IheartIheartTesla Posted June 9, 2021 Share Posted June 9, 2021 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/09/leading-biologist-dampens-his-smoking-gun-covid-lab-leak-theory Quote A Nobel prize-winning US biologist, who has been widely quoted describing a “smoking gun” to support the thesis that Covid-19 was genetically modified and escaped from a Wuhan lab, has said he overstated the case. David Baltimore, a distinguished biology professor, had become one of the most prominent figures cited by proponents of the so-called lab leak theory. Originally quoted in an article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in May, and widely requoted since, Baltimore had appeared to suggest that a specific feature in Covid-19’s genome, known as the furin cleavage site, was the “smoking gun” to the theory the virus had been contained inside a laboratory and then escaped via a leak. Quote In the midst of the renewed controversy, one of the key scientific debates has drilled down into whether the virus’s furin cleavage site is so novel that it occurred through human manipulation rather than evolving naturally. Good - both to his softening his language, and to there being at least a hypothesis of some sort for the 'lab-leak' theory. Also illustrates the ambiguity involved and the difficulty in proving or disproving it one way or another. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zorral Posted June 9, 2021 Share Posted June 9, 2021 It's inevitable the Delta variant will arrive in the US -- it's already here. Thus it's inevitable when fall rolls around all our opened country is going to be surging with illness yet again. Also this time there will be the complications caused by flu and other things we've avoided while not being open, keeping distance, wearing masks and washing -- while huge numbers of us have refused to be vaccinated. Because by September hardly anybody have been doing safety measures for weeks already, and ... how quickly we forget ... how determined not to do the only things that stop it. Who thinks both booster vaccine and flu vaccine will be available by October? Anyway, I really hope I'm wrong about any of these predictions -- except booster and flu vaccines being available in the fall -- want the sooner the better. In the meantime, with the numbers for covid being as low as they are here, and knowing so many vaccinated, I'm going to regard this summer as a vacation from masking in the streets and with my friends. No going to movies, etc. though we are still making plans for the late fall and early winter that involve going to Cuba and doing a lot of primary shooting for Project -- already too long postponed due to covid. In the meantime why is there ANY discussion whatsoever about required evidence of covid-19 vaccination and negative tests prior to sailing off on a cruise ship (one of the greatest environmental eviles devised)? If cruises must be had for the rank and file who can't own their own yachts, what's so difficult to understand about it being a billion times safer for the entire planet, not to mention the crews and staff, to require vaccination passports? And a billion billion billion times less costly for everybody as well as the planet to require vaccination passports -- than sailing around with a crew and dumpkoffs who are deathly ill, looking for anywhere to dock and dump the sick? None of this makes any sense, which is why I believe another dreadful surge is inevitable -- idiots running all the shows. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luzifer's right hand Posted June 9, 2021 Share Posted June 9, 2021 The vaccination passport ship has sailed anyway. Things are way too easy to forge for these things to be trustworthy except maybe digital versions issued by totalitarian countries like China. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zorral Posted June 9, 2021 Share Posted June 9, 2021 Why this opening everything and quitting the masking for 'the vaccinated' is not only a public health disaster, but a social and equality health disaster. Why the CDC and Biden are pretending it's 'empowerment' is beyond comprehension. It's not as if we haven't learned long ago any corporation, business, institution, fashion house etc. uses the term 'empowerment' to describe anything they are doing is using it as a joke, a pretense, to veil the fact that what they're doing is anything but empowering anything except more exploitation and abuse. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/06/individualism-still-spoiling-pandemic-response/619133/ Quote ....From its founding, the United States has cultivated a national mythos around the capacity of individuals to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, ostensibly by their own merits. This particular strain of individualism, which valorizes independence and prizes personal freedom, transcends administrations. It has also repeatedly hamstrung America’s pandemic response. It explains why the U.S. focused so intensely on preserving its hospital capacity instead of on measures that would have saved people from even needing a hospital. It explains why so many Americans refused to act for the collective good, whether by masking up or isolating themselves. And it explains why the CDC, despite being the nation’s top public-health agency, issued guidelines that focused on the freedoms that vaccinated people might enjoy. The move signaled to people with the newfound privilege of immunity that they were liberated from the pandemic’s collective problem. It also hinted to those who were still vulnerable that their challenges are now theirs alone and, worse still, that their lingering risk was somehow their fault. (“If you’re not vaccinated, that, again, is taking your responsibility for your own health into your own hands,” Walensky said.).... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fragile Bird Posted June 9, 2021 Share Posted June 9, 2021 The NYT is reporting that the Chinese tested almost the entire 18.5 M population of the city of Guangzhou between Sunday and Tuesday because cases of the Delta variant showed up, and have ordered 180,000 people into quarantine. Holy smokes. And I see the UK government has sent the military in to northern England to help local authorities deal with the Delta outbreak. I gather the city of Manchester may be seeing new restrictions. I think the title for the next thread is going to be “Are we ready for the next wave?” Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A wilding Posted June 9, 2021 Share Posted June 9, 2021 Chiming in here with my recent experience. We are in one of the UK's Delta variant hotspots. Numbers of cases in the local area have been doubling weekly for a month now, and they are nearly all the Delta variant. Scuttlebutt is that a major cause is a privately run quarantine hotel that appears to have been very lax - a version of this story has now reached the BBC: Our local area, population several tens of thousands of people, has now been declared a "surge testing zone". Everyone living here has been asked to take a PCI Covid test. Frankly this seems pretty pointless to me, given the turnaround time for test results and the fact that many people are anyway unable, unwilling, or cannot afford to isolate if they come up positive. But we were good and ordered the testing kits. I am appalled at them. The instructions are complex and very poorly worded. I very much doubt that I have done the test successfully (I am one of the substantial proportion of people whose tonsils cannot be seen without a tongue depressor). Only after multiple reads did we understand that we had to register online, then do the test, and post the kit in a special postbox so that it then would be picked up by the postman within an hour of us registering. With Johnson obviously not willing to do more than at most delay the end of restrictions for another week or so, I think we are stuffed. I think we just have to desperately hope that, when the Delta variant rips through the population, then the vaccinations are enough to stop the hospitals being completely overwhelmed. Early indications of an uptick in admissions are not a good sign. Edit: I have read that the accuracy of the home PCI tests may be as low as 25%. I am now no longer surprised at that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fez Posted June 9, 2021 Share Posted June 9, 2021 1 hour ago, Zorral said: Why this opening everything and quitting the masking for 'the vaccinated' is not only a public health disaster, but a social and equality health disaster. Why the CDC and Biden are pretending it's 'empowerment' is beyond comprehension. The vaccines are free and widely available to everyone ages 12 and older now in the US. I have zero sympathy, zero, for anyone unvaccinated who could've gotten the vaccine and instead gets sick and dies. There are however many people who can't get the vaccine for one reason or another, and I do have tons of sympathy for them and their situations. However, it is grossly irresponsible to ignore the costs of society continuing to go on as it has the past year and change. You want to talk about equality? Look at how much further behind kids from poorer families have fallen in education outcomes over the past year compared to kids from richer families. Those outcomes are not easily change in later years of school, there are an unknown number of kids who have seen the entire trajectory of their lives change for the worse over the past year. And as for the kids under 12, it seems likely that they'll be able to get vaccinated this fall. And in the mean time, they generally have much better health outcomes when they do get COVID so there's less risk. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Padraig Posted June 9, 2021 Share Posted June 9, 2021 1 hour ago, Zorral said: Who thinks both booster vaccine and flu vaccine will be available by October? I don't think we have to worry about the lack of boosters. If nothing else, you will get another shot of one of the current vaccines. That should help. There is a suggestion that mixing vaccines boosts your response also. See here. Moderna, Pfizer etc. .are all working on next generation vaccines. I believe they could be ready by October. The regulators have said that the next generation will get faster approval. But the evidence still suggests that the current vaccines work on the variants, so we may not need a next generation. Didn't Florida ban cruise's from checking the vaccination status of people though? 1 hour ago, Luzifer's right hand said: Things are way too easy to forge for these things to be trustworthy except maybe digital versions issued by totalitarian countries like China. I'm still not sure of this. While i'm sure there is a vocal group of people that will prefer fraud to a vaccine, i'm not convinced the number is of any real significance. I know there is a problem in the US, because there is not a centralised system. The EU is still trying to figure out how to allow Americans into the EU. But most countries have proper systems. There may be some gaps but unless governments make no effort, I can't see fraud as a major issue. Maybe i'm wrong though. 4 hours ago, Fillyjonk Eilhart said: 3 weeks ago the Delta variant was at 3% in Luxembourg. 2 weeks ago it was 7% and this week it’s at 16%. Definitely making headway. At least the overall cases in Luxembourg are still going down, so the trend isn't as bad as it first appears. But not good. It is striking though. There are only 3 countries in Europe that are seeing increases. The UK, which is seeing very bad growwth. Portugal, bad enough. And Russia, mild growth, if you believe that. The UK is driven by Delta. And Portugal is supposed to have some sort of variant also. I'm actually puzzled at how all these other countries are happily removing restrictions given that the Delta variant is going to spread there. Most of Europe needs at least, another month to get the vaccination rates up. I wouldn't stop remoing restrictions but I would slow down. While the delayed 2nd dose strategy in the UK leaves them a little exposed, the UK still has way more people fully vaccinated than most countries in Europe. We were supposed to be hitting 400k vaccines a week in June but we are still around 300k. Mainly due to delays with J&J I believe. Sadly, the US is apparently having a lot of trouble using up its J&J vaccine before they expire. The US is going to donate 500m doses over the next year, which is more tangible. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/09/us/politics/biden-global-vaccine-plan.html Reuters quotes the following: Quote The text says that the U.S. and the EU "aspire to vaccinate at least two-thirds of the world's population by the end of 2022". In other words, as many as 2.5 billion people in the world may not get a shot before 2023. I think that is a little exaggerated. 2.5bn includes kids. I don't know whether two-thirds refer to adults only. I'm not sure more than two-thirds of the total population will be interested in vaccinatation. Although, if the US/EU were excluding kids, then there may be more of an issue. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Starkess Posted June 9, 2021 Share Posted June 9, 2021 2 hours ago, Zorral said: Why this opening everything and quitting the masking for 'the vaccinated' is not only a public health disaster, but a social and equality health disaster. Why the CDC and Biden are pretending it's 'empowerment' is beyond comprehension. I disagree. Acting like nothing has changed would make no sense. How do you hope to convince people of the importance of taking certain actions like wearing a mask or social distancing etc. etc. if they are untethered to any sort of metric or outcomes? Here in Chicago our current rolling average of new cases/day is 82. On Jan 1 of this year that number was over 1,000. On Jan 1 we had 0% vaccinated, now it's 45.2% fully and 52.9% one dose (I believe that includes the whole population so it's much higher for adults). So how is it reasonable to have the exact same asks and requirements now as then? Easing up on restrictions in accordance with the numbers and vaccination status is following the science! This is exactly what we've been saying all along. It's not "follow the science as long as I'm comfortable with it". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zorral Posted June 9, 2021 Share Posted June 9, 2021 1 hour ago, Fez said: the vaccines are free and widely available to everyone ages 12 and older now in the US. I have zero sympathy, zero, for anyone unvaccinated who could've gotten the vaccine and instead gets sick and dies It is very difficult getting vaccinated is for millions of people who poor, w/o a car and previous health care, where there is no public transportation, who work hourly for even below minimum and don't get that essential pay to feed themselves and kids while trying to get vaccinated, and don't have sick days for reaction, and on and on and on. Sure, walk over to your local cvs and get vaccinated. But there is NO CVS for miles and miles and miles. And you don't have a car. And you have a small baby and and and. Please be more compassionate and understanding than your comment indicates. As these are populations who are lied to constantly, for the sake of convenience for their 'betters' and also just for funsies, don't think they automatically get the information in which you swim every moment of your life. They may not even have a television, much less a smart phone and internet. As for the rest of you who object to us not being more careful and not planning for the inevitable, please READ the article instead of arguing what the article's facts show to be dead dogs, so long dead they're not even in this fight. Among the resources for the piece are the people who administer the vaccinations. Not a single person they are vaccinating is vaccinating in order 'not to be left out.' That fantasy sailed away on the cruise ships. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luzifer's right hand Posted June 9, 2021 Share Posted June 9, 2021 The main problem with easing restrictions is that a lot of people who would like the be fully vaccinated are not and are forced to interact with other people on a regular basis because of their jobs. In a perfect world people could stay at home until they are fully vaccinated on some sort of UBI but that is not the case. The fully vaccinated home office folks who want to enjoy their leisure time and the anti-vaxxers don't make things better. The USA might be different in a way because of the vaccine supply it has but a lot of people there can't even afford a day or two of sick leave if they have side effects. You still have to work between shots too. Here in Austria not even all risk patients have been fully vaccinated. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kalbear Posted June 9, 2021 Share Posted June 9, 2021 2 hours ago, Fez said: The vaccines are free and widely available to everyone ages 12 and older now in the US. I have zero sympathy, zero, for anyone unvaccinated who could've gotten the vaccine and instead gets sick and dies. Yeah, fuck those immunocompromised people, or those people who can't afford to take days off because they get a reaction, or can't actually travel 30 miles to get a vaccine during their work hours. Fuck them all the way! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fez Posted June 9, 2021 Share Posted June 9, 2021 2 minutes ago, Kal Corp said: Yeah, fuck those immunocompromised people, or those people who can't afford to take days off because they get a reaction, or can't actually travel 30 miles to get a vaccine during their work hours. Fuck them all the way! I literally mentioned them in the next paragraph. Not fuck them, but the harms to society outweigh the harms to them. I mean seriously, keeping society lock downed has serious costs and I'm not talking economic ones. Just look at the data on how much we've fucked over kids' mental health in all this. Also, anyone talking about transportation as an excuse not to get it, yes, fuck them. There are plenty of free transportation options right now specifically for vaccine appointments. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kalbear Posted June 9, 2021 Share Posted June 9, 2021 Just now, Fez said: I literally mentioned them in the next paragraph. Not fuck them, but the harms to society outweigh the harms to them. I mean seriously, keeping society lock downed has serious costs and I'm not talking economic ones. Just look at the data on how much we've fucked over kids' mental health in all this. Yes, and you should have NO sympathy for anyone who doesn't believe in this precisely, or thinks that the harms to their family outweigh the greater societal harms! NO SYMPATHY EVER NEVER EVER NOOOOO Just now, Fez said: Also, anyone talking about transportation as an excuse not to get it, yes, fuck them. There are plenty of free transportation options right now specifically for vaccine appointments. Yeah, I know there are a whole lot of uber drivers lining up to give people rides in Eastern Oregon, super convenient Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fez Posted June 9, 2021 Share Posted June 9, 2021 1 minute ago, Kal Corp said: Yes, and you should have NO sympathy for anyone who doesn't believe in this precisely, or thinks that the harms to their family outweigh the greater societal harms! NO SYMPATHY EVER NEVER EVER NOOOOO Yeah, I know there are a whole lot of uber drivers lining up to give people rides in Eastern Oregon, super convenient At this point, nope. Seriously, there's a goddamn pandemic and we've managed to create a miracle drug that solves it and its free for everyone. At certain point people really do have to have some personal responsibility to go get it. The situation absolutely sucks for immuno-compromised folks, but that's it. And it's not just uber. I know plenty of county's are paying for transportation for people who don't have other options. If you're in one that isn't, complain to the county government. Also, people have literally had months now to figure out options; owing a favor to a friend or family member for a ride for instance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HoodedCrow Posted June 9, 2021 Share Posted June 9, 2021 I just thought get the vax as quickly as possible and get out of the way. Tell people that you survived the Great Vax.( very different flavors) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kalbear Posted June 9, 2021 Share Posted June 9, 2021 1 minute ago, Fez said: At this point, nope. Seriously, there's a goddamn pandemic and we've managed to create a miracle drug that solves it and its free for everyone. At certain point people really do have to have some personal responsibility to go get it. The situation absolutely sucks for immuno-compromised folks, but that's it. Yep! No sympathy for anyone who doesn't have things like internet or easy communication. Hell, no sympathy for minority populations who have been abused by the government before and aren't super trusting of programs to give them medicine! Fuck all those people! 1 minute ago, Fez said: And it's not just uber. I know plenty of county's are paying for transportation for people who don't have other options. If you're in one that isn't, complain to the county government. Also, people have literally had months now to figure out options; owing a favor to a friend or family member for a ride for instance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HoodedCrow Posted June 9, 2021 Share Posted June 9, 2021 Now we proudly tell people that we are both double vaxxed, and they relax and look happier. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr. Chatywin et al. Posted June 9, 2021 Share Posted June 9, 2021 1 hour ago, Fez said: I mean seriously, keeping society lock downed has serious costs and I'm not talking economic ones. Just look at the data on how much we've fucked over kids' mental health in all this. Something I overlooked we also need to consider is that many people have not gotten the regular medical help they would have needed if there was no pandemic. It's possible many cancer cases have gone undiagnosed as a result of the pandemic, for example. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr. Chatywin et al. Posted June 10, 2021 Share Posted June 10, 2021 1 hour ago, Kal Corp said: Hell, no sympathy for minority populations who have been abused by the government before and aren't super trusting of programs to give them medicine! Honestly at this point, no. Citing the past in the face of overwhelming evidence that it's safe is not a good excuse, and much of it is straight anti-science. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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