Covid 19-31 The Mutants Are Coming

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

I wish there wasn't a push to get kids back into the classroom this school year with only a month or so left, but that is great news for next year and we do need to get kids back, especially the younger ones.

In my fantasy land we'd also just use a ton of federal spending to send most kids to summer camps for a month or so to isolate them while we vaccinate everyone HS age and above and then vaccinate them if it was deemed to be safe. Those who want their kids to opt out can do so, but then they have to stick to virtual learning until they're vaccinated. 

[Mlle. Zabzie]

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

I wish there wasn't a push to get kids back into the classroom this school year with only a month or so left, but that is great news for next year and we do need to get kids back, especially the younger ones.

In my fantasy land we'd also just use a ton of federal spending to send most kids to summer camps for a month or so to isolate them while we vaccinate everyone HS age and above and then vaccinate them if it was deemed to be safe. Those who want their kids to opt out can do so, but then they have to stick to virtual learning until they're vaccinated. 

I am truly blessed that my children have been in-person all year.  I was sending them back either way, but the extra layer of security of the vaccine is really a game changer.  I am also really divided on whether lack of vaccination should keep a kid out of in-person learning.  From a public health perspective, and as a parent, ABSOLUTELY VACCINES SHOULD BE REQUIRED AND MANDATED.  But it's not the unvaccinated kids fault, so how do we help with educational equity?  Remote learning sucks.  And if it pushes more people toward insular private/home school alternatives in a bubble.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

38 minutes ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

I am truly blessed that my children have been in-person all year.  I was sending them back either way, but the extra layer of security of the vaccine is really a game changer.  I am also really divided on whether lack of vaccination should keep a kid out of in-person learning.  From a public health perspective, and as a parent, ABSOLUTELY VACCINES SHOULD BE REQUIRED AND MANDATED.  But it's not the unvaccinated kids fault, so how do we help with educational equity?  Remote learning sucks.  And if it pushes more people toward insular private/home school alternatives in a bubble.

I am guessing though that your children's experience was somewhat of an outlier given your means. There was no way you could reasonably do that for every kiddo in the country.

I'm not divided on the issue at all. Yes it's not the kids' fault, but that doesn't mean irresponsible parents should be given a pass and allow their children to infect others while prolonging the pandemic. Anti-vaxxers should be shamed, not coddled. If you want to offer the carrot first then fine, but if they don't take it the stick it is. 

[Luzifer's right hand]

10 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Maybe in a vacuum, but this isn't practical. Businesses, especially small business need to be able to open so they don't stay closed permanently. There just has to be strict enforcement of social distancing and safety measures.

Well that is something that is not happening in my country. Strict enforcement I mean. Most of them will go bankrupt anyway after government support runs out. I know quite a few who do not want to open at this point because they know that a lot of people will stay away after the first rush especially once numbers start rising again. 2/3 did not open in the one Austrian state where stuff can be opened and it is the state where numbers a rising unlike the rest of Austria. 

[Jon AS]

13 hours ago, Wylla Manderly said:

As I understand it, the exemptions probably will contain contact rules (more people can meet, when everyone is fully vaccinated) and the curfew rules - so fully vaccinated people can go running at midnight .

Yeah, there's a side in the discussion that wants to frame this as vaccinated people getting privileges over the rest of the population, when it's actually just a question of lifting restrictions that could only be justified for health reasons. The "problem" here isn't what vaccinated people are free to do, it's that not everyone is vaccinated yet. And since there's no way to run a nationwide vaccination campaign without some people getting vaccinated earlier than others, that's simply the way it has to be.

13 hours ago, Wylla Manderly said:

On a personal note I have an appointment for a vaccination on thursday, "thanks" to a stroke a couple of years ago. According to e-mail which confirmed my appointment I will get Moderna. But I will have to drive around to 120 km. The vaccination centre is in Freiburg, I live in Konstanz.

Congratulations on the appointment. Sucks you have to travel so far. How come there's no site closer or even in Konstanz proper? That just seems very poor planning (not exactly a novelty in this crisis, admittedly), but maybe living in densely populated NRW skews my perception here.

[JoannaL]

4 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

I am guessing though that your children's experience was somewhat of an outlier given your means. There was no way you could reasonably do that for every kiddo in the country.

I'm not divided on the issue at all. Yes it's not the kids' fault, but that doesn't mean irresponsible parents should be given a pass and allow their children to infect others while prolonging the pandemic. Anti-vaxxers should be shamed, not coddled. If you want to offer the carrot first then fine, but if they don't take it the stick it is. 

In the CNN corona live news they report about this https://edition.cnn.com/world/live-news/coronavirus-pandemic-vaccine-updates-05-05-21/index.html

"It's too soon to say whether school districts might require students to be vaccinated for Covid-19 to return to classrooms this fall, a top White House official said Tuesday. Such a decision would be made locally and might require full approval of the vaccines from the Food and Drug Administration, Andy Slavitt, a senior adviser to the White House's Covid response team, told CNN's Chris Cuomo.The three vaccines being used in the US have emergency use authorization, or EUA, from the FDA. Full approval requires a separate application from the manufacturer.My understanding is that it can't be required until it goes from authorization to approval from the FDA,” Slavitt said."

 

This is also the reason only half of the US soldiers have taken it so far, it can't be ordered if it isn't even fully approved. I personally think that is by far ethically easier to force this on soldiers and the old people  -who can really die of it- than to force the burden to achieve herd immunity on the young ones , who do have the least health benefit from it.

[rotting sea cow]

For some reason the prevailing narrative on this issues has been between vaxxers and anti-vaxxers and how to vaxx the later category. Maybe I'm mistaken but hard-core antivaxxers (I've never met one) are just a tiny, loud and mostly privileged minority who haven't really felt the burden of the pandemic.

One the other hand, you have a no so small minority of people without readily access to health care, who often live in appalling conditions and their children have been practically shut out of the educational system. These people have really felt the burden of the pandemic. I hear how the ICUs in Germany are full of people of immigrant backgrounds, how many children haven't learn to read and write because of school closures (90000 in UK, 100 millions in the world). How the pandemic have driven them deeper in poverty. This should be the focus of the discourse, imho.

At least in parts of US, it seems that getting the vaccines is as easy as walking in. In Europe is otherwise. There is often a lot of paperwork involved and little effort to reach out and help the migrant communities. There is no word how they plan to vaccinate the millions of undocumented migrants because they aren't part of the social security system.

The current and planned policies might just further alienate them from the society at large, unless the vaccination campaign is accompanied with a big social drive to tackle those issues. I don't see that happening.

So every time you see problems with the vaccine uptake, ask yourself how different minorities are being approached. Because they are the ones who will be hit harder - again - in case of a new outbreak and they often perform key invisible jobs in the society like mopping the floors of that nursing home.

 

[Luzifer's right hand]

I think the idea that anti-vaxxers are a tiny minority is not true at least in the context of Covid-19. But there is already a market for fake vaccination certificates(99-250€ is the price range I have read about). People who post pics with batch numbers and doctors signatures are indirectly helping the forgers because it makes finding real batch numbers and real doctors really easy. I only know one pre Covid-19 anti-vaxxer myself but I know a lot of people who are anti-vax in the context of Covid-19. 

Most migrant communities are pretty well organized in my experience. You have the reach the people who are in charge at their mosque or churches. Which might no be that difficult in the context of mosques but some of the biggest clusters here in Austria were caused by free churches that are only frequented by migrants from eastern Europe and those churches tend to be extremely against covid-19 measures and contact tracing was really difficult(people who ger a lot of info from facebook and telegram contacts from Eastern Europe are actually the most extreme anti-vaxxers I know). 

 

[Padraig]

2 hours ago, JoannaL said:

The three vaccines being used in the US have emergency use authorization, or EUA, from the FDA. Full approval requires a separate application from the manufacturer.My understanding is that it can't be required until it goes from authorization to approval from the FDA.

And Pfizer is going to apply for full approval at the end of May.  Although presumably, that only would apply to adults?  Kids will only get emergency use?  That will obviously make a difference to any mandatory vaccine ideas.

In the EU, it has conditional approval (which is a higher approval than emergency but not full approval) but i'm sure it will apply for full approval at some stage.  I wonder do we have the same rules around making a vaccine mandatory?  There is a logic to it but timing wise, I can't see full approval for kids by Sept (just conditional).

I see Pfizer also expects to apply for an EUA for a booster shot that could protect against Covid variants during the second half of July, so that's impressive.

The EU is also starting to look at approving China's Sinovac option (I wonder will that move faster than Sputnik.  It isn't an adenovirus anyhow).  Very unclear how good that vaccine is.

https://fortune.com/2021/05/04/coronavac-sinovac-covid-vaccine-eu-ema-rolling-review/

And CureVac is complaining about the lack of raw materials.   Its a handy excuse.  I would not be confident of seeing a lot of Curevac in June but we'll see!   I hope i'm wrong!

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/curevac-says-mass-vaccine-rollout-thrown-into-doubt-by-us-restrictions-2021-05-04/

[JoannaL]

2 hours ago, rotting sea cow said:

For some reason the prevailing narrative on this issues has been between vaxxers and anti-vaxxers and how to vaxx the later category. Maybe I'm mistaken but hard-core antivaxxers (I've never met one) are just a tiny, loud and mostly privileged minority who haven't really felt the burden of the pandemic.

One the other hand, you have a no so small minority of people without readily access to health care, who often live in appalling conditions and their children have been practically shut out of the educational system. These people have really felt the burden of the pandemic. I hear how the ICUs in Germany are full of people of immigrant backgrounds, how many children haven't learn to read and write because of school closures (90000 in UK, 100 millions in the world). How the pandemic have driven them deeper in poverty. This should be the focus of the discourse, imho.

 

It is true, here in Germany in the ICU - at least in the third wave, I don't know if before as well- the proportion of migrants is high. But it is not clear yet if this is because of some cultural differences in vaccine uptake or- , and I think that is more likely- this relates more to poverty and poor living conditions - regardless of cultural background. some politicians start to do something about it, for example the city of cologne decided to get the daily infection rates not for the city as a whole but for each district and found out that in some districts infection rates were much higher than in others. Surprise: the highest infection rate was in a poor district with a high proportion of migrants. they sent a mobile vaccination team in this district which was open for everyone who lives there - just walk in-  (and no priorisation like everywhere else in Germany) and the uptake is great.

[Wylla Manderly]

3 hours ago, Jon AS said:

Congratulations on the appointment. Sucks you have to travel so far. How come there's no site closer or even in Konstanz proper? That just seems very poor planning (not exactly a novelty in this crisis, admittedly), but maybe living in densely populated NRW skews my perception here.

There is a vaccination centre in every Landkreis in Baden-Württemberg, but the possibility to get an appointment differs greatly. Initially every Landkreis got the same amount of vaccination doses without taking the population into account - this changed a couple of weeks though. But at the local centre there ist still a backlog. Also the booking system is kind of complicated. So there was the either the possibility to make the appointment earlier at a vaccination centre a bit away or to wait at least a couple of weeks.

[Fragile Bird]

I’m curious to understand what’s going on in Gibraltar. According to vaccine trackers, 97% of the population have had two doses of vaccine. Why no vaccine hesitancy?

[Fragile Bird]

A second woman in Canada has died of VITT after receiving the AZ vaccine, a 50-year old woman in Alberta. It was only the 2nd case in the province, where 235,000 AZ doses have been administered. The first woman who died was a 54-year old in Quebec, a couple of weeks ago.

[Luzifer's right hand]

47 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

I’m curious to understand what’s going on in Gibraltar. According to vaccine trackers, 97% of the population have had two doses of vaccine. Why no vaccine hesitancy?

Maybe because they expected to be trapped on the peninsula otherwise? 

[Heartofice]

51 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

I’m curious to understand what’s going on in Gibraltar. According to vaccine trackers, 97% of the population have had two doses of vaccine. Why no vaccine hesitancy?

Probably because they are British and we don't tend to have much issue with the vaccine takeup

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

5 hours ago, JoannaL said:

In the CNN corona live news they report about this https://edition.cnn.com/world/live-news/coronavirus-pandemic-vaccine-updates-05-05-21/index.html

"It's too soon to say whether school districts might require students to be vaccinated for Covid-19 to return to classrooms this fall, a top White House official said Tuesday. Such a decision would be made locally and might require full approval of the vaccines from the Food and Drug Administration, Andy Slavitt, a senior adviser to the White House's Covid response team, told CNN's Chris Cuomo.The three vaccines being used in the US have emergency use authorization, or EUA, from the FDA. Full approval requires a separate application from the manufacturer.My understanding is that it can't be required until it goes from authorization to approval from the FDA,” Slavitt said."

 

This is also the reason only half of the US soldiers have taken it so far, it can't be ordered if it isn't even fully approved. I personally think that is by far ethically easier to force this on soldiers and the old people  -who can really die of it- than to force the burden to achieve herd immunity on the young ones , who do have the least health benefit from it.

I'm aware of that and it's why we need to get at Pfizer and Moderna fully approved. After that there's no excuse for any adult not to have to be required to take it to participate in society in a normal way. We're never going to get past this if a large chunk of society doesn't get vaccinated, and it's made worse because those same people are also the least likely to follow the safety guidelines. I'm over catering to these selfish assholes. 

[Fragile Bird]

28 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Probably because they are British and we don't tend to have much issue with the vaccine takeup

Lol, that is the most hilarious, colonial, bullshit you’ve written in a while!

Gibraltar is an outlier from all other British-related places. I would think the Isle of Man was far more British than Gibraltar is, and they aren’t remotely close to the Gibraltar numbers. No one is. I just double-checked the number, and it’s actually just under 100%.
 

And have you even been to Gibraltar? I have, and while people speak English, I wouldn’t describe the population as British.

A friend has just arrived from the Bahamas, where he’s been in charge of hurricane repairs on Abaco since late 2019. He’s quarantining at his brother’s country place for two weeks. The Bahamas is a place that’s damn British, and vaccine hesitancy is rampant. That’s because the Bahamas, like Canada, IMO, is bombarded by US influence, especially from Florida in their case. I just looked at official UK stats, and they report hesitancy in the UK dropped from about 30% in January to less than 10% now. While there’s hesitancy in the EU, at least the UK is not being flooded by non-stop English language bs like anyone near the US is being hit with.

 

[rotting sea cow]

3 hours ago, JoannaL said:

It is true, here in Germany in the ICU - at least in the third wave, I don't know if before as well- the proportion of migrants is high. But it is not clear yet if this is because of some cultural differences in vaccine uptake or- , and I think that is more likely- this relates more to poverty and poor living conditions - regardless of cultural background. some politicians start to do something about it, for example the city of cologne decided to get the daily infection rates not for the city as a whole but for each district and found out that in some districts infection rates were much higher than in others. Surprise: the highest infection rate was in a poor district with a high proportion of migrants. they sent a mobile vaccination team in this district which was open for everyone who lives there - just walk in-  (and no priorisation like everywhere else in Germany) and the uptake is great.

That is an excellent initiative!

2 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

’m curious to understand what’s going on in Gibraltar. According to vaccine trackers, 97% of the population have had two doses of vaccine. Why no vaccine hesitancy?

Availability and accessibility.

[Pebble thats Stubby]

For those of you who know me on Facebook, you may be aware I had my 1st vaccine this morning.  I'm not posting on fb because that's far more public and I don't want to add to any vaccine negativity.

I had the Moderna Vaccine, and had an almost immediate reaction.  My heart raced, I had real difficulty in breathing and my oxygen levels dropped.

they gave me oxygen, laid me on the floor and injected me with something else,  everything returned to normal fairly quickly.  they kept me there for about an hour before they let me go home, although I was not allowed to drive myself home.

This is why they keep you for 15 mins observation.  If you are gonna react badly it will happen quickly and they can treat you immediately.

I'm fine now, apart for arm ache and a bit of a headache.  I don't know what exactly is going to happen with the 2nd shot  I think there is a trial happening about mixing the vaccines or if I need to have 2 shots of a different type.

 

[HoodedCrow]

I would insist on a different one, in future. But, congratulations on being safer from Covid. And all your fellows are safer, too:)