Covid-19 #21 - The Darkness Before the Dawn

[Fragile Bird]

A vaccine is being distributed, but so many will still die before they ever get a chance to get it. So much suffering on many other levels as well yet to come.

[Pebble thats Stubby]

I've been trying most of the day to work out a festive themed pun for this thread title.

 

Not that there is anything festive about a pandemic, and so many people dying, but so many extra will die because of Xmas.   

[Spockydog]

Just got back from a thoroughly depressing walk in the park with an old friend. He's convinced the whole thing is some kind of depopulation exercise, with Bill Gates at the helm. Also, the global economy is being tanked 'so they can control us'.

Fuck Facebook. 

[Fragile Bird]

33 minutes ago, Pebble thats Stubby said:

I've been trying most of the day to work out a festive themed pun for this thread title.

 

Not that there is anything festive about a pandemic, and so many people dying, but so many extra will die because of Xmas.   

I tried as well, More Thanks Given for Christmas! 
 

Bah. 

[Fragile Bird]

A health care worker in Alaska had a severe reaction to the Pfizer vaccine similar to those in the UK and has been hospitalized. It’s unclear yet if they had a history of allergic reactions.

[Zorral]

Going to be a long darkness of many months -- and that's not even factoring in the utter idiocy of everybody in charge with now we're close, no we're open, indoor dining, not indoor, except indoors outside, here, but not there -- and then we're going to open again for Christmas! when every expert says Christmas is going to make January and February indescribably bad -- and finish off the nurses and doctors and morgue workers, etc.  Why are people so stupid now?  One cannot reconcile the irreconcilable!  Plus we have a regional snowstorm which likely is going to regionally disrupt vaccine delivery, while closing down the vaccination centers.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/the-trump-admin-has-a-plan-to-distribute-the-vaccine-that-ends-when-biden-takes-office

 

Quote

 

....Coronavirus numbers continue to climb, even as vaccinations are beginning. Josh Kovensky and Kate Riga at Talking Points Memo are following the story that the Trump administration appears to have planned a federal vaccine rollout only until Biden takes office, and then has simply planned to turn the problem over to the states to handle without any funding. This threatens to turn vaccine distribution into chaos, while Trump administration officials are making rosy predictions about how things will go in those early weeks.

Dr. Leana Wen, a former Baltimore city health commissioner and a George Washington University health policy professor, told the TPM reporters: “I just don’t see how it would happen.” Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar has promised that the vaccine will be widely distributed in February and March, but, she said, “That’s an extremely optimistic projection that assumes everything is done perfectly, and when resources are so limited, that perfect execution is nearly impossible.”....

 

 

[JoannaL]

So this will be a rant:

We had 950 deaths today. Since Germanys population is roughly a quarter of the US  I think our number of deaths are quite comparable. We have a much small number of daily new infected though. How is this possible?

In March we locked down everything and came out quite ok. This then raised critisims in a lot of areas (prevention paradoxon). One main argument was that is it wrong to isolate the old. That this was overdone. E.G. when one politician proposed that it would be a good idea to have some hours reserved for the over 60 for shopping he was shitstormed for "age discrimination". The old and pensioneer are a main basis for Merkels CDU party. So when the second wave hit it seemed important for the politicians to NOT close the nursing homes. To NOT single out the old ones and tell them to stay at home. Now they are dying.

Even with the new stronger lock down which started today, the nursing homes are still open. When I look out the window I see a barricaded playground so that no children can meet and play. On the other hand my mother, who lives in a nursing home and suffers from dementia may still go out all alone (without a mask, because she forgets to use it) and come back with out disinfecting her hands (also because she forgets). When I complained about not closing I was told that they will not close as long as there are no cases in the facility (I think the english idiom for such a thing is something with horses and barn doors?) I am so frustrated and frightened.

To hinder the children to play is unnessaryly cruel. But to not protect the vulnerable is murderous.

[Fragile Bird]

18 minutes ago, JoannaL said:

So this will be a rant:
<snip>

(I think the english idiom for such a thing is something with horses and barn doors?) I am so frustrated and frightened.

To hinder the children to play is unnessaryly cruel. But to not protect the vulnerable is murderous.

Uh-huh. I think Canada has one of the worst records in the world when it comes to seniors. We have had 13,744 deaths, and almost 80% have been in LTC homes. Imagine if we had had better protections for them, maybe we’d only have 2,700 deaths.

[Fragile Bird]

Oh, in other news, some shipments of the Pfizer vaccine have been returned to the plant because they were shipped at too cold a temperature. 
 

I knew they had to be kept at - 94 F, but I assumed that was a minimum and being colder was irrelevant. Wow.

[williamjm]

2 hours ago, Pebble thats Stubby said:

I've been trying most of the day to work out a festive themed pun for this thread title.

Not that there is anything festive about a pandemic, and so many people dying, but so many extra will die because of Xmas.   

How about 'Not Driving Home For Christmas'?

1 hour ago, Fragile Bird said:

A health care worker in Alaska had a severe reaction to the Pfizer vaccine similar to those in the UK and has been hospitalized. It’s unclear yet if they had a history of allergic reactions.

I haven't heard about any more serious cases in the UK since the two before they changed the guidance to avoid people with bad allergies. The latest count was about 140000 vaccinations done so it hopefully doesn't look like a common problem (at least not for the first dose).

[IheartIheartTesla]

1 hour ago, Fragile Bird said:

Oh, in other news, some shipments of the Pfizer vaccine have been returned to the plant because they were shipped at too cold a temperature. 
 

I knew they had to be kept at - 94 F, but I assumed that was a minimum and being colder was irrelevant. Wow.

Its more that they dont know the effects of too cold a temperature and returned the trays due to an abundance of caution.

I dont know too much about the Pfizer vaccine, but using my own example of insulin - freezing it as opposed to storing between 2-8C can render a bottle practically useless because of breakdown. Other examples include materials crystallizing out at lower temperatures from which it is harder to resuspend them. For the Pfizer case, because of accelerated development I imagine they haven't done too much testing of off-spec conditions.

[Werthead]

My friend who had COVID back in March, right at the onset of it all, and is still not 100% back to normal. She managed to get an antibody test today and they confirmed she has no antibodies at all, so is open to reinfection.

[Fragile Bird]

7 minutes ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

Its more that they dont know the effects of too cold a temperature and returned the trays due to an abundance of caution.

I dont know too much about the Pfizer vaccine, but using my own example of insulin - freezing it as opposed to storing between 2-8C can render a bottle practically useless because of breakdown. Other examples include materials crystallizing out at lower temperatures from which it is harder to resuspend them. For the Pfizer case, because of accelerated development I imagine they haven't done too much testing of off-spec conditions.

I figured as much, but still...

I wonder what happened, did someone put too much dry ice in the box?

[Zorral]

In keeping with Bird's introduction to thread CV-!9 #21, and the ever-widening circles of needless cruelities:

For the first time ever, UNICEF has allocated funds to feed children in a part of London!

How could this be, on might ask?

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/dec/16/theatre-of-the-absurd-as-boris-tells-country-obey-the-rules-dont-obey-the-rules

Quote

 

....Starmer began by asking if the country had been too slow to lockdown, given the UK is the world’s sixth largest economy and has suffered one of the highest death rates and deepest economic recessions. Boris tugged his hair – a sure tell that he’s about to lie – and said that everything had worked out just fine. With help from Typhoid Dido we had still managed to fit in the Cheltenham festival and it was just petty to quibble about a possible 20,000 extra deaths.

Then Johnson went completely rogue. “We have always followed the science,” he insisted. Apart from the times when he hasn’t. Most scientists wanted to go into lockdown sooner in March. They also wanted a further short lockdown in September. And they sure as hell don’t want the five day Christmas killing zone that the government has set its heart upon. Even more bizarrely, Boris acted as if both the lockdowns the country has been put in were nothing to do with him, and were all the fault of the namby pamby Labour leader. I guess Johnson is often as surprised as the rest of us that he is actually in charge of the country.

Time and again, Keir tried to drag Johnson back to reality, but with limited success. He got no answer as to why Dominic Cummings – the man whose 50-mile round trip to Barnard Castle that single-handedly undermined the credibility of the government’s public health messaging – was worth a £40K pay rise when public sector workers were getting a pay freeze. Nor could Boris answer why, if the government’s new tiering system was working, the rate of infection was going up in three-quarters of the country. Instead he accused the Labour leader of having no plan. Apart from the one that he and the editors of the British Medical Journal and the Health Service Journal had endorsed....

....There was a rather more serious Johnson on offer at the afternoon press conference with Chris Whitty, but the message remained much the same contradictory nonsense. Obey the rules but don’t obey the rules. The rules are really only there for show – remember it was Boris who promised us that the pandemic would all be over by Christmas – so try not to see anyone, if at all possible. Again, the prime minister appealed to his own terra incognita of personal responsibility yet somehow managed to leave the viewer with a sense that the government had just abdicated its own....

 

No different here. Beyond time they all get locked away in an institution for the criminally insane. I think that includes our mayor and governor.
 

[Clueless Northman]

7 hours ago, Spockydog said:

Just got back from a thoroughly depressing walk in the park with an old friend. He's convinced the whole thing is some kind of depopulation exercise, with Bill Gates at the helm. Also, the global economy is being tanked 'so they can control us'.

Fuck Facebook. 

That's something I just don't get. If you want to depopulate with covid, it's not working at all, it only hurts countries with already low birth-rates, and still only kills the elderly. You're not going to reduce global population with that, you'd need a 1/3 death ratio if you wanted some serious effect. On the other hand, why would any mad scientist engineer a virus of limited harm to force people to take a deadly vaccine that still wouldn't kill anyone for the next 6-12 months before becoming effective, when you can just engineer a killer virus instead? (not to mention the sheer stupidity of the "killer vaccine" part, it's jus a bad sci-fi trope)

This would be the most convoluted and least efficient way of depopulating the Earth I could ever think of, and if there's one thing I'm not lacking, it's wild imagination.

[Fragile Bird]

I have been watching Worldometer all day, and swallowed hard when I saw at my 5:30 pm check the US number was already over 200,000 cases. The day hasn’t ended yet, but the number is now 246,431, which is a record, I think. And the deaths are at 3,472, also a record, right? 
 

Back in September the guy who does the projections that are usually quoted by everyone was being interviewed on CNN. He said deaths would hit about 4,000 around Christmas. I really had difficulty believing that. He said it was because too many people weren’t wearing masks.

At the end of October doctors kept saying “look at Canada, they’re warning us not to gather at Thanksgiving, look at their spike.”

[Fragile Bird]

Oh, Dr. Sanjay Gupta just explained what happened in Alaska. The person did recover fully.

They had no record of severe allergies, they took a Benadryl, but things got worse, then epinephrine, then another shot, then was hospitalized with an epinephrine drip for a while.

This sounds like a rare event.

eta: since more than 500 M doses will be given in the US, this kind of reaction might happen 500 or more times, if it’s a one in a million event.

[BigFatCoward]

6 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

I have been watching Worldometer all day, and swallowed hard when I saw at my 5:30 pm check the US number was already over 200,000 cases. The day hasn’t ended yet, but the number is now 246,431, which is a record, I think. And the deaths are at 3,472, also a record, right? 
 

Back in September the guy who does the projections that are usually quoted by everyone was being interviewed on CNN. He said deaths would hit about 4,000 around Christmas. I really had difficulty believing that. He said it was because too many people weren’t wearing masks.

At the end of October doctors kept saying “look at Canada, they’re warning us not to gather at Thanksgiving, look are their spike.”

Apparently it finished off at 3700. Which is just fucking insane, especially when it's still trending upwards. 

They need to do one day in which for every death reported there is a full report and figures released to show exactly what people died of. Too many morons keep saying things such as 'if you die in a car crash but had tested positive 2 weeks earlier its shown as covid'. My gut tells me statistically 99% of covid deaths reported are actually from covid, and idiots need to know this. 

[DireWolfSpirit]

Wow.....just wanted to quote this post in case anyone missed this scary news-

12 hours ago, Werthead said:

My friend who had COVID back in March, right at the onset of it all, and is still not 100% back to normal. She managed to get an antibody test today and they confirmed she has no antibodies at all, so is open to reinfection.

 

[BigFatCoward]

12 minutes ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

Wow.....just wanted to quote this post in case anyone missed this scary news-

 

The number of people who have contracted twice is still phenomenally small, so unfortunate for her, but hopefully she is just one of the very very unlucky ones.