Deadlines? What Deadlines? Posted October 19, 2021 Share Posted October 19, 2021 4 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said: You could, but only if you were using Ted Cruz's line of argument. On a pubic health and economic impact basis you can't make a good argument. I didn't think Cruz was making an argument. He's just trying to take cheap shots. My point is that Australia and New Zealand have been super decisive in terms of instituting lockdowns in response to outbreaks. In a was that, by our standards, seems crazy on its face. If you tried to do that in Texas you'd have a public revolt I'm sure. But then you look at the relative infection and death rates and you see why. I also mentioned geographic isolation. If the Aussies or Kiwis got into a situation we have here, where hospitals were maxed out and they had to transport overflow to other countries, what would the logistics of that be like? I'm guessing it's more than just a two hour flight to a neighboring province. I couldn't say what the relative economic impacts have been compared to us, but I'm guessing it's less. Being on a vent for 4 weeks is an expensive way to die. Another thing that Australia and New Zealand share is extreme caution when it comes to dealing with potentially invasive species (and for good reason). I wonder if that has something to do with the public acceptance of the response. 4 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said: Sigh. Some idiot influencers decided the lockdown rules in Auckland didn't to them, so they decided to have a big ole pre-pandemic style party. Now they are all crying crocodile tears because they have discovered actions have consequences. But on the flip side they are getting death threats, also totally unacceptable behaviour in public or private. More and more I'm convinced that anyone who would self-apply the title "Influencer" needs to be welded into a centrifuge full of boiling shit and fired into the sun. They can start with Katie Hopkins. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Anti-Targ Posted October 19, 2021 Share Posted October 19, 2021 7 hours ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said: I didn't think Cruz was making an argument. He's just trying to take cheap shots. My point is that Australia and New Zealand have been super decisive in terms of instituting lockdowns in response to outbreaks. In a was that, by our standards, seems crazy on its face. If you tried to do that in Texas you'd have a public revolt I'm sure. But then you look at the relative infection and death rates and you see why. I also mentioned geographic isolation. If the Aussies or Kiwis got into a situation we have here, where hospitals were maxed out and they had to transport overflow to other countries, what would the logistics of that be like? I'm guessing it's more than just a two hour flight to a neighboring province. I couldn't say what the relative economic impacts have been compared to us, but I'm guessing it's less. Being on a vent for 4 weeks is an expensive way to die. Another thing that Australia and New Zealand share is extreme caution when it comes to dealing with potentially invasive species (and for good reason). I wonder if that has something to do with the public acceptance of the response. More and more I'm convinced that anyone who would self-apply the title "Influencer" needs to be welded into a centrifuge full of boiling shit and fired into the sun. They can start with Katie Hopkins. There is an element of that. We are very strict when it comes to keeping plant and animal diseases out, and locking down parts of the country when a couple of fruit flies are detected. Though actually the USA is just as strict. When you get a bird 'flu outbreak in poultry flocks the US goes into a very strict lockdown and cull. It's just that the area of the country affected (and the population, being it's almost always rural) is a very small part of the country so almost no one pays any attention. Also there are parts of Texas that are "locked down" right now, but only for the orange trees, because of those damned Mexican...fruit flies. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Anti-Targ Posted October 19, 2021 Share Posted October 19, 2021 Interesting video from 6 years ago, so totally not tainted by any of the COVID anti-vax stuff. Am I suffering from confirmation bias because this video fits with my existing beliefs?? Everyone suffers from it, but no one thinks they do. I suffered from confirmation bias in believing it was highly improbable that the virus came from a lab. I've got over it and accept that there is a good probability that it did, but don't know enough to be able to say definitely one way or the other. No doubt there are several others I suffer from. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Which Tyler Posted October 19, 2021 Share Posted October 19, 2021 New Delta variant starting up in the UK - who'd'a thought it? https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/oct/19/fears-grow-in-england-over-rise-of-new-covid-delta-variant Quote Offshoot of Covid Delta variant on the rise in England UK Health Security Agency monitoring AY.4.2 as daily cases at highest level since late July A newly detected coronavirus variant is on the rise in England, with the virus believed to be an offshoot of Delta. According to a briefing from the UK Health Security Agency, released on Friday, “a Delta sublineage newly designated as AY.4.2 is noted to be expanding in England”, with the body adding that the variant is being monitored and assessed. The report states that in the week beginning 27 September – the last week for which complete sequencing data was available – AY.4.2 accounted for about 6% of sequenced coronavirus cases and is “on an increasing trajectory”. AY.4.2 contains two mutations in its spike protein, called A222V and Y145H. The spike protein sits on the outside of the coronavirus and helps the virus to enter cells. ARTICLE CONTINUES... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deadlines? What Deadlines? Posted October 19, 2021 Share Posted October 19, 2021 Does the mutation turn the spikes into little chainsaws? They should call it the Whisky-Tango-Delta variant. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deadlines? What Deadlines? Posted October 19, 2021 Share Posted October 19, 2021 A 1/2 Hour News Hour* alumnus. He's 73 years old... https://www.mediamatters.org/dennis-prager/dennis-prager-announces-he-has-covid-19-while-ranting-against-vaccines-and-declaring *It was so bad it could've passed for a left wing parody of itself. Un-funny, cruel, and simultaneously pegged the needle on cringe while making me feel pity for some of the people who participated in it. Kinda like those American Idol contestants who think they're the shit when the world is actually laughing at them. This was supposed to be Fox's answer to Saturday Night Live BTW. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Impmk2 Posted October 19, 2021 Share Posted October 19, 2021 2 hours ago, Which Tyler said: New Delta variant starting up in the UK - who'd'a thought it? https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/oct/19/fears-grow-in-england-over-rise-of-new-covid-delta-variant Should have read the full article before I went down that rabbit hole... Anyway yeah as the article notes further down those mutations are really far away from the receptor binding domain, or any of the other key features likely to influence protein function. Actually looking at their location I doubt they're exposed residues at all so unlikely to even have a big effect on immunogenicity. So yeah, would put in the interesting but nothing to stress about until we see more data. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clueless Northman Posted October 19, 2021 Share Posted October 19, 2021 7 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said: I suffered from confirmation bias in believing it was highly improbable that the virus came from a lab. I've got over it and accept that there is a good probability that it did, but don't know enough to be able to say definitely one way or the other. That's not confirmation bias, that's common sense. It's highly improbable it's a lab leak, coming from a lab who works on a regular basis with all the Western labs, who's actually doing coronavirus research for Western labs. We're not talking about bioweapon research. Then there are recent studies that tend to show there was a double animal-human crossing from very close coronavirus variants occurring in caves in Yunnan, resulting in 2 slightly different viruses hitting Wuhan - something that, if fully confirmed, would basically rule out any lab leak. BTW, situation in NZ sucks big time, from what I see (not because it's spiralling out of control but because it's not contained, which is bad enough imho). Is it confirmed that eradication is now out of the question? I'm awfully sorry, I hoped the country could get things under control until opening up begins. You might have been a bit lucky in previous outbreaks, and definitely have been terribly unlucky with this one. Looks like you need insanely high standards of quarantine and caution when dealing with airborne virus with a R0 of 7. At least it'll be a lesson for future pandemics... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deadlines? What Deadlines? Posted October 19, 2021 Share Posted October 19, 2021 Regarding Pragers idiocy, The CDC has produced this handy chart. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/investigations-discovery/hospitalization-death-by-age.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fragile Bird Posted October 19, 2021 Author Share Posted October 19, 2021 8 minutes ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said: Regarding Pragers idiocy, The CDC has produced this handy chart. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/investigations-discovery/hospitalization-death-by-age.html Lovely. 90x higher rate of death for my age group. <sighs> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Anti-Targ Posted October 20, 2021 Share Posted October 20, 2021 3 hours ago, Clueless Northman said: That's not confirmation bias, that's common sense. It's highly improbable it's a lab leak, coming from a lab who works on a regular basis with all the Western labs, who's actually doing coronavirus research for Western labs. We're not talking about bioweapon research. Then there are recent studies that tend to show there was a double animal-human crossing from very close coronavirus variants occurring in caves in Yunnan, resulting in 2 slightly different viruses hitting Wuhan - something that, if fully confirmed, would basically rule out any lab leak. BTW, situation in NZ sucks big time, from what I see (not because it's spiralling out of control but because it's not contained, which is bad enough imho). Is it confirmed that eradication is now out of the question? I'm awfully sorry, I hoped the country could get things under control until opening up begins. You might have been a bit lucky in previous outbreaks, and definitely have been terribly unlucky with this one. Looks like you need insanely high standards of quarantine and caution when dealing with airborne virus with a R0 of 7. At least it'll be a lesson for future pandemics... You can still suffer from confirmation bias even when something is common sense. lab leaks happen (see the last or next to last Foot and Mouth Disease outbreak in the UK), so it is not improbable. My confirmation is was accepting "official" sources saying it's not a lab leak without really considering the strength of evidence behind the assertions. As to NZ, they gave up "unofficially" on elimination several weeks ago when they moved to level 3 too soon. They officially gave up on elimination somewhat more recently. My conspiracy theory that I've mentioned before is that the govt decided it's politically better to fail to eliminate and get vaccination rates up and hopefully limit the severity of cases and then just slowly let it creep through the country, than to eliminate and then have to figure out when to deliberately let it back in. This is probably covered by the "omission bias" that is talked about in the video. Today they announced for the first time ever at a level 3 lockdown that year 11-13 students will return to high school, though it's only a faux return because classroom lessons for the senior years in school have already ended and it't end of year exam time, so really they've only re-opened schools so students can do in-person exams, which are socially distanced anyway given there needs to be separation to prevent cheating. But still things are being progressively loosened. We're at 72% of the total population at least single jabbed (57% double jabbed). Which is not nearly enough to prevent a health disaster since everyone who is unjabbed has zero immunity. Most other countries have a level of immunity on top of the vaccination rate because of past exposure. So while the USA for example is 60% (or something) jabbed the immunity rate is probably in the 80%s at least. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rotting sea cow Posted October 20, 2021 Share Posted October 20, 2021 8 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said: As to NZ, they gave up "unofficially" on elimination several weeks ago when they moved to level 3 too soon. They officially gave up on elimination somewhat more recently. My conspiracy theory that I've mentioned before is that the govt decided it's politically better to fail to eliminate and get vaccination rates up and hopefully limit the severity of cases and then just slowly let it creep through the country, than to eliminate and then have to figure out when to deliberately let it back in. I think we discussed it already. My opinion is when those gang members started to get infected it became clear that elimination was not possible anymore. This is because around gangs, there is a bunch of associates, petty criminals, drug-addicts, shady businesses, victims, etc. All of whom do not have the incentives to come forward. All of them circulating in an environment of poverty, marginalization, low education and overcrowding. People like to blame the failures of COVID policies on antivaxxers, covidiots, etc. The truth of it is when COVID reach disenfranchised, marginalized or disadvantaged members of the society, the fight for elimination is lost. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rotting sea cow Posted October 20, 2021 Share Posted October 20, 2021 12 hours ago, Impmk2 said: Anyway yeah as the article notes further down those mutations are really far away from the receptor binding domain, or any of the other key features likely to influence protein function. Actually looking at their location I doubt they're exposed residues at all so unlikely to even have a big effect on immunogenicity. So yeah, would put in the interesting but nothing to stress about until we see more data. D614G was also far away from the RBD and still affected infectivity and while there is too much emphasis on the spike mutations (for good reson), little attention is given to other parts of the genome, at least by media, scientists probably are looking at it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Impmk2 Posted October 20, 2021 Share Posted October 20, 2021 31 minutes ago, rotting sea cow said: D614G was also far away from the RBD and still affected infectivity and while there is too much emphasis on the spike mutations (for good reson), little attention is given to other parts of the genome, at least by media, scientists probably are looking at it. Sure I'm not saying these substitutions* couldn't have any effect at all. Just I'm less stressed than if they'd announced a couple big changes somewhere really critical. At a quick glance at these mutations seem to be buried in the trimerisation interface, so sure could have some kind of stabilising effect. But the likelihood of a dramatic change is reduced, so I'd really want more data before I panic. But yeah I've felt for a while mutations outside the spike aren't being studied as much as the should. *more the Y->H, A->V is usually pretty insignificant Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fragile Bird Posted October 20, 2021 Author Share Posted October 20, 2021 Shares of Novavax have dropped about 15% today after Politico came out with an article explaining that the delay in bringing their vaccine out and available is still being caused by the company’s manufacturing issues. The vaccine itself has a better than 90% efficacy. The new Delta variant in England has been detected in the US, but not, apparently, in any clusters, according to a report I just saw on CNBC. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DireWolfSpirit Posted October 20, 2021 Share Posted October 20, 2021 England's 7 day average for Daily New Cases is particularly bleak. This new variant will probably being wreaking destruction in the U.S. Our recent dip in cases is likely a fools gold of hope. Still too many pockets of unvaxxed to burn through this winter. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Padraig Posted October 20, 2021 Share Posted October 20, 2021 3 hours ago, Fragile Bird said: Shares of Novavax have dropped about 15% today after Politico came out with an article explaining that the delay in bringing their vaccine out and available is still being caused by the company’s manufacturing issues. I was reading that. Either Novavax is misleading investors (they say they expect to apply to approval in the UK in a couple of weeks) or the story is overblown. It is based on "people familiar with the matter", so who knows. It has already been delayed 6 months though, so it certainly has had issues. https://www.politico.com/news/2021/10/19/novavax-vaccine-rush-process-global-campaign-516298 Quote But three people familiar with the matter said they are not confident that the company has the resources needed to reproduce a high-quality vaccine on a consistent basis — a benchmark Novavax must meet before that time. Those same people said Novavax could potentially fix its manufacturing issues and reach full licensure by the end of 2022. Of course, applying for approval isn't the same as getting approval, so we wouldn't know much for while. I am curious to see who will next get approval. Valneva has a chance, since it has released results but its a small manufacturer. Sanofi/GSK is supposed to announce results in Q4 also. Its trial is more a normal trial also (with placebo's etc.), which might help. And it is very used to the regulatory process. Atea/Roche has run into problems with its anti-viral pill. Unlike Merck (who was successful) it tested its pill on a wider cohort. These pills may not be as effective on those that have already been vaccinated. Quote While Merck deliberately excluded patients who had been vaccinated for Covid-19, Atea did not, which might have skewed the results, according to the company. Merck also recruited only patients who had at least one risk factor for severe Covid-19, such as obesity or heart disease, while Atea required only a positive test and mild symptoms. https://www.statnews.com/2021/10/19/ateas-antiviral-pill-fails-to-clear-covid-19-forcing-a-re-think/ And Europe's cases really are going up. Maybe winter? Maybe falling effectiveness? But I can see a lot of boosters been thrown at the problem over the next month. Although, fatalities hasn't escalated so far. 7 minutes ago, DireWolfSpirit said: This new variant will probably being wreaking destruction in the U.S. I think it is way too early to say much about that. Lots of variants have come and gone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zorral Posted October 20, 2021 Share Posted October 20, 2021 Medical personnel in Wales afraid to come in to work, as due to medical personnel shortages and overwhelmed by covid the hospitals and so on are sending them to treat patients they aren't trained and qualified to handle. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/oct/20/doctors-in-south-wales-scared-to-come-to-work-over-safety-fears Quote The RCP heard that understaffed rotas at the original three sites were now being stretched across four sites, meaning that doctors with no specialist training were left to handle paediatrics, trauma, obstetric and stroke patients – sometimes in minor injuries units. Some doctors reported being expected to work two to three hours extra unpaid every day with many “close to total burnout”. Herd immunity and how to get there? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paxter Posted October 20, 2021 Share Posted October 20, 2021 2 hours ago, Padraig said: And Europe's cases really are going up. Maybe winter? Maybe falling effectiveness? But I can see a lot of boosters been thrown at the problem over the next month. Although, fatalities hasn't escalated so far. I think it would be much more of a surprise if cases didn't go up. The question mark for me is the extent of pressure on health care systems. England as an example has been dealing with elevated caseloads for a number of months but hospital admissions have never exceeded 800 per day during that time. That compares to a (quite staggering) 3,500 per day in January. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Raja Posted October 20, 2021 Share Posted October 20, 2021 1 hour ago, Paxter said: I think it would be much more of a surprise if cases didn't go up. The question mark for me is the extent of pressure on health care systems. England as an example has been dealing with elevated caseloads for a number of months but hospital admissions have never exceeded 800 per day during that time. That compares to a (quite staggering) 3,500 per day in January. We've gone past 800 plenty of times per day over the last month so I'm not sure where you're getting the 'never exceeded' - I also do not think you should really be comparing the current number of admissions per day to the peak in January, that doesn't really make much sense to me. The NHS is under significant pressure and there are plenty of signs about it affecting patient care & routine care, we're not going to be doing anything about it though We're blessed with one spineless health secretary after the next. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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