Covid-19 #38: As the Worm Turns

[Zorral]

4 minutes ago, Padraig said:

Europeans are not allowed to travel directly to the US.  You can go to the Caribbean for 2 weeks and then fly to the US.  Seems a bit much but if you need to visit, its one way to go.

Of course, if Europeans already live in the US, then they can remain in the US.  In other years they may have gone home for the summer though.  This year, they may not have risked that.  So perhaps NYC was a popular alternative.  That is speculative though.

Thanks you.

This is a guy who didn't need to through the Caribbean, and he sure as hell doesn't live here, though he'd love to be tRump's neighbor guy, you betcha!

Quote

New York pizzeria forces Trump-loving Brazilian president to eat outside after he refused to show proof of vaccination

He might think he's in Mar-a-Largo, since that's how he behaves.  Like we hear increasingly about these matters in the supermarkets, at the restaurants, etc.: Your rules don't apply to me because I don't live here.

[SpaceChampion]

Pretty good article on the development of mRNA technologies since the 70s.

Never occurred to me Moderna was a portmanteau of Modified RNA.

 

 

[The Anti-Targ]

1 hour ago, Padraig said:

It seems to have been designed that way.

I'm sure this approach was cleared by the FDA (and other medical bodies).  The main concern (I imagine) with this vaccine was its side-effects on children.  Something like myocarditis as you mention.  But it has passed those tests.  Given it has an immune response similar to older recipients, its very difficult to imagine that it wouldn't be effective also.  Although, how effective is yet to be determined, as you say.

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/pfizerbiontech-say-data-show-covid-19-vaccine-safe-protective-kids-2021-09-20/

I imagine speed comes into play also.  They'd rather get it cleared asap.

Otherwise, even more on Moderna v Pfizer v J&J.  Consistent with previous reports.

https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/coronavirus/moderna-vaccine-more-effective-than-pfizer-jj-especially-after-4-months-cdc/3278415/

Europeans are not allowed to travel directly to the US.  You can go to the Caribbean for 2 weeks and then fly to the US.  Seems a bit much but if you need to visit, its one way to go.

Of course, if Europeans already live in the US, then they can remain in the US.  In other years they may have gone home for the summer though.  This year, they may not have risked that.  So perhaps NYC was a popular alternative.  That is speculative though.

At this point effectiveness is not really much of a question, so checking for an antibody response will do the trick to confirm the immune system is recognising and responding, and I guess in the case of the mRNA vaccine the replicating function is working. As you say, most of the work for expanding the vaccine to different demographics (age, pregnancy, breast feeding, pre-existing diseases) is about safety. We already know that vaccination is effective in even under 5s given the age of first receiving the MMR vaccine is 12 months, so there isn't really a question of there being any inherent age factor that would limit effectiveness.

[IheartIheartTesla]

COVID deaths in the US are set to surpass that from the 1918 pandemic, but it isnt that surprising since in 1920 the US population was only ~ 106 million. Weird thing about statistics, eh?

[Fragile Bird]

9 minutes ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

COVID deaths in the US are set to surpass that from the 1918 pandemic, but it isnt that surprising since in 1920 the US population was only ~ 106 million. Weird thing about statistics, eh?

Let’s hope the US doesn’t see almost 2 M deaths!

[Zorral]

23 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Let’s hope the US doesn’t see almost 2 M deaths!

Considering how quickly this #38 covid thread has accelerated to 20 pages, my hopes are slim.  While my fears are -- well we know.

Damn, damn, damn this crazy national political deranged bullshit!

 

[The Marquis de Leech]

Auckland down to 14 cases today. That's a decent drop.

[The Anti-Targ]

Two commentaries in the media today:

Several epidemiologists and modellers have said moving to level 3 now for Auckland will make elimination harder. Not unachievable, just more difficult. That calls into question the wisdom of making the move now from a purely epidemiological perspective. However sociologically it could be argued that Auckland may well have been at a bit of a breaking point with level 4 and it needed some pressure relief. If it remained in level 4 there may have been more smuggling runs to Huntley for KFC and McDs.

Quote

Professor Michael Baker said reaching zero cases of the virus in the community was “definitely possible” but depended on the delivery of New Zealand’s strategy.

“It’s the imperfections in delivery that I think ultimately limit what is possible,” Baker said.

“At the moment, the modelling is telling us of course that alert level 4, which is very stringent, is doing a good job at stamping out the outbreak, but ... I think we are realising there is always leaks in the system.”

These leaks included people leaving their homes for essential activities, essential workers breaking their bubbles to continue working, and the “very problematic one” of people breaking or bending the rules.

“We know a proportion of the population are part of the ‘underground economy’. They are carrying on with activities with various degrees of legality in some cases.

“If the virus is being transmitted in those groups, it may be very hard to eliminate.”

Baker said officials had talked about being “cautiously optimistic” about an alert level change but moving Auckland to level 3 created more of a risk that the country wouldn’t achieve zero cases in the community.

“After a period of being in lockdown, people will push the boundaries in terms of their connectedness. There will be more social mixing.

An assertion that if Auckland isn't out of Lockdown in 2 weeks (ie we've basically achieved zero new daily cases in the community) we will have all but failed at elimination.

Quote

Effectively, the Government’s actions have now reflected the reality that a continued super-hard lockdown in Auckland was simply not tenable. A key bit of the elimination strategy is the theory that by having a short but hard lockdown, life can get back to normal more quickly. By the time this is up for review in a fortnight, Auckland will have been in a lockdown (level 4 or level 3) for seven weeks.

If Auckland isn’t ready to drop to alert level 2 by then, elimination as a worthwhile public policy goal will have failed. The best that can be said about the response to this latest outbreak is that if the virus is spotted early, hard and decisive lockdowns are successful at controlling the Delta variant of Covid-19. But not eliminating it.

In other words, the longer this drags on, the less viable the entire plan becomes as a strategy. But that has been obvious for a while. The Government is banking on the fact it can get cases back to zero to give a little breathing space to finish the vaccination programme.

Between these two commentaries I conclude our chances of elimination are about 50/50. If that happens i wonder if we are going to erect a border around the South Island. Once it leaks out of Auckland there is not way of keeping it out of anywhere in the North Island. But it may be possible to keep our other inhabited Islands COVID-19 free.

[The Marquis de Leech]

My reading is that Lockdown has basically eliminated the virus in the "legal economy." The remaining cases (the "illegal economy") can only be flushed out with contact tracing. which may take a while.

As Ashley Bloomfield points out, Level 3 with vaccines is a damned sight more effective than Level 3 with it. I really don't think this is the end of Elimination.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

1 hour ago, Fragile Bird said:

Let’s hope the US doesn’t see almost 2 M deaths!

I think 1 million is almost unavoidable at this point. That actual number may already be north of that. 

8 hours ago, Zorral said:

So, just learned the US is averaging 2000 covid deaths per day now.

Jesus and his saints weep.

According to worldometers, there were a few recent days with peaks above 2k, but the 7 day average is just under 1700. Still terrible. 

New Jersey and New York were 1st and 2nd in deaths/million. They are now 2nd and 4th because they've been displaced by Mississippi and Louisiana. Florida and Arkansas have entered the top 10. Tennessee has displaced North Dakota in infections/million.  At the beginning of the summer I would have told you all those things were impossible. 

Note: the reason so many states in the northeast had such high mortality was because they got hammered right at the start of this pandemic; when there was a critical shortage of ventilators, no vaccine, and no hand sanitizer or masks in the stores. What's going on now is just tragic stupidity.  

In a another glimmer of good news from Alberta, in the 4 days of data from September 16-19 (right after the quasi-lockdown and proof of vaccination was announced), there were 51,342 first doses administered. Except for 25-29 year olds, every eligible age cohort is above 70% in the "at least 1 dose" category. 45+ is north of 80%. We'll see where we are at the end of the week.

The bad news: I downloaded my proof of vaccination card today. This thing is a joke. No bar code. No QR code. I guarantee there will be forgeries. 

[The Anti-Targ]

While it's not the end of elimination, I think it is far from being the sure thing we hoped for at the start of this outbreak. And I am less certain that the govt necessarily wants to achieve it quite as much as they initially did. If Delta is going to close down Auckland for 7 weeks every time it shows up the govt for sure does not want to have another lockdown, ever. Confidence that a 4 week lockdown for Auckland would do the job in any future outbreak could have meant an ongoing appetite for and acceptance of future lockdowns. But that notion is gone. The only way to ensure no future 7-week lockdowns is not to achieve elimination and work even harder to keep it out, but rather to let it bubble along until the only people really at risk are the anti-vaxxers and then more or less let it loose. Then see if a few prominent anti-vax deaths drives a a decent number of the casually anti-vax back to sanity.

[The Marquis de Leech]

If I were feeling cynical, I'd suggest that current media negativity has two ulterior motives - they think that this has the potential to destroy Jacinda, and because they've at least sipped the Australian kool aid. 

[The Anti-Targ]

I think the only things about COVID that would destroy Jacinda is an actual outbreak that leads to many deaths and over-stressing, if not breaking, the health system; or a bloody-minded persistence with border restrictions that are not sustainable in the long term. Achieving elimination, or not achieving it won't make much difference of themselves. Achieving it means no major outbreak, illness and death, but it makes it harder to start moving to opening up to less / no border restrictions, but politically there has to be a move in that direction. Not achieving it, but reaching realistic vaccination goals before it is let loose allows for an easier pathway to reduced border restrictions, but it comes with a risk of a blowout in transmissions and a politically fatal number of severe cases, deaths and long COVID, and potentially localised lockdowns in hotspots, especially where there are pockets of low vaccination, of which there are some.

We certainly know Bridge, Hoskings, Garner, Plunket and a few others are just wetting themselves with anticipation that COVID will be the death of the Adern premiership, actual deaths are acceptable collateral damage.

@The Marquis de Leech as you said yesterday, muppets...

Quote

Twenty staff at Auckland’s North Shore Hospital came into contact with a man who evaded hospital security staff before running into a lift, and has since tested positive for Covid-19.

The man breached the hospital's level 4 visitor rules on September 16, bypassing front-of-house screening processes while staff were assisting another person and hid from security, an update sent to Waitematā DHB staff, seen by Stuff, said.

A “small number” of staff have been temporarily stood down from work after encountering the man, who “briefly” visited Ward 7 and the assessment and diagnostic unit before he was confronted by security and escorted from the building.

 

[DireWolfSpirit]

8 hours ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

Someone killed a 20 year old gas station attendant in Germany with a head shot because he did not want to mask properly. He actually wore the mask incorrectly according to the article I read to provoke a reaction. 

Fucking hell...

Who wore the mask incorrectly though? 

Was it the assailant or the clerk?

I cannot tell from the way this is worded.

[Luzifer's right hand]

15 minutes ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

Who wore the mask incorrectly though? 

Was it the assailant or the clerk?

I cannot tell from the way this is worded.

The assailant.

Edit:Found an English version of the article I read. 

https://dip.org.ua/en/germany/a-cashier-was-shot-dead-at-a-gas-station-in-germany-after-an-argument-over-masks/

Quote

 

The cashier at the gas station was shot dead as a result of a dispute over wearing a mask to protect against coronavirus, according to DPA, citing a statement from the German prosecutor’s office.

A 49-year-old man, a customer at a gas station in the West German city of Idar-Oberstein, was in a rage after an employee refused to sell him beer because he did not have a mask covering his nose and mouth, said Attorney General Kai Furmann.

The attacker confessed to the murder of a 20-year-old student with a shot to the head and said that he was pushed by the severity of the pandemic, Furman said.

The criminal felt cornered and “saw no other way out” but to set an example. His victim was “responsible for the whole situation because she applied the rules,” the prosecutor stressed.

According to investigators, the 49-year-old attacker entered the gas station on Saturday night without a mask and tried to buy 12 bottles of beer. The cashier drew his attention to the requirement to wear a mask. The buyer returned an hour later in a mask and tried again to buy beer. Trying to buy beer, he lowered his protective mask. The cashier again advised him to comply with the requirement to wear masks, and then the criminal shot him.

Police arrested him the next morning in the town of Idar-Oberstein.

 

 

[Pebble thats Stubby]

13 minutes ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

The assailant.

Edit:Found an English version of the article I read. 

https://dip.org.ua/en/germany/a-cashier-was-shot-dead-at-a-gas-station-in-germany-after-an-argument-over-masks/

 

 

That is so fucked up.   I really feel for the workers that have to face arsehole throwing tantrums at them for doing their job.  but straight up murdering them is taking things to a whole new level.

 

I really hope the German Justice system also feels there is no way out other than to set an example and gives the maximum possible sentence to this guy after all the whole situation is his fault because he can't follow rules. 

 

 

[Luzifer's right hand]

14 minutes ago, Pebble thats Stubby said:

That is so fucked up.   I really feel for the workers that have to face arsehole throwing tantrums at them for doing their job.  but straight up murdering them is taking things to a whole new level.

 

I really hope the German Justice system also feels there is no way out other than to set an example and gives the maximum possible sentence to this guy after all the whole situation is his fault because he can't follow rules. 

 

 

They have seized weapons from people that are against covid-19 measures before and there have been other violent events. It was just question of time until someone got murdered I feel. 

It is really sad but unsurprising.

I'm sure the justice system will work but I also feel that police forces are doing not enough to combat these people. No surprise as they tend to be far right and police forces tend to be far right too. Zero tolerance enforced by the police and extra security at stores from day one would have been the way to go imho.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

47 minutes ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

The assailant.

Edit:Found an English version of the article I read. 

https://dip.org.ua/en/germany/a-cashier-was-shot-dead-at-a-gas-station-in-germany-after-an-argument-over-masks/

Quote

The criminal felt cornered and “saw no other way out” but to set an example. His victim was “responsible for the whole situation because she applied the rules,” the prosecutor stressed.

Please tell me this is a bad translation.

[Luzifer's right hand]

1 minute ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

Please tell me this is a bad translation.

Nope. The German articles read the same and that is how the more extreme anti-measures people tend to think.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

5 minutes ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

Nope. The German articles read the same and that is how the more extreme anti-measures people tend to think.