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Covid-19 #38: As the Worm Turns


Fragile Bird

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I knew intuitively the government was trying to horde the masks for HC professionals. I also know I had been seeing about a billion Asians masking up over the previous decade for avian bird flu and previous Sars epidemics.

Needless to say I wasn't waiting for an Uncle Fauci to tell me it might be a good idea to stock up on masks.

It was self evident all along, I really wasn't interested in what the media wanted to report about it. We had recent past history to already look at on this subject.

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On the topic of whether you should bribe people to get a vaccine I don't think it is a good idea. What are you going to do when the second generation vaccines come out? Everyone will now expect the bribe. I think the stick would work better than the carrot. After a certain date unvaccinated people should miss out on liberties. Unvaccinated people should not be allowed to get on a plane for instance.

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14 hours ago, kairparavel said:

Apologies if this was already shared at some point. This article from 2011 details the origins of invermectin and it's use in treating river blindness in developing nations as well lymphatic filariasis.

That is a good article - the origins and eventual deployment makes for a great read. A true success story of modern medicine benefiting global health. Up there with the efforts to drive out Polio and Small Pox IMO. I hope the exuberance of people to self enroll in the Phase I trials of Ivermectin as a Covid-19 treatment doesn't impact its invaluable use in combating these Neglected Tropical Diseases.  

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Ivermectin is the essential mainstay of two global disease elimination campaigns that should soon rid the world of two of its most disfiguring and devastating diseases, Onchocerciasis and Lymphatic filariasis, which blight the lives of billions of the poor and disadvantaged throughout the tropics. It is likely that, throughout the next decade, well over 200 million people will be taking the drug annually or semi-annually, via innovative globally-coordinated Mass Drug Administration (MDA) programmes.

 

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At present 33 countries are receiving ivermectin for Onchocerciasis and 15 for Lymphatic filariasis. Consequently, around US$4 billion worth of ivermectin tablets have been donated to date. In 2010, Ecuador became the second country in the Americas to halt River Blindness transmission. It is hoped that transmission of the disease in the Western hemisphere will be stopped by 2012—a goal that will have been achieved thanks to twice-yearly MDA with ivermectin. Lymphatic filariasis is targeted for global elimination by 2020, and, if all goes well, Onchocerciasis may well be eliminated from Africa soon thereafter.

 

As the article above is from 2011, the latest I see on the WHO webpage for Lymphatic filariasis is...  

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Seventeen countries and territory (Cambodia, The Cook Islands, Egypt, Kiribati, Maldives, Malawi, Marshall Islands, Niue, Palau, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Togo, Tonga, Vanuatu, Viet Nam, Wallis and Futuna, and Yemen) are now acknowledged as achieving elimination of lymphatic filariasis as a public health problem. Five additional countries have successfully implemented recommended strategies, stopped large-scale treatment and are under surveillance to demonstrate that elimination has been achieved. Preventive chemotherapy is still required in 50 countries and within 10 of these countries MDA has not yet been delivered to all endemic areas as of the end of 2019.

And the WHO page for Onchocerciasis (River Blindness) indicates...

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On 5 April 2013, the Director-General of WHO issued an official letter confirming that Colombia has achieved elimination of onchocerciasis. Colombia was the first country in the world to be verified and declared free of onchocerciasis by WHO. This has been followed by Ecuador in September 2014, Mexico in July 2015, and Guatemala in July 2016. More than 500 000 people no longer need ivermectin in the Americas.

 

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12 hours ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

I knew intuitively the government was trying to horde the masks for HC professionals.

Yeah, this. 

Someone needs to write something comprehensive  and scholarly on the toilet paper hoarding early in the pandemic. I mean, Why toilet paper?

I can still remember the day I walked into my local supermarket and the ass-wipe aisle wasn't bare shelves. It was very emotional.

 

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19 hours ago, Zorral said:

If no one was advised to wear masks how in hell did we and our friends learn of it and started doing it before the end of March?

You tell me.  How am I supposed to know that? :)  I'm not saying individuals or groups of people weren't recommending masks but i'm pretty confident no country (i.e. its government) was recommending masks in the Western world for a number of months.

And it really would be shoddy if they did it because they wanted to ensure masks went to medical people.  I would have thought governments could ensure that via regulation.  I think they simply didn't see the benefit at the time.  Embarrasing now but it happens.

14 hours ago, Makk said:

On the topic of whether you should bribe people to get a vaccine I don't think it is a good idea. What are you going to do when the second generation vaccines come out?

They may hope that if you overcome initial reservations, people may be less fearful next time.  It is worth a chance.

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4 minutes ago, Padraig said:

You tell me.  How am I supposed to know that? :)  I'm not saying individuals or groups of people weren't recommending masks but i'm pretty confident no country (i.e. its government) was recommending masks in the Western world for a number of months.

And it really would be shoddy if they did it because they wanted to ensure masks went to medical people.  I would have thought governments could ensure that via regulation.  I think they simply didn't see the benefit at the time.  Embarrasing now but it happens.

I just want to point out I was posting videos of how to make a mask on Facebook very early, maybe February but probably March, and people were telling me they’d be useless and ineffective. I said watching annual videos of millions of people wearing masks in Asian countries in flu season had me convinced they could be useful.

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How quickly it is forgotten -- or even wasn't even noticed -- by others.  New York City canceled public activities such the Patrick's Day parade and festivitiues ton March 14th, 2020.  It shut down all the way a few days later and instituted a curfew.  And I mean shut down, like nowhere in the US at least was done, except maybe Portland and San Francisco and parts of LA?  Since like everyone else I was in a state of trauma and trying to figure out how to navigate this at that time, I don't remember. What I do remember was that most of the country, thanx to the monster, they believed it was only godless NY and antifa Portland that would suffer this -- and  if they were good and lucky, only the people who were the poors and were black.

The only places open, were supermarkets, bodegas, some hardware stores -- places that provided necessaries, such as the pharmacies/CVS.  Even the doctors offices all shut down because everyone was drafted into working the hospitals, even those who were retired. Schools were closed, the universities sent everyone home -- who could get there, teaching remote only.  But no libraries, restaurants, movies, shops and stores. We didn't even have take-out allowed at first.  The curfew was for 7, or was it 8 PM?  (Yes how quickly we forget, but I have it all journaled so I can go back and check -- don't even have to go on line.)  The mayor told us to wear masks, and gloves, if possible.  We were in a state trying to find any such thing.  Our physician relatives in AZ sent us a care package of gloves, masks and wipes, etc.  So did a friend in LA.  And within the first 5 days of the shut down friends of our uptown found boxes of surgical masks in a dusty hardware stores.  The streets were literally empty except for delivery trucks for weeks..  Except at night with drag racers after a while.  Then when things opened to a degree. BLM protests.  Everyone who could left for their second homes or parents, etc.  So it was city like you cannot ever imagine NYC as being unless you experienced it.

And we did have mandated masking for the supermarkets, etc.

The rest of the country like AZ and others, didn't start this until quite some later.  And nowhere did anywhere get as strict and long  shutdown as NYC did -- most places never even bothered.  And still aren't. So the US has suffered over 40 million infections.  And more than twice as many every day across the country right now than last spring or this January, the highest points of deaths and hospitalizations in the US until now -- or very soon, it's starting to look like.  (Though They Say, the numbers finally are starting to fall in Florida -- could that be for rhe $1500 antibody treatment in which so many rethuglicans own stock, as opposed to the $20 vaccine dose -- either way the tax payer is paying.)

Additionally, federal medical supplies that were part of epidemic / pandemic planning program by CDC, pulled together so well under Obama was just about the first thing shoggoth destroyed when he slithered into the White House.  So the entire USA was in very short supply of everything.  And this is where, ya, NYC's mayor and governor stepped up.

It seems that people who haven't themselves lived through this version of the pandemic experiences -- when where one is living, that has such a high population, is the epicenter, or at least one them -- can know what was going on.  Which makes sense, I suppose.  Just like if one hasn't lived through a hurricane and aftermath, one can't imagine, and if one has, and one can, one gets the hell outta dodge as far ahead of it as possible.

 

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F*ck them

"Until Friday, I can’t remember the last time I cried so hard that I had a headache after. I have done everything asked of me for the past 18 months. I turned my living room into a home office. I stayed home. I wore masks when I couldn’t stay home. I missed my aunt’s funeral and my grandma’s funeral because I didn’t want to risk traveling from this Petri dish of a state into groups of old people whom I love. I didn’t want to be Typhoid Mary to my whole family. I got the vaccine the week I was eligible for it. I mostly stayed away from friends."

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https://www.nashvillescene.com/news/pithinthewind/hospitals-are-full-of-unvaccinated-covid-patients-and-its-hurting-others/article_b2e91460-0f33-11ec-919c-638d85f0904a.html

Throw them out and let them die. My patience is quickly coming to an end, and when this happens, the lives of all of these fuckers will be forfeit, as far as I am concerned.

She's actually way too kind and lenient in her description of the situation. People who refuse to get vaccinated aren't self-harming or harming others, they are murdering other people who will be denied medical care. As to "how a society comes back from this", it's quite simple and easy: just like Nazis or salafis, these people have to realize their ideas and behaviour are fucked up, have harmed society, caused massive pain and suffering, and will have to massively change them to adapt to normal rules of courtesy and civilized life, and obviously will have to make penance for their downright criminal past misdeeds.

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How this country can come back from this division I, who possess an above average imagination -- well I CANNOT.

Even if the people most directly hurt by this, left with life-long disease, if they survive not receiving the procedures they needed -- their family members will likely not.  There may be vigilantism and vengeance that the covid anti-vaxxers clearly cannot imagine happening.

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3 hours ago, Zorral said:

And we did have mandated masking for the supermarkets, etc.

So I looked it up.  The NY Times reports on the 15th Apr that NY is requiring people in the state to wear masks or face coverings in public whenever social distancing was not possible.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/15/nyregion/coronavirus-face-masks-andrew-cuomo.html

The shift from views in March was faster than I thought.  The CDC announced a change a few days later.  Goes back to the idea that March 2020 seemed to last forever!

Anyhow, while I was looking for that, I see that the US and Israel is reporting that over 40% of hospitalised breakthrough cases are in immunocompromised people.  Not a surprise but I hadn't seen figures before.

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/meetings/downloads/slides-2021-07/07-COVID-Oliver-508.pdf

Seperately, there is a report on how much spare vaccines are floating around.  Its a lot!

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The comments come after a new study from Airfinity, a life sciences analytics company, which concluded that developed countries are sitting on 500 million doses they could be distributing this month – and will have an extra 1.1 billion by the end of the year.

The estimate does not eat into supplies that might be needed for vaccinating teenagers and reserves enough for each country to boost everyone who has already been vaccinated, if necessary. If western countries were only to boost the over 50s who have already had two doses, the surplus would more than double to around 2.5 billion.

I wonder will the speed of distribution start to speed up over the next few months.  Especially since a lot of people were only fully vaccinated a few months ago, so wouldn't need a booster until 2022 (at the earliest).

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/health-pharma/pfizer-chief-says-enough-covid-doses-to-meet-who-s-vaccine-goal-1.4667667

And figures on a huge trial in South Africa on J&J versus Delta.

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Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine cuts the risk of getting infected with the disease by about half.  The vast majority of the breakthrough infections were mild.

Initial results from Sisonke (released previously) showed J&J’s single-dose vaccine was about 70% effective against hospitalization and 96% effective against death.  Not great numbers but Delta is more difficult.  Its possible that Pfizer drops down to around 50% after around 6 months also.

https://fortune.com/2021/09/07/johnson-and-johnson-vaccine-reduces-risk-covid-infection-by-half-south-africa-health-workers/

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40 minutes ago, Clueless Northman said:

Throw them out and let them die. My patience is quickly coming to an end, and when this happens, the lives of all of these fuckers will be forfeit, as far as I am concerned.

The problem is these people are contageous. I imagine some of them own firearms.

Just announce that the hospital will no longer be postponing surgeries and Ivermectin poisoning and unvaccinated Covid patients cases go to the back of the line. Make sure its on the hospital website and make sure all the media outlets report it. 

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28 minutes ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

Just announce that the hospital will no longer be postponing surgeries and Ivermectin poisoning and unvaccinated Covid patients cases go to the back of the line. Make sure its on the hospital website and make sure all the media outlets report it. 

It sadly doesn’t work like that. Americans show up panicked to the ED, and surgeries that don’t need immediate attention (on a case by case basis) but need a hospital bed have been on and off since March 2020 to accommodate this demand.  It’s a feature of our broken healthcare system.  Now it’s more about having staff capacity to keep people alive in a triage situation.
 

I don’t know of any country who refuse to treat patients because of their shitty health choices, smoking/drinking/overindulging in sugar and saturated fat, even in limited care situations - it gets into very strange moral and medical ethics grounds. I would like to see some kind of restorative justice for people who occupied a hospital bed and refused vaccination - maybe likenesses used in advertising along with their hospital bills, or they have to go on a vaccine advocacy tour for their family.
 

I’ve said it before, but the excess deaths (and reduced quality of life/life expectancy for people as in the story above who had delayed healthcare) as the result of this are going to be seen over a tail of many years.

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1 hour ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

The problem is these people are contageous. I imagine some of them own firearms.

Just announce that the hospital will no longer be postponing surgeries and Ivermectin poisoning and unvaccinated Covid patients cases go to the back of the line. Make sure its on the hospital website and make sure all the media outlets report it. 

Not picking on this post, just wanted to jump in on the ivermectin: it looks like the media has overblown the ivermectin overdose stuff.  It's not causing hospitals to be backed up; there have defintely been a few hundred people admitted for taking a bunch of it nationwide in the US, but those reports of gunshot victims having to wait for care because of ivermectin seem to be wrong.

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@VigoTheCarpathian

https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/august-2020/its-time-for-canada-to-follow-ontarios-critical-care-triage-protocol/

edit: I'm not necessarily endorsing the arguments put forth in that article, I'm just showing that there are jurisdictions that have protocols in place.

5 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

Not picking on this post, just wanted to jump in on the ivermectin: it looks like the media has overblown the ivermectin overdose stuff.  It's not causing hospitals to be backed up; there have defintely been a few hundred people admitted for taking a bunch of it nationwide in the US, but those reports of gunshot victims having to wait for care because of ivermectin seem to be wrong.

One or one hundred thousand: Back of the line, Sunshine. 

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1 hour ago, Padraig said:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/15/nyregion/coronavirus-face-masks-andrew-cuomo.html

The shift from views in March was faster than I thought.  The CDC announced a change a few days later.  Goes back to the idea that March 2020 seemed to last forever!

Goes to show how long people are beating the dead horses of masking mandates >cruelty to horses all the time all the places!<

Calling up my journals from March -- here in NYC, as I recalled, we were highly recommended to wear masks if we could already.  Like I said. It took months for the death and hospital rates to fall after that -- and it was masks and lockdown that did it.  We'd already stopped trying to shop for groceries in person, but did online order and delivery.  As you probably don't recall, I kept posting here how privileged we were and how we knew it -- even though I was starting to lose it all from exhaustion from cooking for so many people who couldn't seem to pull together any idea of cooking, masking, etc.  And that went on until, mostly, early August -- when the OUTDOORS Green Markets reopened, mask mandated.  And that wonderful thing of the libraries providing grab and go.

At the moment -- only the moment -- at this moment -- on the pandemic map of infection, hospitalizations and deaths, and new cases, NY is one of the few spaces on the USA map that is pale yellow, as opposed to deep orange, red and purple.

Yes, I wear masks in the streets, fully vaccinated, etc.

I'm so glad the university mandates both vaccination and masking.  As I keep saying, this is not only good for staff, faculty and students, but for our neighborhood as a whole.

We actually went outside to dine at a restaurant tonight to celebrate/observe an anniversary. Partner convinced me.  I'm so afraid of getting sick with covid with my 9/11 respiratory troubles.

 

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