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Covid-19 #29: Gazing Into the Abyss, Again


Fragile Bird

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2 hours ago, Chataya de Fleury said:

@Karlbear - France is notably vaccine-hesitant, culturally. An outlier from the rest of the EU.

Ah, yes, sadly 100% true. My mother-in-law jokes that the government deliberately slowed its vaccination campaign so people would want the vaccine.
Well, she doesn't exactly joke about it, Macron & buddies merely fucked things up on an epic scale, but I like to take her remarks as one. That the initial screw-ups in the campaign seem to have convinced a few people that they wanted it could be an unintended consequence though.
The thing about people who are intent on destroying government is that they tend to be rather bad at using it. The consequences on politics are dreadful though. I've heard and seen more conspiracy theories around Covid-19 than I have on anything else. The combination of stringent restrictions and terrible communication has infuriated many, and they desperately want a narrative to make sense of it all.
On the good side of things, people over 55 will have access to the vaccine starting next monday. Over-50 starting mid-May. Target is 30 million vaccinated by the end of June. Can't wait to get there. One of my buddies plans to get married in mid-July ; that's going to be quite the party.

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I think it's getting easier in the US to get a vaccine.  It's definitely not just random drop in availability though.  I think most states have an appointment system.  That drive through guy probably had an appointment, or he showed up at the end of the day and they had some doses left over.  In California in my county, there's an appointment system, and if you check early in the day when they refresh the openings, it doesn't appear too difficult to schedule an appointment, if you aren't too picky about location in the county and have access to the internet (there's an option to book through the phone, but no idea how easy it is that way).  Supply of the mRNA vaccines has been pretty good and reliable for a while now.

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Current rates of serious consequences for AZ and J/J are lower than what I would've feared a year ago for the first available vaccines. I can see why people want to be extra-careful, but at this point we still need to vaccinate billions of people as soon as possible with whatever we have. The only solid reason I could see to fully interrupt the process is if the vaccine was mandatory, or you'd expect to make it mandatory pretty soon. Granted, I'm quite convinced that it will have to be mandatory in some countries if they want to eradicate covid - France for instance. I'm actually growingly annoyed at the spineless politicians who never mention this possibility or just downright state they'll never make it mandatory - in some countries, you'll still get a lot of covid-infected people in hospital next autumn/winter because herd immunity will still be a pipe-dream, and the system will suffer a lot because of some selfish idiots, and that's the optimistic take that assumes we won't have once again ICUs swamped with covid patients.

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32 minutes ago, Zorral said:

The very idea that throughout the US getting an appointment for vaccination is a breeze is a ridiculous lie.

That one has a choice of vaccines at the site where one is able to schedule and appointment is also a ridiculous lie.  You get what the site has on offer.

 

 

Well, you know how it is. You see what you want to see.  I also I think there’s a bit of propaganda going on, we all know there’s vaccine hesitancy out there, so go do some good news interviews, encourage people to get vaccinated.

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And while all this is going on, Novavax is complaining about the lack of plastic bags!

Plastic bag shortage a hefty problem for Novavax's COVID-19 vaccine production push | FiercePharma

Novavax is another "easy" vaccine, as it doesn't require really cold storage.

I will be interested to see what the FDA plans to do with J&J.  They will have very little data to go on.  So yes, maybe stamping a warning label on it and letting people choose is the best way to go.

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2 hours ago, Zorral said:

The very idea that throughout the US getting an appointment for vaccination is a breeze is a ridiculous lie.

That one has a choice of vaccines at the site where one is able to schedule and appointment is also a ridiculous lie.  You get what the site has on offer.

 

 

I did have an easy experience getting the appointment but I live in a small town, people I know in bigger cities who want it haven’t gotten it yet.

On the latter point, 100%. all the adults in my immediate family have at least one shot and none of us got to pick. It’s whatever they have. Wife got Moderna like 4 days before I got pfizer at the same site. My brother in law just got J&J over the weekend where my sister got Moderna. It’s a crapshoot. We were all personally fine with any of them, and that is the state of mind I recommend to Americans showing up to their appointments.

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4 minutes ago, S John said:

We were all personally fine with any of them, and that is the state of mind I recommend to Americans showing up to their appointments.

You Betcha!

 Again I cannot express how grateful I am there are vaccines, that no matter how difficult it was for me to personally get them (even qualified, yes!  even privileged!  just insane appointment non-organization), that I was still extremely privileged to get them -- gddm! get vaccinated.

The sooner the greatest percentage of us are vaccinated, the sooner we can end this particular pandemic, and move on -- which includes learning how to best deal -- globally -- with the next one, which will come.

 

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On 4/12/2021 at 8:33 PM, Mlle. Zabzie said:

In better news, WSJ reporting that B.1.1.7, while definitely more communicable, is not leading to more severe outcomes among those hospitalized.  It is reporting on a study in The Lancet that B.1.1.7 patients are not dying at higher rates or having worse outcomes.  “Worse outcomes” were measured by “needing a ventilator” or death.  It did show that younger, healthier patients were being hospitalized.  

In sum, my understanding from the article is that B.1.1.7 appears more likely to land you in hospital, but once you are there it appears that there isn’t a substantial difference in outcome.

I'm not sure from how you phrase the above that this is really good news. If it is leading to a higher level of hospitalization for Covid, and the percentage of those hospitalized with Covid who die is staying the same, that means a higher % of people in the population as a whole are dying from Covid with this new strain. 

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Just now, Zorral said:

You Betcha!

 Again I cannot express how grateful I am there are vaccines, that no matter how difficult it was for me to personally get them (even qualified, yes!  even privileged!  just insane appointment non-organization), that I was still extremely privileged to get them -- gddm! get vaccinated.

The sooner the greatest percentage of us are vaccinated, the sooner we can end this particular pandemic, and move on -- which includes learning how to best deal -- globally -- with the next one, which will come.

 

Ya I was talking to my wife about how when we finally get through this one, wouldn’t it be some shit if there was another one in like 3 years? I think a lot of us are thinking this is once in a lifetime, and hopefully it will be, but there’s no rule about that.

With how interconnected modern society is, and just how many people there are, with how humans are increasingly encroaching into uninhabited wild areas where who-knows-what lurks, and with climate change potentially unleashing nasty microbes from previously frozen tundra - we could be entering an era where this is a challenge mankind has to face on a more regular basis. I fucking hope not, but the older you get the more you realize that the whole world is just fuckin’ flying by the seat of its pants at all times and there are no guarantees about anything at all.

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10 hours ago, Zorral said:

I have been wondering a lot about the vaccinators ever since I got my first dose: wondering who they are, why and how they got to be vaccinators, and how many hundreds of thousands of them we need, how many vaccinations they are expected to administer per shift, how they handle this very repetitious, monotonous work, day in, and at nights too, how they are recruited.  We certainly don't have enough nurses, nurse practitioners in the first place for 'ordinary' and emergency medical situations.

A lot of them are re-skilled from other health professions: dentists, opticians, paramedics, physios, chiropractors, acupuncturists etc etc.
The reskill for those was quick and easy.
As for the rest of your questions - very much down to the individual, but involving a lot of good will.

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7 hours ago, Ormond said:

I'm not sure from how you phrase the above that this is really good news. If it is leading to a higher level of hospitalization for Covid, and the percentage of those hospitalized with Covid who die is staying the same, that means a higher % of people in the population as a whole are dying from Covid with this new strain. 

It's all about how your base things.  We have known for a while that this variant was more transmissible (and thus that became the new base).  The worry was that it would also be more likely to kill you, if you got it.  That seems not to be true.

Its like that skit about a person waking up after 2 years in a coma.  He asks what he missed and is told that the good news is that we have invented a vaccine against the deadly pandemic.  And he says "deadly pandemic???".

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12 hours ago, Chataya de Fleury said:

while the Black people of color whom I know are like “my (relative) was in the Tuskegee Syphilis study so I’m holding off”

Not much I can say to the latter except “if you choose to take it, the vaccine will be there for you when you’re ready.”

More importantly, at some point, you're able to tell them "*I* had the vaccine, look at me". Not a scientific endorsement, but though they're understandably suspicious, you are their very own guinea pig / food taster, so they should feel a bit safer knowing this, I hope.

 

2 hours ago, Padraig said:

It's all about how your base things.  We have known for a while that this variant was more transmissible (and thus that became the new base).  The worry was that it would also be more likely to kill you, if you got it.  That seems not to be true.

Exactly. It would be even worse if it was more transmissible and deadlier. The mere fact it's more transmissible will probably kill more people than if it was merely deadlier, so thankfully the virus didn't "improve" on both aspects.

 

10 hours ago, Zorral said:

The sooner the greatest percentage of us are vaccinated, the sooner we can end this particular pandemic, and move on -- which includes learning how to best deal -- globally -- with the next one, which will come.

 

I've always suspected we would get a truly nasty deadly one this century. This is a horrible terrifying ordeal, but at the end of the day, I mostly take it as a stress-test, as practice, for the real deal. That's another reason why I'm so pissed off at our lack of serious leadership to root out the pandemic. We have to do far better the next time, or we might see 1/4 of mankind - including our very own countries - wiped out due to our sheer stupidity. In a way, we got lucky and have a 2nd chance not to fuck up, because next time, failure could well have world-shattering consequences.

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In good news - and perhaps related to the J&J delivery stopp - Biontech confirmed that they will deliver 50 mio doses more to the EU in the second quarter (250 mio instead of 200 mio). these new doses are of the amount sceduled for the fourth quarter of the year, which means it will not reduce the amount in the third quarter.

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20 minutes ago, JoannaL said:

In good news - and perhaps related to the J&J delivery stopp - Biontech confirmed that they will deliver 50 mio doses more to the EU in the second quarter (250 mio instead of 200 mio). these new doses are of the amount sceduled for the fourth quarter of the year, which means it will not reduce the amount in the third quarter.

Hah.  I wonder could they check whether they can find another 50m while they are down there!

But yes, very impressive.

While the adenovirus route may not be the optimal route, I hope the EU doesn't become very reliant on the mRNA approach.  That part has worked out very well so far but these are paranoid times!

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