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Covid 19-31 The Mutants Are Coming


Mlle. Zabzie

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1 hour ago, Which Tyler said:

That doesnt look so good. Next update it will be the foremost variant in the UK if it continues like that. Is there data on transmissiblity yet? It really must be more than the Kent variant (which was already insanely contagious).

And the vaccines work not so great on the Indian varian as well , but at least better than against the south Africa variant.

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1 hour ago, Which Tyler said:

Those stats are scary, considering we’ve gone full bore on one shot only in Canada and the India variant is here too. More than half the population has now received one shot, but only 5% are fully vaccinated.

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Holy smokes, now California is offering more than $116 M in lottery prizes and gift cards as inducements to get vaccinated before June 15. Ten prizes of $1.5 M and 30 prizes of $50,000 are being handed out, and the first 2 M to get vaccinated will get a $50 gift card.

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1 hour ago, Fragile Bird said:

Welcome back to flying!

Unruly passenger incidents are 20 times higher in 5 months this year than they normally have been in an entire average year.

Passengers have a combative attitude when they get on planes, apparently, with attitudes similar to road rage, according to an interview I saw with a representative from the Flight Attendants association. Incidents are usually connected to mask wearing.

Search any topic related to flight incidents, fight on airplane, flight attendant attacked etc. etc., some of the videos are just wild.

Eta: this is in the US, I should have mentioned

I heard an interesting remark following the couple of fan incidents in the NBA: people may need to be resocialized after a year plus of feeling trapped without much face to face human contact.

 

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1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

I heard an interesting remark following the couple of fan incidents in the NBA: people may need to be resocialized after a year plus of feeling trapped without much face to face human contact.

 

Yeah, all of the norms of public behavior have gotten a bit rusty.  I’m assuming it’s an even larger culture shock for mixing together people who have been masking and those who haven’t, because they’ve likely been in their own bubble of behavior for a year-plus (and likely getting it 1000x reinforced online).  Add in some corporate enforcement of rules...it’s going to be like Thunderdome at stressful places like the airport and DMV. 

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There has been, and is still is, a lot of bad modeling and deliberate misinformation.  Conflicts have been pumped up, intentionally, for money.

I recall being told, by smart friends, that Bush Junior “ must have” had reasons to attack Iraq that we didn’t know about. But when I watched the news I just kept noticing that those promoting the Iraq war paired Al Qaeda with Iraq in the same sentences without any evidence or even making a clear statement.  I noticed being told in August by a pro war person that they wouldn’t start heavy promotion until marketing season. I noticed how Hans Blix was discredited just in time to stop him from investigation.

As vote manipulation after 9/11, it worked like a charm. People had been badly frightened.

The manipulation is more extreme now. There is just whole sale lying with Internet amplification.

 

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We have bad news here too. This is long and worth reading; lots of graphs.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/interactive/2021/covid-rates-unvaccinated-people/?

From the middle --

Quote

 

....The rosy national figures showing declining case numbers led the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to loosen mask recommendations last week and President Biden to advise people to take off their masks and smile.

But adjustments for vaccinations show the rate among susceptible, unvaccinated people is 69 percent higher than the standard figures being publicized. With that adjustment, the national death rate is roughly the same as it was two months ago and is barely inching down. The adjusted hospitalization rate is as high as it was three months ago. The case rate is still declining after the adjustment.

In the United States, the current case rate for unvaccinated residents is similar to the case rate for all residents on April 29.

Unvaccinated people are getting the wrong message, experts said.

“They think it’s safe to take off the mask. It’s not,” said Lynn Goldman, dean of the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University. “It looks like fewer numbers, looks like it’s getting better, but it’s not necessarily better for those who aren’t vaccinated.”

States with high rates among unvaccinated people
The adjusted rates in several states show the pandemic is spreading as fast among the unvaccinated as it did during the winter surge. Maine, Colorado, Michigan and Washington state all have covid-19 case spikes among the unvaccinated, with adjusted rates about double the adjusted national rate. The adjusted rates of Minnesota, Oregon and Pennsylvania are slightly lower.

Oregon’s current surge is driven in part by a covid-19 variant known as B.1.1.7, which is 50 percent more contagious, said Tom Jeanne, a deputy state epidemiologist and a senior health adviser, in an interview.

It is characterized by outbreaks traced to social gatherings with unvaccinated people and no masks.

“They’re at very high risk for infection,” Jeanne said.

Washington state officials say they are caught between applauding the optimism that comes with vaccination and warning everyone who isn’t vaccinated that it’s still dangerous.

“Things are getting safer for those who are vaccinated,” the state’s secretary of health, Umair A. Shah, told The Post. “For those who are unvaccinated, they remain at risk. We have to make sure that nuanced message is getting to our community.”

States with high death rates
In addition to cases, several states still have relatively high death rates.

Coronavirus vaccines are virtually perfect in preventing deaths, so the decline in deaths nationally hides the steady covid death rate among unvaccinated people....

 

 

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4 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

Holy smokes, now California is offering more than $116 M in lottery prizes and gift cards as inducements to get vaccinated before June 15. Ten prizes of $1.5 M and 30 prizes of $50,000 are being handed out, and the first 2 M to get vaccinated will get a $50 gift card.

California's richer than most other states. But a lot of states are following Ohio's lead after seeing how effective lotteries are at getting more hesitant people (but not true anti-vaxxers) to get vaccinated.

It's pathetic that it's needed, but it works. And the benefits far outweigh the costs of the prizes.

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6 hours ago, Which Tyler said:

B1.617 has doubled in a week (UK).

Shit!

Yeah, it's not great. I really was feeling positive about things until a couple of weeks ago. It does feel like a race between vaccinations and the spread of B.1.617.2 now. I just can't see people following the rules even if we do go back into stricter restrictions.

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It has been a rocky time, even if things still seem positive overall, with numbers way down on where we were a few months ago.  The need to get both doses of the vaccine to fight off the Indian variant is probably the biggest news of the week.

But you'd worry about how J&J will manage against the Indian variant given it is only 1 dose.  (Although, it did get acceptable results against the South African variant previously).  Not that many people are getting the J&J vaccine right now.  Huge delays with it because of this Emergent factory in the US.  We were supposed to see major deliveries in June but that's not happening.

The EMA has now approved Pfizer for 12-15 year olds, whether there should be a rush to vaccinate them or not.

And Curevac continues to struggle to finish off its trial.  I wonder have people dropped out in Europe because they got a vaccine elsewhere?  They were hoping to get approval in June but that looks difficult right now.  It has been a bad quarter for vaccine approvals.

Just on the blood clotting issue.  German scientists claim to have solved why.  Not sure how long it will take that verify that!

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10 hours ago, Which Tyler said:

On a similar vein there were some statistics released yesterday about the impact of the vaccines on hospitalisations for that variant where they do seem to be dominated by unvaccinated people (and to a lesser extent partially vaccinated people).

 

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4 hours ago, Padraig said:

Would be quite an amazing feat if this could be fixed in such a short timeline.

 

12 hours ago, Which Tyler said:

Good to see that 2 jabs aren't much less effective against Indian variant. We can pull it off. So far, no variant seem to mandate a 3rd jab. After 15 months of raging pandemic across the world, it's safe to assume we won't need a flu-like yearly shot, because that beast doesn't mutate nearly as much.

On the other hand, it really looks like UK should shift a bit focus on giving 2nd doses to older and at-risk people, and stop trying to cover eveyone and his dog with just 1 jab. Though I can easily guess it's a tough call. Considering how AZ is being shunned by a few countries in EU and elsewhere (apparently Hong Kong people aren't keen to use AZ and plenty of doses sit untouched, ready to be wasted), it might be worth considering buyig up these unwanted doses (2nd dose seem fully safe if you didn't get a clot the 1st time) - assuming the roadblock to continue wide 1st dose campaign and fast 2nd dose rollout is availability of vaccines and not limits in the vaccination infrastructure.

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4 hours ago, Padraig said:

This is a pretty poorly written article from a scientific standpoint. I know it's trying to distill some pretty complex molecular biology, but the terminology in the first couple paragraphs isn't great, it reads like the worst of undergrad essays.

The paper is interesting. The data on the abberent splicing and soluble spike protein secretion seems pretty solid, albeit entirely based on in vitro cell culture work, but then they're making several leaps to a final mechanism in the absence of much real data. Needs more work backing it up (and peer review).

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2 hours ago, Clueless Northman said:

On the other hand, it really looks like UK should shift a bit focus on giving 2nd doses to older and at-risk people, and stop trying to cover eveyone and his dog with just 1 jab. Though I can easily guess it's a tough call.

I remember reading that they've recently started to move some second dose appointments sooner for over 50s.

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