0xDBFB7

Oh, I believe that last paper you linked is the one I was referring to.

In my experience, commercial food pressure cookers are pretty commonly found doing duty in microbiology research labs. There's a great paper demonstrating (will dig up) that instant pots are acceptable substitutes for autoclaves for use in low-income countries. I can easily believe that there are FDA tests for medical use (like soft-goods steam penetration, for instance) that it will fail, however. Besides the quality of sterilization, there are other downsides to instant pots as autoclaves, like the un-directed exhaust vent that can willingly spray high-titer bacterial lysate into your face.

@imbAF just a conductive sphere alone? are there not analytic solutions for that specific case?

sorry, I should just go back to the book. Thanks for all the help!

but it's not like ,B> has a meaning like |B> alone does

then it would be bra-ket notation explicitly, I guess

sorry, this probably sounds like the stupidest question, but if the comma was a pipe | would that change the meaning? The author of these lecture notes seems to use <|> in other places

in the lecture notes I'm using the author also notates the inner product as $<A|B>$

@ACuriousMind thanks for the reply - does the comma not represent commutation here? (e.g. math.stackexchange.com/questions/1692331/…)

(e.g. compared to the square brackets used in the trace)

really stupid noob notation question, does the use of angle brackets have significance here?

Honestly, given the amount of publicity the paper and this answer is getting, I really wish it was better. It's correct, but the rhetoric seems... unconvincing and hostile for its target audience. The paper is thoroughly bunk from tip to stern, and deserves a point-by-point rebuke. I really like Barry's answer.

Beyond anything else, the limited few-week timespan considered really deserves a mention, since the vaccines will work for years at least.

This is a lousy answer, but it's what I've got for now. I recall seeing a much better example of a correctly produced risk-reward analysis somewhere regarding blood clots and age groups, but I cannot find it offhand. Other possible improvements might include the types of statistical mining that are done to establish causality, maybe an example of the number of deaths expected after a certain time period based on chance (Poisson process?), a better rebuke of the 95% underreporting figure.

@CJR a great example of post-publication peer-review. A saddening example of pre-publication peer review. The refs hardly even scrutinized the paper's conclusions at all.

Good and constructive input, by the way.

Given that, and the very low observed rates of adverse events in vaccination across the board, what data would be required to change your recommendation? One missing piece might be the adverse event rate in only the non-naive population, but given that 30M US citizens are non-naive and 50% are vaccinated, does it not seem like effects should have caused a large safety signal already?

You say that Long COVID is supported with circumstantial, anecdotal evidence that non-severe infections can cause long-term harm, and I concur.

@LangLangC The data I linked above seems to imply, in sum: despite your excellent study on a strong T-cell response, there is good evidence that less severe reinfection occurs at least a half-percent rate, with a non-zero mortality rate, and this appears to be seen at the scale of large populations. There is good "mechanistic" evidence (considering only the antibody data above) to believe that vaccination increases immunity and does not decrease immunity.

It is clear from the first paper that reinfections are indeed less severe. However, it's useful to remember the reason for vaccination; to produce a robust protection for the community by preventing transmission.

> in individuals who have experienced natural infection or who have only had one vaccine dose. "

> Similarly, the majority of responses in naïve individuals after one dose show weak recognition of B.1.1.7 and B.1.351. This finding indicates potentially poor protection against B.1.1.7 and B.1.351

> In contrast, nAb responses in individuals several months on from mild infection show much lower IC50 titers against B.1.1.7 and B.1.351, often less than 100.

> "It is notable that the high IC50 titers in those vaccinated after infection provide such a large protective margin that responses to authentic B.1.1.7 and B.1.351 variants are also high.

Finally, see this excellent study. science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6549/1418.full . In particular:

For comparison, general-population vaccination adverse event rates are below 0.03%, and serious are below 0.005 (health-infobase.canada.ca/covid-19/vaccine-safety).

The amount and quality of real-world data on this topic is, frankly, disappointing. The 3.2% figure above was associated with a group with a higher rate of comorbidities. Several studies are due to be published by the Iwasaki group on this topic that should shed some light on the long-COVID topic.

Agreeing with you, there have been several papers disputing the idea that previously infected individuals require vaccination, e.g. medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.01.21258176v2.full.pdf . However, these appear to suffer from methodological flaws. healthfeedback.org/claimreview/…

See doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(21)00675-9 . Infection was associated with 84% protection against reinfection over the period studied.

@LangLangC please see doi.org/10.1093/cid/ciab345 . A median time to reinfection of 116 days was found, with a mortality rate of 3.2%. The N was quite low. An average reinfection rate of 0.7% was found (but behaviour and prevalence affect that, obviously). Note that mortality is not necessarily the most enlightening endpoint, since even mild cases are known to still be associated with Long COVID.

@LangLangC Understood and agreed. However, it has been my impression that, despite such good evidence to the contrary, in practice, infection and hospitalization curves this year have been incompatible with the idea that natural immunity is sufficient to prevent severe disease in the community. This may be entirely fallacious, I need to find sources when time permits. I wonder if there are any great meta-analyses on this topic. Thanks again for your thoughtful discussion.

@LangLangC could you point to which section of that paper you're interested in?

I'm afraid I have to go move house, but thanks for the discussion!

( the >>200 number also has issues, of course).

I am very glad to see your insistence on data on skeptics.se, by the way.

I brought up the lancet piece only to contrast with your report of 3 deaths; 3 vs 750 sounds way worse than >>200 deaths (brazil) vs 750, implying that the 3 figure might plausibly be a measurement effect.

I agree wholeheartedly that the answers could be improved, and that antibodies alone are a poor indicator for the long-term course of immunity.

which is very surprising in the context of the low reinfection severity reported in the US

The resurgence reported in the lancet appears to be associated with an equivalent resurgence in hospitalizations

I would be interested to hear your opinion of that lancet study on reinfection, how it compares to the US data collection

That is a very interesting point, but I feel that it (vaccine breakthrough numbers) is subtly different from the question asked (might be worth a different question perhaps?). Those data are presumably coming from different sources, trials, methodologies - does it not seem likely that myriad huge measurement biases are likely to occur in that sort of comparison...

@LangLаngС moreover, are you suggesting that the 750 breakthrough infections would not have occurred if the people were not vaccinated? By what mechanism would the vaccine reduce immunity? Do you have an example of such an event occurring in the past? Based on the antibody titers observed, that would seem to be remarkable. Remember, your comments are on clinical practice and may affect people's lives. Take care!

@LangLangC good point. I have been made aware of these data ( thelancet.com/article/S0140-6736(21)00183-5/fulltext ) in Brazil and Peru that appear to show extraordinary (almost 100%) rates of reinfection. I do not know how to interpret this conflict.

disregard, found it

really dumb question, but does anyone happen to remember a chilling letter by a russian?/ukranian?/polish? mathematician/physicist?/academic? to colleagues, talking about leaving academia, something along the lines of "could no longer work on such academic problems during such times"?

mmm nvm I'll mess around a bit more sorry for the bother

so lpsa.swarthmore.edu/Representations/SysRepTransformations/… says we need to separate into left and right sides,

and the transfer function is H(s) = R [another constant] * F(s) * U(s)

where all the a's and 'b's are constants