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Covid 19 #26: Now is the Winter of Our Discontent


Fragile Bird

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2 hours ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

Y’all, I am a teeny bit worried about my 78 yo dad.  I called him last night and he was peeved because he is currently quarantined.  A little context, my dad still works.  Full time.  And he goes into the office every other week because it’s the only way to get access to his lab (my dad is a physicist).  He and my mom are both fully vaccinated.  However, as he put it “some dumb kid” came into the lab and worked with my dad for a while and was later that day diagnosed with Covid.  This happened within the two weeks after the second dose.  My dad is excellent about mask wearing, and I know the lab requires masks, so I assume the kid was masked too.  And 2 doses + 9 days (that’s what it was) is certainly better than nothing.  But I”m still worried about him.

I understand you are worried. Hopefully, with all precautions applied and your dad having been vaccinated it’ll be all right. Keep us in the loop. 

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Analysis of Covid-19 deaths by Johns Hopkins and the WHO indicates that the death rate from Covid-19 is 10 times higher in countries where the percentage of the population that's overweight is 50% or higher.

I'm grinding my teeth right now because in the fall I was within striking distance of dropping below "overweight" as measured by BMI. Then my sister-in-law went to Poland for 7 weeks and I was looking after my brother. 70 year olds can be worse than children when it comes to what they will eat and won't eat. Since I was cooking (mainly dinner, he could look after breakfast and lunch) I reached the point where I simply was not going to make two meals, and I was not going to let him not eat. I slid back into bad habits and gained a few pounds, then Christmas came a bit of comfort eating for a couple of pounds more, then bitterly cold weather and snow so I wasn't out walking. I've now lost half of what I gained and the weather is better, so I'm out walking again. Also, I discovered two very, very bad, very addictive food items: Speculoos cookie butter and freeze dried shitake mushrooms.

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The team examined mortality data from Johns Hopkins University (JHU) and the World Health Organization (WHO) and found that of 2.5 million COVID-19 deaths reported by the end of February, 2.2 million were in countries where more than half the population is overweight.

In an analysis of data and studies from more than 160 countries, the researchers found that COVID-19 mortality rates increased along with countries' prevalence of obesity. They note that the link persisted even after adjusting for age and national wealth.

The report found that every country where less than 40% of the population was overweight had a low COVID-19 death rate of no more than 10 people per 100,000.

But in countries where more than 50% of the population was overweight, the COVID-19 death rate was much higher -- more than 100 per 100,000.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/covid-19-death-rates-10-times-higher-in-countries-where-most-adults-are-overweight-report-finds-1.5333373

According to the article, almost 3/4 of the US population is either overweight or obese. The number in Canada is a bit lower, 63%, but obviously other factors must be involved with regard to deaths. The US rate is 160 per 100,000 and the Canadian rate 58, using Worldometer numbers. We did more lockdowns, and I think mask wearing was more accepted since leaders across the country, federal, provincial and municipal, strongly supported it.

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3 hours ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

My dad is excellent about mask wearing, and I know the lab requires masks, so I assume the kid was masked too.  And 2 doses + 9 days (that’s what it was) is certainly better than nothing.  But I”m still worried about him.

2 vaccine doses + both individuals wearing masks should substantially reduce his risk, but here's hoping he doesnt get infected. One thing I would recommend based on our own standards (I work in a lab too) is having face shields be mandatory if two people will be working in close proximity (defined by 3 feet or less). For 6 feet or so the masks are deemed to be sufficient. Also, if glove wearing is standard PPE for his lab work, it may provide some additional protection (although I should note gloves are not meant to be primarily used for COVID protection but rather chemical and other hazards). 

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5 minutes ago, Chataya de Fleury said:

@Fragile Bird - very odd to think that most Americans and Canadians are overweight.

Food is cheap and there are whole industries built around getting people to eat and drink a lot. We live in a "I bet you can't just eat one potato chip" society.

But my theory is, everybody has put on weight and so we just don't see it anymore. What used to be considered overweight is taken as normal. When I weighed 15 or 20 pounds less than I do today I really, really felt fat, because before I started working stupid hours in corporate law I was damn skinny. I still remember an old boyfriend talking about the exercise he did "because a couple of pounds a year and ten years later you're fat, and it creeps up on you!" 

I absolutely see it when I watch an old movie and everybody looks wafer thin. We were mainly wafer thin until the end of the 70s, and then you can just see the increase in weights in western countries, almost across the board, but especially in North America.

Anyway, I don't want to derail the Covid-19 thread. :) 

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Brazil is suffering from a horrible variant that seems to be causing reinfection among people that thought they would be immune for awhile after recovering from previous covid infections.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/03/world/americas/brazil-covid-variant.html?smid=url-share

This variant is spilling beyond Brazils border and is a threat to everyone now.

CDC recently announcing we are in danger of losing all the gains we've had fighting the virus if we ease our restrictions too fast right now.

Watch Texas get us all sick next.

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Mississippi too, in solidarity of TX's desire to kill us all off (because, doncha know, rich white men are immune).

That Brasilian variant has been tracked in a few spots here in the USA too.

 

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Health Canada runs the vaccination program here and approves the vaccines, but we also have what is called the National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI) which gives advice to the federal and provincial governments. The position of Health Canada was to follow the dose timing recommended by Pfizer and Moderna, but some provinces decided not to, mainly Quebec which stretched the timing to 90 days and BC which stretched the timing to about 39 days. NACI has now come out and said doses can be spread out by 4 months, something no other country has done. Their reasoning is that after 2 months the effects of the vaccines seem to have peaked and it's not unreasonable to assume that those effects will last for at least two months. The decision seems to be based on the reports out of Quebec, Scotland and Israel.

So far BC and Manitoba have said they will go to 4 months and Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario have said they will also extend the time, and Quebec will look at going from 90 days to 120. NACI will continue to monitor the reports from provinces and other countries and make new recommendations if need be.

They have also announced that vaccine modifications will not have to go through the kind of process the vaccines went through.

This is a natural result of having no vaccine. I have said before that we are so happy the EU didn't take the same route the US did, banning the export of all vaccines, though I now realize we were only being sent half the amount each EU country is getting. The idea that Italy blocked a shipment of AZ to Australia sent shudders through me, but we are getting our first 2 M from India and Korea, and the balance from the US. But I wonder if someone will try to block Pfizer and Moderna next.

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I really hate this blocking of vaccine exports.
I can kinda understand it when a country is suffering badly, and struggling to get their over 70s and priority personnel vaccinated; but I hate it nonetheless.

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@Mlle. Zabzie and @RhaenysBee

sending positive vibes your way!:grouphug:

4 hours ago, Chataya de Fleury said:

@Fragile Bird - very odd to think that most Americans and Canadians are overweight.

Well, when it's likely based on BMI, it's a somewhat poor definition of what overweight is.

Speaking of BMI, I had my first jab today of the Pfizer vaccine. I promise no one is more shocked and surprised than I am about it. I received notification late Monday afternoon that I was able to schedule an appointment and my expectation was in weeks, not days. At any rate they pulled patients via random lottery and here I am, five hours later. They kept everyone for 15 minute observation but I was held for 30 because I had a reaction after my first Hep-B shot seven years ago. So far I feel ok, though my right side neck lymph node feels tender and my ear has that 'infection coming on' feeling. I have a long history of ENT on this particular side so I'm not super concerned. Could just be Thursday. My second appointment is on the 25th.

With the addition of Johnson &Johnson and other factors, DC is expanding its vaccination program. Really really want MC and restaurant workers to get it.

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4 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

Analysis of Covid-19 deaths by Johns Hopkins and the WHO indicates that the death rate from Covid-19 is 10 times higher in countries where the percentage of the population that's overweight is 50% or higher.

A bad, bad article. It's raw numbers, not rate or risk: 2.2m died in one group, 0.3m in the other, with no weighting for number of people or number of covid cases in each group. Overweight numbers are harder to find than obesity, but 67% of countries have a mean BMI in the overweight range. It's analysis of Johns Hopkins and WHO data, not analysis by them; it's a press release from the World Obesity Forum, whoever they are (a brief googling was unenlightening). The countries with the most deaths might happen to fall into the first group, but I think there could be other explanations for why so many people have died in the US and Brazil. Does being overweight increase your chances of dying if you catch covid? Who knows, this article provides zero information on the matter.

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2 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

This is a natural result of having no vaccine. I have said before that we are so happy the EU didn't take the same route the US did, banning the export of all vaccines, though I now realize we were only being sent half the amount each EU country is getting. The idea that Italy blocked a shipment of AZ to Australia sent shudders through me, but we are getting our first 2 M from India and Korea, and the balance from the US. But I wonder if someone will try to block Pfizer and Moderna next.

No, every country in the EU gets the amount of the delivered vaccine  in relation to population, so there will be countries which get much more than Canada and countries which get less.

There will be no blocking of Pfizer or Moderna vaccines since they are not in breach of contract. It is even delivered to the UK which does not deliver AZ to us.

Why do you shudder at the blocking of AZ? Italy has already had  almost 100000 deaths. A lot of countries in the EU are in really bad shape at the moment. The Czech republic for example has as far as I know the worst case ratio in the world.  They are depending on vaccine, France and some German states like Saxony and Thuringia are giving them of there own supplies, though it is really not that we have a lot. All of the EU (apart of  some smaller countries like Malta) is still vaccinating in the highest priorty group of the over 80 year old. And why do we not have enough vaccine? Because (not the only but a main reason) AZ delivered  60 mio doses less than promised in the first quarter and now says that it will deliver 80 mio less than promised in the second. And now they want to ship EU produced vaccine to Australia which has no cases at all. IMO It is really rather brazen of them to apply for export under these circumstances.

 

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55 minutes ago, Which Tyler said:

I really hate this blocking of vaccine exports.

That's understandable.  It is not a good thing.

The EU did try though.  While the UK and US take everything that is produced in their countries, the EU allowed other countries to be supplied with vaccines from its factories.  (There is a selfish aspect to that.  Selling products to other countries is normally a very positive thing for EU factories!).  But still, it didn't have to be flexible at all.

The vaccines going to a country with practically no disease probably made it easy for the Italian government.

2 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

I wonder if someone will try to block Pfizer and Moderna next.

I'd be very surprised.  While Pfizer and Moderna have had some relatively small issues, AZ have being skating on thin ice since the start.

3 hours ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

Brazil is suffering from a horrible variant that seems to be causing reinfection among people that thought they would be immune for awhile after recovering from previous covid infections.

The scariest thing in that article is that people are being re-infected by this variant.  But it doesn't clarify whether they get very sick?  (It mentions that one person got re-infected with mild symptoms but that's one person).  Given the current death rates, it may suggest people are being re-infected and getting very ill.  But that's just supposition on my part.  Brazil is a massive country.

The hope with the current vaccines versus the variants is that it will at least protect you from serious illness.  But if people are being re-infected and dying in Brazil, that theory is flawed.

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51 minutes ago, JoannaL said:

No, every country in the EU gets the amount of the delivered vaccine  in relation to population, so there will be countries which get much more than Canada and countries which get less.

There will be no blocking of Pfizer or Moderna vaccines since they are not in breach of contract. It is even delivered to the UK which does not deliver AZ to us.

Why do you shudder at the blocking of AZ? 

 

European countries may be getting vaccine in accordance with their population, but Canada is not a European country.  :)   Poland is the same size as Canada, 3,619,316 doses administered in Poland versus 2,091,700 in Canada, and it’s not because we have 1.6 M doses on the shelf. So not quite twice as much, 80% more.

I shudder at the blocking of AZ not because I am worried about Australia but because if AZ is blocked how can we be sure Pfizer and Moderna won’t be blocked? We are not on the exempt list, just like Australia. If we were blocked we’d be in real trouble, since the US has blocked the rest of our orders (AZ, J&J and Novavax). 
 

Eta: and I’d point out that we all ordered vaccine around the same time, and Canada paid much more for vaccine doses than the EU, yet we still got short shipped. When the Pfizer plant shut down for re-tooling we got much less vaccine as well.

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I guess if the trend of vaccine nationalism continues and starts to really impact deliveries to countries which are hard hit I'd be worried. But as an Australian I'm not particularly concerned, though the right wing press will no doubt kick up a fuss. We have basically no cases and local AZ manufacturing capacity coming online this month. And frankly our initial rollout isn't even close to hitting target numbers, and that needs to be resolved more urgently than any supply issues at this stage.

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here is a relevant bit:

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/qanda_21_308

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In deciding whether to grant an export authorisation under this Regulation, Member States, together with the Commission, shall assess whether the volume of exports is not such that it poses a threat to the execution of the Advance Purchase Agreements the EU has concluded with vaccine manufacturers.

and neither Pfizer nor Moderna are in danger of that.

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2 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

Eta: and I’d point out that we all ordered vaccine around the same time, and Canada paid much more for vaccine doses than the EU, yet we still got short shipped. When the Pfizer plant shut down for re-tooling we got much less vaccine as well.

Its a bit more complicated than that.  Canada has 3 separate contracts with 3 separate companies.  The EU has the same.  It's unlikely that they were identical, as in, that each contract promised that Canada would get the same amount of doses per head of population as the EU did.   It is certainly possible that the EU was promised higher rates.  And of course, Canada approved the AZ vaccines much later than the EU, so any direct comparison is difficult. 

I don't think that Canada has complained about being short changed?  Now, that doesn't mean it hasn't been.  It could feel it would gain nothing by going public.  But these things often do end up leaking, if there was a serious issue.

The EU's issue with AZ was that it was getting way less doses than planned, while the UK seemed largely unaffected.  On the other hand, the EU was certainly affected by the Pfizer slowdown (like Canada was).  And by issues with Moderna also.  Was Canada affected more?  Hard to know.  But as stated, I'm not aware of anything public.  And you'd have to compare the contracts to be sure.

Anyhow, in fairness, it is understandable to be moderately concerned.   There could be a major issue with Pfizer tomorrow, which changes everything.  At the same time, it is very unlikely.  Moderna and Pfizer have managed their contracts far better (in fact, Pfizer will end up delivering more than it originally suggested it would).

2 hours ago, Impmk2 said:

I guess if the trend of vaccine nationalism continues and starts to really impact deliveries to countries which are hard hit I'd be worried.

And the good news is, supply constraints should be relaxed by the start of April.  The EU is supposed to triple (if not eventually quadruple) its deliveries.   Admittedly, until we see doses in arms, people will worry!

But I did say a few days ago that March would be a grim month.

Edited to add.  And this is a fascinating article from bloomberg on Pfizer.

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3 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

since the US has blocked the rest of our orders (AZ, J&J and Novavax). 

Come on, that's not possible. America First, that was just right-wing fascism and nationalism gone amok under Trump. Under Biden, it's totally different, the US is back playing nice with other countries and being a nice member of the international community. It was Trump who was suspected of trying to buy all vaccines available the world over, and to block any vaccine export outside the US. Biden would never do that. He's a nice guy. It's Change. Surely, the US administration is making sure other countries have a reasonable access to and supply from US vast vaccine manufacturing.

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