing itself over time. In the mid 19th century, the GOP was the party of big government and concern for minorities while the Democrats advertised themselves as "The party of the white man" -- an orientation that lasted into the mid 20th century in the South. The Democrats are still obsessed with race but have now flipped into support for discrimination AGAINST whites.

Was Pope Urban VIII the first Warmist? Below we see him refusing to look through Galileo's telescope. People tend to refuse to consider evidence— if what they might discover contradicts what they believe.

Global warming

Calibrated in whole degrees. Larger graph here

Climate scientist Lennart Bengtsson said. “The warming we have had the last 100 years is so small that if we didn’t have meteorologists and climatologists to measure it we wouldn’t have noticed it at all.”

The term "Fascism" is mostly used by the Left as a brainless term of abuse. But when they do make a serious attempt to define it, they produce very complex and elaborate definitions -- e.g. here and here. In fact, Fascism is simply extreme socialism plus nationalism. But great gyrations are needed to avoid mentioning the first part of that recipe, of course.

Two examples of Leftist racism below (much more here and here):

Beatrice Webb, a founder of the London School of Economics and the Fabian Society, and married to a Labour MP, mused in 1922 on whether when English children were "dying from lack of milk", one should extend "the charitable impulse" to Russian and Chinese children who, if saved this year, might anyway die next. Besides, she continued, there was "the larger question of whether those races are desirable inhabitants" and "obviously" one wouldn't "spend one's available income" on "a Central African negro".

Hugh Dalton, offered the Colonial Office during Attlee's 1945-51 Labour government, turned it down because "I had a horrid vision of pullulating, poverty stricken, diseased nigger communities, for whom one can do nothing in the short run and who, the more one tries to help them, are querulous and ungrateful."

Defensible and indefensible usages of the term "racism"

The book, The authoritarian personality, authored by T.W. Adorno et al. in 1950, has been massively popular among psychologists. It claims that a set of ideas that were popular in the "Progressive"-dominated America of the prewar era were "authoritarian". Leftist regimes always are authoritarian so that claim was not a big problem. What was quite amazing however is that Adorno et al. identified such ideas as "conservative". They were in fact simply popular ideas of the day but ones that had been most heavily promoted by the Left right up until the then-recent WWII. See here for details of prewar "Progressive" thinking.

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a war criminal. Both British and American codebreakers had cracked the Japanese naval code so FDR knew what was coming at Pearl Harbor. But for his own political reasons he warned no-one there. So responsibility for the civilian and military deaths at Pearl Harbor lies with FDR as well as with the Japanese. The huge firepower available at Pearl Harbor, both aboard ship and on land, could have largely neutered the attack. Can you imagine 8 battleships and various lesser craft firing all their AA batteries as the Japanese came in? The Japanese naval airforce would have been annihilated and the war would have been over before it began.

FDR prolonged the Depression. He certainly didn't cure it.

WWII did NOT end the Great Depression. It just concealed it. It in fact made living standards worse

Joe McCarthy was eventually proved right after the fall of the Soviet Union. To accuse anyone of McCarthyism is to accuse them of accuracy!

The KKK was intimately associated with the Democratic party. They ATTACKED Republicans!

People who mention differences in black vs. white IQ are these days almost universally howled down and subjected to the most extreme abuse. I am a psychometrician, however, so I feel obliged to defend the scientific truth of the matter:

The average African adult has about the same IQ as an average white 11-year-old and African Americans (who are partly white in ancestry) average out at a mental age of 14. The American Psychological Association is generally Left-leaning but it is the world's most prestigious body of academic psychologists. And even they have had to concede that sort of gap (one SD) in black vs. white average IQ. 11-year olds can do a lot of things but they also have their limits and there are times when such limits need to be allowed for.

America's uncivil war was caused by trade protectionism. The slavery issue was just camouflage, as Abraham Lincoln himself admitted. See also here

Did William Zantzinger kill poor Hattie Carroll?

Did Bismarck predict where WWI would start or was it just a "free" translation by Churchill?

Leftist psychologists have an amusingly simplistic conception of military organizations and military men. They seem to base it on occasions they have seen troops marching together on parade rather than any real knowledge of military men and the military life. They think that military men are "rigid" -- automatons who are unable to adjust to new challenges or think for themselves. What is incomprehensible to them is that being kadaver gehorsam (to use the extreme Prussian term for following orders) actually requires great flexibility -- enough flexibility to put your own ideas and wishes aside and do something very difficult. Ask any soldier if all commands are easy to obey.

A good article on Leftist hate

The real history of social Darwinism

Some personal memoirs

Memoir highlights

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Covid breakthrough Infections and the elderly

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