CDC - If you’ve tested positive just do what you think is best for you
Also the CDC - Do NOT set foot on a cruise ship. Those things are fucking fucking disgusting
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To be fair, they ain’t wrong on that on.
Cruise ships and kids nurseries are the greatest breading grounds for diseases and virus
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Really want to say, “apart from your Mum”.
There.
Sorry. Couldn’t help it 
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Has any company done better than Pfizer out of this pandemic? Amazon, maybe?
Moderna, without a doubt. Pfizer has had a good run with their vaccine, but were already a global business. Moderna was a biotech company which had raised $600M in 2018 and lost $500M in 2019.
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maybe a few of the tech companies that jumped on the online video/conference calling malarcy like Zoom.
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Yeah. If you go back to the early days I despaired at Moderna getting the NIH hand holding because in our field they have a bad reputation. Lots of people view them as a bit scammy, like an investment vehicle with a good PR department rather than a genuine biotech company. This is the first product they have ever actually managed to bring to market. And as of today its vaccine is looking like the best of the lot
Also keep in mind that for the established biotech companies, a lot of their focus on covid came at the expense of other programs and products. It’s not quite zero sum, but it’s not purely additive. For a company like Pfizer to make that switch of resources to a product they then sell at cost (mostly) is not the business win it seems like.
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Surely you should be asking Tory donors that question? Or Matt Hancock.
Rees-Mogg?
Sorry wrong disaster
What about this anti-viral?
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Hearing the WHO catechism of getting vaccines to everyone being recited, and I no longer understand it. On a global scale, they are now marginally relevant - great for limiting seriousness for those who have already had it, nice if you can get them in the next 5-6 weeks. But at the pace this variant is spreading, the timescale required for rolling out the vaccine to the global population makes it irrelevant. If you run an IDEA model using the WHO’s own current assumptions for parameters, and assume the first case was November 10, the global peak will be January 31 (day 82), with peak exposures on January 27 (~250M/day), with global exposures of less than 1M/day by Day 120. Not many countries are even making a serious effort to slow it down either.
Allowing for 5 days for vaccine efficacy, utility of vaccines after January 24 is declining, and essentially non-existent by mid-March. Yet there is absolutely no one who would suggest that anything can be done to scale up vaccinations within that time frame. If I understand the production cycle correctly, the production inputs for that January 24 administration date will already have been made. In global policy terms, they have really become a luxury good for the developed world.
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This thread is too depressing. Here’s a NZ COVID advert that is so bad it’s good
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In the omicron surge in South Africa, it looks like deaths may have more than doubled, though from one low level to another. The U.S. is still averaging around 1300 deaths per day even prior to omicron. Therefore, if deaths in the U.S. double in the next eight weeks, that would bring us back close to the January 2021 peak. It’s a little strange that the U.S. is no less vaccinated than Britain, I think, but we seem to have a worse deaths in the post-vaccine period.
It is about a 7% difference in vaccination, so not likely to be just a function of the vaccines. I suspect the largest difference is that Britain has had an enormous number of cases since July (largely Delta), so many Omicron cases in the UK are reinfections from the last 6 months. By contrast, many parts of the US getting hit hardest by Omicron did not have massive Delta waves, and reinfections are hitting people with 12 months plus since their prior infections.
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Yup, I said at the time it felt like the government were happy to keep targeting a high vaccination rate at the same time as letting Delta circulate in the population during a period when the health service is under less pressure, precisely to build up greater immunity for the winter. Particularly among the anti-vax community. Such a strategy does appear to be helping the UK deal with Omicron at the moment, specifically when it comes to hospitalisations and deaths.
Ignore numbers from SA though. SA has had over 1/4 of a million excess deaths in the last 18 months. It suggests that it’s not capturing 2/3rds of the real numbers.
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How do we get out of the current bind where there are insanely high positive tests and asymptomatics are effectively having to isolate? This is obviously an issue in football currently but it applies as much to general workers, and is a major issue for key workers like healthcare staff and teachers.
Do you significantly scale back testing so that we know less about who has the virus? Testing is currently demanding significant resources from governments so it would be a win there, but in the process we go blind on variants.
Or do you continue very high testing but remove isolation and use those test now purely to track the virus for new variants?
I’m not sure scientists can be confident of any approach yet given they don’t even have the full picture of the most recent variant but I still find it interesting which path will be taken.
But at some stage a country will have to take the leap and carry out the next step of ‘getting back to normal’ which will involve scaling back self-isolation. I do wonder whether the CDC guidance is wholly influenced by the shortage of tests or whether they are already experimenting with this kind of rollback.
England in particular has already done that. Other than mask wearing England has been back to normal since August. Nothing like a weak PM and some it job back benchers who really hold the power to ignore science.
The result has been a high case load and for me anyway a uncomfortable level of deaths but as far as certain politicians are concerned it’s over.
It isn’t of course, not while the risk of new variants and world wide cases remain so high. But I’ve no idea how long it will take to from the current position to one where the virus is considered “managed”. Part of the issue is without doubt the vast variance in vaccine levels and approaches to managing the virus.
I don’t think it has though. Policy is still that those testing positive need to isolate including taking days off work, with staff shortages one of the main pressures on the NHS.
This is what I am specifically talking about. Almost treating COVID like a cold or flu virus. If a footballer had flu he can still play, providing he is feeling well enough
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Maybe. Tough one but if you’re I’ll you generally stay at home no matter what the illness. Difference with Covid I guess is the infectious period before symptoms and how infectious it is.
Behaviour wise in the general population in England is pretty normal though, or has been until mask wearing was reintroduced.
I think there’s a very small step between where we are now and normal to be honest.
The getting back to normal thing, I think, is slightly undermined by the fact that we’re still running a rolling seven day average of 132 deaths a day.