sounds like some areas of Murica. dem social media doctors be spellins all sorts of untruths about that dang virus turning y’all into zombies, I tell you what.
1 Like
I’m fascinating by the dynamics of this. Herd immunity shouldn’t be thought of as a binary yes or no thing even though it is commonly discussed in that way. When we think of it in binary terms what we really mean is has herd immunity surpassed the threshold required to suppress further outbreaks (even if the answer is no, approaching that threshold is way better than not).
There have been no credible models that have suggested we can reach that level of vaccination and therefore that threshold in the US without a massive change in the attitude towards the vaccine. Most analyses were putting the required vaccination rate at close to 90% and we’ve just passed 50% (fully vaccinated) without much room for us going that much higher. Despite that we are now seeing case loads and hospitalization data approach spring 2020 levels prior to our first round of lock downs. Keep in mind that much of America stayed relatively “open” during periods with case levels way higher than that which initially caused lock downs back in March 2020, and so we’ve achieved this level of suppression despite many people still doing whatever the fuck they want and with unimpressive population level vaccination rates. It’s difficult to know what to make of that.
1 Like
A record Monday followed by a record Tuesday. Could be a big week.
Anybody used the Yellow card reporting site after their vaccine? Just submitted my potential side effects and its a well-put-together form.
I felt absolutely fine until Monday morning (84 hours after Pfizer jab) when I struggled to even get myself out of bed due to fatigue. Nose has been running like a bitch for the last 48 hours. Last night I went to bed at 9pm due to fatigue which is way earlier than I have ever gone to bed, but stayed up to 1am due to feeling nauseous. I’ve heard side effects can be much more severe and I’m thankful I haven’t reacted like some getting almost heavy flu symptoms, but I’ve reported my potential side-effects anyway. Without data there is no knowledge.
3 Likes
I never even knew about the yellow card site, but luckily apart from feeling fatigued and tired the next day and a slight fever overnight I didn’t get any reaction with the AZ jab
2 Likes
Shakes head. I’ve been posting links to the yellow card site since February!
2 Likes
Northern Ireland opens up vaccinations for everyone aged 18+
1 Like
Putting this out here to warn everyone who thinks that the virus is going anywhere anytime soon…it isn’t. Even in Singapore where we had stringent measures, a continual need to manage the inflow of foreign labour especially from India caused the latest round of spikes. With Taiwan, they have pretty much lived life as per normal in the last year but again complacency and momentary lapses in testing and quarantine caused this huge spike which they are struggling to contain.
I am saying this because I am seeing much bigger countries who are so eager to reopen and relax the measures too much because even in countries with the strictest measures, all it takes is just one wrong move, one lapse for the virus to spiral into another round of uncontrollable spread.
PS: one thing I really cannot understand, why is the UK allowing football fans to travel overseas? Are they subject to any measures coming back to the UK?
3 Likes
I agree, just think back to March last year, when 3000 Atletico Madrid fans were allowed to travel to Liverpool from Madrid, a COVID-19 ‘hotspot’ at the time. I was in the city centre and the Madrid fans were mixing freely in the bars, shops and restaurants. It was complete madness to allow their fans to travel and the game to go ahead. (Plus, we would have still been in the Champions League, when football resumed a few months later)
2 Likes
I remembered that. That was crazy. And I would say it is even crazier to allow it now because we should have learnt. Around the world, I can understand that life as we know now sucks. We all have our wants but humans as humans should have the ability to rein in our wants for the greater good. But humans as humans just could not. Majority are of course responsible human beings but again this virus only need a few irresponsible ones.
2 Likes
Imagine if there had been a concerted worldwide cooperative strategy to combat this virus. Where all nations took the same measures to safeguard their own populations and the citizens of other countries… Where the vaccine was distributed equally across the world by an organised centralised body and all scientific findings were freely shared.
As a species our reaction to this emergency has been little short of pathetic. When the next real emergency comes - a virus that kills humans instantly - we need, as a species, to have a far more unified and coherent strategy in order to save as many lives as possible.
You have to ask, in the midst of a global pandemic, the greatest threat to human life since WW2, where the hell were the WHO and the UN? What practical use were either of them?
A new global, independent, pandemic response body needs to be formulated and activated as soon as possible, with branches in every single nation. with the power and authority to act swiftly and decisively. Time to act globally rather than nationally.
4 Likes
Similar thing happened with an Atalanta game in Italy too.
2 Likes
But, but … the economy… !
Will we learn is the big question. Will ‘herd immunity’ be conclusively put to one side for example?
I think vaccine development was good and this ‘episode’ has probably done a lot to progress this branch.
For many aspects I feel it’s still too early to come to conclusions as the data needs to be collected and computed. However many European nations need to hang their heads in shame yet that narrative is being swept under the carpet (just look at the UK and France). Just goes to show how nationalistic each country is. I just cannot see how union would change much without enormous change in our conceptions. (In other words is it really a problem with WHO and/or UN (lots of things wrong with these organiseations but they shouldn’t get blamed for everything)).
1 Like
Agree completely. I am under no illusion that the UN or the WHO were ever either independent or effective. The pandemic has just illuminated further how ineffectual, weak and powerless these two organisations are.
2 Likes
There’s much bigger worries imo.
The way Austria and Italy reacted for example (at the start of the pandemic in europe) was disgusting. Yet this keeping and getting tourism back on its feet (as it were) just won’t go away. It’s just so important that spreading of the variants just isn’t important despite the fact that the vaccines might not be efficient against one or more of them.
I thought it crazy that at the start countries were so eager to repatriate people from the epicenters etc and here we are encouraging people to fly round the world to sit on a beach, eat in restaurants, and mingle in museums. To add to that masks are no longer necessary (well if your outside but that will go further).
Talking of variants there’s debate over whether it’s necessary/effective what ever to do sequencing (only to cover up that certain countries have the sequencing ability of a snail). I’m no expert however if your going to let people fly round the world with no comtrols at borders or airports surely this is one of the only ways to track what’s going on with variants.
Anyway the pharmaceutical industry will probably end up being busy for a while keeping their vaccines upto date (it will probably end up like the flu vaccine but with a wider public being targetted).
I know not a post on WHO or UN but I needed to get this off my chest. I do wonder if this pandemic will ‘force’ changes and/or reform of WHO who imo haven’t been very helpful over world health for a while now (though I do think they have been better during this pandemic than I could have anticipated).
1 Like
Like France imposing restrictions on the UK due to the high number of cases of the Indian variant, a number which is known only because the UK sequences such a high proportion of all positive cases. It’s submitted 417,172 genomes to GISAID compared with 35,730 from France, for example.
Just in the last 30 days the UK has submitted genomes of 32.6% of all its positive cases (20,376 out of 62,428) compared with 1.12% submitted by France (4,217 out of 375,385).
We also do so much quicker taking a median 9 days to deposition compared with 15 days by France.
2 Likes
Lockdown again in Victoria. 26 locally acquired cases.
A quarantined passenger supposedly tested negative entering South Australian quarantine, traveled to Victoria after completing quarantine, then tested positive on arrival. Believed to have picked up the virus in hotel quarantine.
It’s rather strange how Victoria, and to a lesser extent SA, have struggled with containment in hotel quarantine, yet NSW and Qld, who have the bulk of returning travelers, are barely having any issues.
12,000 vaccines administered in Victoria in the last 24 hour period, so they are really struggling to get the vaccine strategy up and running. My folks in Tas (late 60’s) still haven’t been offered vaccine.
2 Likes
Exactly and precisely, if a country doesn’t have sequencing capability then it can not track the variant so should be putting up restrictions but not silly adhoc restrictions general restrictions.
France is a complete clusterfuck over policy over this pandemic and just because many other countries are as well isn’t an excuse.
But as I was saying these nationalistic trends just don’t help either!
We’ve now had record numbers of vaccinations for a Monday, a Tuesday, and a Wednesday so far this week. It’s looking like a biggy.
Our record single day was 844k back in March. That could be surpassed but it’s almost certain that this will be the single biggest week of vaccinations so far.