Covid-19 Politics

[broncofan]

I don't know enough about the vaccine manufacturing process to know if making more initially was feasible. But it does seem like it would have made sense in terms of risk/reward to have subsidized the production of Johnson & Johnson since at least December. I also don't know how many doses are promised to other countries so don't mean to sound nationalistic.

There is concern about the variants we've seen. There are three of them so far and while the UK one has characteristics that make it more dangerous (more transmissible possibly more deadly) the South African one has drifted enough that it evades some of our antibody response. Still, Johnson & Johnson is nearly 50% effective against the South African variant in actual trials and Pfizer and Moderna likely offer modest protection.

It is concerning any time a virus mutates but I read a thread from a virologist who said that it's not unexpected given how much transmission there has been in a year. Her point was that there has been antigenic drift throughout the year but these variants are the first that show significantly different characteristics in terms of transmissibility and antibody response. That does not mean that it's a fast moving target or that it's going to be as tough to protect against as the flu which in some years reformulated vaccines only offer 35% protection. Here's virologist Angela Rasmussens's thread about the differences in rates of mutation between flu and sars-cov-2. I'm including the conclusion because the rest is way above my comprehension. https://twitter.com/angie_rasmussen/status/1353057302694117376


Edit: I should also point out that she is offering a correction to Tom Frieden who is the former CDC director. Most virologists I've followed agree with her viewpoint. I'm not saying he's acting in bad faith or scaremongering but amusing that his glib, frightening conclusion has many more likes than hers.

[Laphroaig]

If vaccination is not compulsory I assume you could choose to pass and then opt in later. The government wants to get as many people vaccinated as possible, so it would not make sense to not let people change their minds.

Possible but while I'm not sure (and by my estimation am unlikely to get the vaccine myself until summer at the earliest) I don't believe you know in advance which one you'll be given. It would be like continually rolling the dice and hoping to eventually roll a double 6.

[blackchubby38]

Governor Cuomo has gotten a lot of praise for how he has handled the pandemic. But its interesting to see how some of that shine is starting to come off.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/01/nyregion/cuomo-health-department-officials-quit.html

This line here is pretty infuriating:

“When I say ‘experts’ in air quotes, it sounds like I’m saying I don’t really trust the experts,” Mr. Cuomo said at a news conference on Friday, referring to scientific expertise at all levels of government during the pandemic. “Because I don’t. Because I don’t.”

[Stavros]

We had this nonsense during the Brexit debate when Michael Gove was asked to name an economist who backed his Brexit campaign - "Michael Gove has refused to name any economists who back Britain’s exit from the European Union, saying that “people in this country have had enough of experts”. "
https://www.ft.com/content/3be49734-29cb-11e6-83e4-abc22d5d108c

The sad fact is that plans are made by experts to anticipate a crisis, be it in public health, a major accident etc, but when it happens, polticians with their 'eyes on the prize' intervene, and usually to make a bad situation worse. That this is the worst public health crisis in 100 years ought to have tempered Mr Cuomo's approach, but evidently it emboldened him to scale the heights of glory. That this is not unique, in either the US or the UK or for that matter, in Europe, suggests we have a generation of politicians who do not compare favourably with those we had in the past, so it is not just an Institutional failure. I daresay New York will get through this over the next year, but when the history comes to be written, I will trust the experienced historians of medicine and society, rather than the memoirs of any man, or woman, seeking to cement their place in history, often with prose that actually reads like cement.

[blackchubby38]

We had this nonsense during the Brexit debate when Michael Gove was asked to name an economist who backed his Brexit campaign - "Michael Gove has refused to name any economists who back Britain’s exit from the European Union, saying that “people in this country have had enough of experts”. "
https://www.ft.com/content/3be49734-29cb-11e6-83e4-abc22d5d108c

The sad fact is that plans are made by experts to anticipate a crisis, be it in public health, a major accident etc, but when it happens, polticians with their 'eyes on the prize' intervene, and usually to make a bad situation worse. That this is the worst public health crisis in 100 years ought to have tempered Mr Cuomo's approach, but evidently it emboldened him to scale the heights of glory. That this is not unique, in either the US or the UK or for that matter, in Europe, suggests we have a generation of politicians who do not compare favourably with those we had in the past, so it is not just an Institutional failure. I daresay New York will get through this over the next year, but when the history comes to be written, I will trust the experienced historians of medicine and society, rather than the memoirs of any man, or woman, seeking to cement their place in history, often with prose that actually reads like cement.

You mean a book like this right:

https://www.amazon.com/American-Crisis-Leadership-COVID-19-Pandemic/dp/0593239261/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1OMXWY7I5RAIG&dchild=1&keywords=andrew+cuomo+book&qid=1612309559&s=books&sprefix=andrew%2Caps%2C158&sr=1-1

[cleats50]

You are so wrong. Faucci is scum. He fucked up AIDS response and now this

[Stavros]

You mean a book like this right:

https://www.amazon.com/American-Crisis-Leadership-COVID-19-Pandemic/dp/0593239261/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1OMXWY7I5RAIG&dchild=1&keywords=andrew+cuomo+book&qid=1612309559&s=books&sprefix=andrew%2Caps%2C158&sr=1-1

One of those WTF?! moments as I had not heard of this before. I assume it is now on the reading list for Columbia students of American fiction?

[fred41]

One of those WTF?! moments as I had not heard of this before. I assume it is now on the reading list for Columbia students of American fiction?

Just to add to the WTF ?! Moment - he also won an Emmy.

[broncofan]

I watched Cuomo's press conferences and thought he spoke well and was good at offering hope and encouragement during tough times. But that's not the only job of a governor obviously. New York has not done a great job with the virus and Cuomo has not had a good relationship with health experts in his state and as blackchubby's post shows, has derided them as well.

I don't know enough about him and while I was inclined to like him it takes some balls to write a book about your leadership ability when you've done no better than average during a crisis. Reminds me of Giuliani bringing up 9/11 every other sentence thinking it was his crowning moment and would lead him to the white house. We know how that turned out.

People make a lot of judgments based on how someone speaks and presents himself. Cuomo came across as credible but his attempt to capitalize on an international crisis is pathetic. Genuinely pathetic...

[broncofan]

Reminds me of Giuliani bringing up 9/11 every other sentence thinking it was his crowning moment and would lead him to the white house.
And I'm not saying anything about Giuliani's performance during 9/11 because I don't really know but I just think that when you overplay your hand about how you responded in a crisis eventually people tire of it even if you were initially lauded.

[Stavros]

Just to add to the WTF ?! Moment - he also won an Emmy.

Blimey, Fred, now I'm lost for words. Even if I can think of something intelligent to say about this, I won't bother, life is too short on this occasion.

[sukumvit boy]

Very interesting article about Russia's race to create the Sputnik V vaccine.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/02/08/the-sputnik-v-vaccine-and-russias-race-to-immunity

[filghy2]

Johnson and Johnson says it can produce ten million doses in February and that's ten million more people vaccinated. I imagine they can ramp up much further after that. Since the government is paying for vaccines, I'm not sure who would choose a vaccine that is 66% effective rather than 95% effective at preventing covid cases but maybe it has a better side effect profile or maybe some people in a lower priority group would prefer to get some protection earlier.

There's a discussion of different dimensions of efficacy here that may be relevant. In addition to efficacy in preventing people catching the virus, which is the stat that gets most attention, there is also efficacy in preventing people transmitting it to others and efficacy in moderating the effects if people get infected. Different vaccines may perform differently on the three dimensions.
https://www.vox.com/22273502/covid-vaccines-pfizer-moderna-johnson-astrazeneca-efficacy-deaths

[broncofan]

There's a discussion of different dimensions of efficacy here that may be relevant. In addition to efficacy in preventing people catching the virus, which is the stat that gets most attention, there is also efficacy in preventing people transmitting it to others and efficacy in moderating the effects if people get infected. Different vaccines may perform differently on the three dimensions.
https://www.vox.com/22273502/covid-vaccines-pfizer-moderna-johnson-astrazeneca-efficacy-deaths
This is extremely important. I was aware of these other endpoints but without data I figured we could only assume they were correlated with each other (though they probably aren't). Efficacy for preventing people getting covid disease was the endpoint for the studies and it makes sense that it would be easier to collect data on it and reach statistical significance. The article makes the point about why it takes longer to measure efficacy in preventing death.

It is an unanswered question whether Astrazeneca's vaccine is effective at preventing death for those exposed to the b.1.351 variant in South Africa. To provide just the superficial info I've gleaned from immunologists, different aspects of the immune response may be involved in protecting one against disease v. severe disease. Antibodies are thought to be important early on and be the most important in protecting against getting covid. But t-cell response may be more important once the virus has replicated and a person is sick. I'm sure it's much more complicated than this but it's one reason they don't assume the different possible endpoints are always correlated with one another.

A couple other issues scientists are trying to work through: As they develop updated boosters that are more effective against emerging variants, does it require them to go through all three phases of clinical trials or is there some expedited process?

The other question is whether efficacy at preventing disease can be inferred from data in the lab, which is not how vaccine efficacy is established in the original trials. For instance, while there is now some data for how well J&J, Astrazeneca, and Novavax perform in South African cohorts, where the b.1.351 variant is thought to be dominant, Pfizer and Moderna have only released statements saying that the antibodies in the blood of people who have been received their shots neutralizes this variant in vitro.

Scientists make a lot of predictions after phase 2 safety trials where they have the blood of people who have received the vaccine and can measure antibody titers. They try to figure out "correlates of protection" by comparing these titers in the blood of vaccinated people to those who have been infected. But they assume they don't really know until they get to Phase 3 and test the vaccine against placebo. I think as new variants emerge regulators are probably going to find ways to make educated guesses about efficacy hopefully without sacrificing safety.

[broncofan]

There's also the fairly obvious point that while safety risks are important to monitor there's a risk in assuming that there's efficacy when there isn't because people take fewer precautions after they're vaccinated. In Israel they found a doubling of the rate of infections in people for the first week after they received their first Pfizer shot because some probably believed they had immunity that hadn't yet developed.

Given that we have indications that both natural infection and some vaccines are less effective at preventing disease for the South African variant it will be important to get guidance about how vaccinated people are supposed to behave. That variant will be making its way around the world obviously.

[blackchubby38]

So much for being the patron saint of Corona virus response.


New York governor's top aide admits administration delayed the release of Covid-19 deaths in long-term care facilities over federal investigation concerns


www.cnn.com/2021/02/12/us/new-york-aide-apology-covid-deaths-facilities/index.html

[filghy2]

There must be something in the water in New York
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/feb/13/andrew-cuomo-mini-trump-new-york-coronavirus

[fred41]

There must be something in the water in New York
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/feb/13/andrew-cuomo-mini-trump-new-york-coronavirus

It’s an excellent article. I wish other papers would’ve written it when it mattered - say....back in March or so. The NY Post did, but it’s owned by Murdoch so we’ll just ignore it. I’m glad the orange distraction is out of office now. I hope that means that, here in the States, the media will now look at the actual politicians in front of them and write fair, but critical, pieces on them regardless of whether there’s a D or an R in front of their names. The clown show Cuomo put on with his brother on CNN seems so horrifically tone deaf now....as does his book and his absurd Emmy.

[Stavros]

How many Cuomos are there (other than, more than enough) ? There seems to be a dynastic tinge to Americana these days - the US is threatened with yet more Trumps entering the political arena, and there seems to be an endless supply of Jenners and Kardashians -are they going to enter politics too? Has Chelsea Clinton made any decision on politics?

[fred41]

The dynastic tinge doesn’t just apply to ‘these days’....we’ve always had them - remember the Kennedys? Sometimes dynasties merge..as when Andrew Cuomo married Kerry Kennedy. I suspect that, because we don’t have actual royalty, like you do in the UK, we create our own - whether in politics or , all too often, in Hollywood. How else to explain the Kardashians? They are famous for being famous. The Kardashians are a family that were pretty well off financially..but became sickeningly wealthy by virtue of a sex tape. Kris Jenner (the mom) basically prostituted her own daughters to the media...and it worked! Have you ever listened to Kim Kardashian in an interview? I have. She’s a pretty girl but bland as fuck.

[Stavros]

Something has gone wrong when a thread on Covid ends up with those insignificant nobodies. I make a point of not finding out, as I see the headlines when I log out of my yahoo email, and can't be bothered to google them either, like Britney Spears or some rapper who has made a fortune shouting obscenities into a microphone. In the real world, people like me are stil waiting for the 'essential' second dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine, while debate rots the soul with its perpetual questions about vaccinating children, lifting lockdown restrictions, new variants, and now the decision, a year after this virus first appeared to force people arriving in the UK fro designated destinations to quarantine themselves -and at their own expense- in hotels.

It remains to be seen that if, as Boris Johnson says, the lockdown can only be lifted to be permanent, if that is what happens. I think here in the UK, the problems is not the science so much as the interface between science and politics, and the pressure Johnson is under to make more of the Government's proposals subject to a vote in Parliament, and the demands of the markets to open or die. Throw in the mess Brexit is creating for so many firms, and 2021 is going to be an 'interesting' year -Boris may get a postive 'bounce' if the Covid situation eases as the year goes on, but he has no free pass as far as Brexit goes, because he owns it.

The best he can hope for is that the SNP falls apart owing to the tactics of Alex Salmond, even if it turns out the internal machie done him wrong -or will the average voter stick with Nickola come what May?

[broncofan]

A couple other issues scientists are trying to work through: As they develop updated boosters that are more effective against emerging variants, does it require them to go through all three phases of clinical trials or is there some expedited process?

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/22/health/covid-vaccine-variants.html

Covid vaccine: FDA says shots for new variants won't need large clinical trials (cnbc.com) (https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/22/covid-vaccine-fda-says-shots-that-target-new-variants-wont-need-large-clinical-trials-to-win-approval.html)

We've got an answer from U.S. regulators. The process will be expedited. Take a look at the articles if you're curious but boosters (or re-formulated vaccines) may be necessary for the South African variant.

[blackchubby38]

NYC sports teams can now have up to 2,000 fans in their respective arenas.

Movie theaters are set to reopen on March 5th.

The subway now only closes between the hours of 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. for cleaning.

Who would have thought all it would take for Governor Cuomo to ease up on restrictions in NYC is a major scandal.

[Stavros]

A round-up of recent developments to add to Blackchubby's post above.

1) The AstraZeneca Vaccine
Germany, Sweden, Belgium and France have reversed their decision not to use the AstraZeneca vaccine in over 65's. From my perspective, it might appear to be more efficient to have a one-jab rather than a two-jab vaccine, but the main purpose is to be vaccinated, and if that happens over a 12-week period, what's the problem?

2) Claims over the use of Foetal tissue in vaccines in the US

"Roman Catholic leaders in St. Louis and New Orleans are advising Catholics that the COVID-19 vaccine from Johnson & Johnson, newly approved for use in the U.S., is "morally compromised" because it is produced using a cell line derived from an aborted fetus.
...
While not disputing the church officials' contention that an abortion-derived cell line is used in the production, Johnson & Johnson issued a statement Tuesday stressing that there is no fetal tissue in its vaccine."
https://abc7news.com/johnson--vaccine-covid-jj-catholics/10385381/

This from the Roman Catholic Church, morally compromised because of its leading role in the slaughter of approx 100 million human beings in the Americas from the 15th through to the 20th Century.

3) The (phased) ending of Covid Protocols
Boris Johnson may be getting some applause for the UK's management of its vaccination programme, but we still do not know if the decline in deaths, hospitalizations and new cases is permanent, as there are some signs of a slowdown in decline in parts of the West Midands, London and the South-East. Because the vaccination programme has yet to target the 40-50 age range the prospect of new infections taking place in this cohort has risen, with some concern that citizens with a Pakistani heritage where large families live in one household are a risk.
https://www.itv.com/news/2021-03-04/covid-decline-in-cases-slows-amid-concerns-people-will-catch-virus-before-their-jab

This in turn suggests that the phased end to the lockdown that begins wiith the staggered re-opening of schools next Monday (March 8th) is a calculated risk -whatever Johnson says, we have to wait and see.

I suggest the decision made in Texas by the Governor is of a similar level of risk, or may be reckless depending on the stats. San Francisco appears to have some good stats in the context of both California and the US-

"...the lowest death rate from COVID-19 of any major city in the U.S., as well as the lowest number of cases ending in death. Its cumulative death rate (https://www.usnews.com/news/healthiest-communities/coronavirus-data/covid-death-rate?chart_type=line&geoid[]=6075)is 36 per 100,000 people, compared to 219.3 for New York City and 162.7 for Los Angeles. Its case fatality rate was just over 1%, in contrast to the Big Apple’s 4.45%. The COVID death rate in San Francisco, a city and county of over 880,000 people, is currently (https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#county-view) a seven-day average of 4.54 deaths per 100,000, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention COVID-19 Tracker.
https://www.fodors.com/world/north-america/usa/california/san-francisco/experiences/news/i-live-in-the-city-with-the-lowest-covid-death-rate-in-the-u-s

But as we know how easily the virus, and variants of the virus can spread, are relaxations of Covid protocols taking place too soon, whether it is within the US, the UK, or anywhere else?

4) Variants and their Potential
I don't know enough -does anyone?- about the risks posed to teachers by children, or indeed the potential for children to become a new cohort of infected cases, given that we still do not know enough about variants of the virus and who is most at risk. The Nature review in the link below, points to research -not yet peer reviewed- which argues

"The researchers found that adults living with kids — especially high-school students — who went into school were more likely to report COVID-19 symptoms or test positive for SARS-CoV-2. But the researchers also found that schools could eliminate that risk entirely by implementing at least seven mitigation measures from a list that included requiring students and teachers to wear masks, preventing parents from entering schools and increasing the spacing between desks. The findings have not yet been peer reviewed."

New Variants can be expected, and I think most epidemiologists believe that vaccines will deal with them, not least because vaccines are modified on a regular basis to deal with such evets. Whether or not these new variants will have negative effects on children or adults not vaccinated must be considered a possibility.

Some of the above issues are reviewed here-
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00502-w

[broncofan]

A couple thoughts. I agree with you generally that vaccines will be tailored to new variants. The variants are at least a minor concern as sequencing in most countries has been poor and the South African variant is able to evade immune response for some vaccines. It appears that even if vaccines aren't as effective at preventing disease they might be somewhat effective in preventing severe illness and death but I haven't seen a lot of data on that.

Moderna has submitted its booster for the south african variant to the fda for phase 1. I think companies will respond quickly to the new variants but as infections are rampant in many parts of the world expect more mutation. It's not a cause for panic but is something to be vigilant about.

The announcement by the governor of Texas is the kind of demagoguery that has made the pandemic worse. It has no upside and is in the spirit of trying to exploit people's frustration with an undeniably difficult period of time.

Lots of things I'd like to get back to but can't because I don't want to get sick and don't want to get people I'm in contact with sick. I do think things will get better in a lot of places by summer so there's that.

[Stavros]

Linked below is a challenging article. I agree with a lot of it, but wonder if the author is right to argue that an aerosol borne virus is ineffective in the open air. I have often been on crowded streets in the open air where the close proximity of other people could be as effective a location of infection as a bus or a night-club, so I am not convinced that being in the open air is always safe, as it depends on where one is, and how many people there are around.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/02/how-public-health-messaging-backfired/618147/

[Stavros]

And a new survey in the UK reveals this, below, though I just don't get it -we are vaccinated when young against a host of diseases, so what's the problem with the Covid vaccine?

"Although the debate on vaccine hesitancy has focused primarily on ethnicity, the ONS report suggests that the variation by age is even more striking. It says a black person is more than six time as likely as a white person to express vaccine hesitancy. But it says someone aged 16 to 29 is more than 17 times as likely to express vaccine hesitancy as someone aged 80 or over. (Among the over-80s, vaccine hesitancy is just 1%.)

Tim Vizard, a public policy analyst at the ONS, said:
Over the past three months, we’ve seen people become increasingly positive about the Covid-19 vaccines, with over nine in 10 adults saying they would have it if offered, or having already had it. Of those who are hesitant about receiving the vaccine, it’s younger and black adults who are most likely to say this, with concerns around side effects, long term effects and how well the vaccine works being the most common reasons."
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2021/mar/08/uk-covid-live-news-minister-defends-pupil-isolation-after-rapid-test-results-as-schools-return-in-england

[broncofan]

The US is close to administering 3 million shots a day of pfizer and moderna. If we can keep that up, it means by June 8 or so we will have administered 270 million more shots.

Since most of these are two shot regimens we might have close to half the population vaccinated and a higher percent with partial protection. I still wonder what this all means for herd immunity since the threshold has been found to be very high. There have been places in Brazil where more than 70% of the people ended up getting infected.

By summer it's expected that supply of the vaccine might be greater than demand and people's desire to get vaccinated may become the limiting factor. I hope some of that can be overcome with education because the rate of serious side effects for pfizer and moderna is very low, particularly compared to the threat posed by the virus.

[Stavros]

But, again, here is the problem -surely the same cohort of the population inoculated in their early childhood against diseases such as measles, polio, chicken pox etc, cannot on that basis justify refusing the Covid vaccine? It only makes sense if people actually believe what a certified idiot like Trump says, or possibly their local 'pastor' or religious head? I mean, more than 500,000 deaths and 29 million cases -don't these statistics have any impact on the public?

"Nearly one-third of all Republicans are opposed to receiving coronavirus vaccinations, according to a growing number of polls, as reports indicate many Americans rejecting the jab have cited former President Donald Trump (https://www.independent.co.uk/topic/donald-trump)’s misinformation about Covid-19 (https://www.independent.co.uk/topic/covid-19).
Those who have said they were “definitely not” planning on getting a coronavirus vaccine suggested the global pandemic had been overblown by the media and the Democratic Party in interviews with the Washington Post (https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/03/07/republicans-covid-vaccine/) for a report published on Monday.
The comments largely reflected the former president’s misleading statements and outright falsities about the novel virus as it swept through the United States last year, at a time when Mr Trump was claiming the virus would disappear and was not a threat to the nation. More than 500,000 Americans have since died as a result of the pandemic.
“I think the president set the tone early on by downplaying the coronavirus or comparing it to the flu,” Robert Coon, a GOP consultant in Arkansas, told the newspaper. “For a lot of people, the first impression was that it’s not that big a deal, and it’s kind of hard to come back from that.”
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/nearly-third-republicans-definitely-won-150408348.html

[broncofan]

I think Stavros' post is correct that Trump set the tone early by making concern about the virus a political issue. Most of the people I've seen who are skeptical about vaccines aren't the usual cult of antivaxxers but are making bad arguments about cost-benefit in this case. They will say that the risk of death for young people is so low that the risks of the vaccine are not justified. From what we've seen so far the vaccines have a very low rate of serious reactions. Risk of death from covid infection is not nearly as low in any of these groups (I say confidently for any of group over 18; at least).

Politicization of the virus by Trump and the impression that concern about the virus makes one a liberal is now a major obstacle. So now we see people who are not part of the cult of antivaxxers pretending to make nuanced arguments about cost-benefit. It's because Trump's leadership legacy was to make skepticism about treatment and indifference to public health a conservative value.

Some guy named Rover or something was claiming in the general discussion section that covid was like the flu. Not only did this appear foolish early on but I don't know how they don't feel like complete fools at this point. Over 500,000 dead in a year with people taking precautions? Flu kills an average of about 35,000 or so and unless it's a flu pandemic never more than 60,000 in the U.S.

[blackchubby38]

The two places that I'm happy to see reopening the most are movie theaters (for selfish reasons) and schools. The latter is because I got the feeling that if the teachers' unions would had their way, schools would have stayed closed until September.

[Stavros]

The two places that I'm happy to see reopening the most are movie theaters (for selfish reasons) and schools. The latter is because I got the feeling that if the teachers' unions would had their way, schools would have stayed closed until September.


But would you not agree that schoolteachers should be vaccinated before the schools re-opened? I am not sure if all teachers in New York (state and city) have, or just some. Younger teachers might not be at risk, older ones who are say, in their 50s but not yet vaccinated, maybe.

Last nght on BBC-2's Newsnight, a Professor at the London Schoo of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said it was too early for the UK to consider the kind of 'Green App' or Vaccine passport as has been trialled in Israel, for three reasons:

1) Studies have yet to be completed and peer reviewed to determine if vaccinated people are still liable to be infected and thus become carriers of the virus;
2) the majority of the population has not been vaccinated; and
3) we still do not know how long the effectiveness of the vaccine lasts.

The British Govt is phasing in the relaxation of rules to take account of no 2) on the basis that once the majority of people, notably those in the most vulnerable categories are vaccinated, the overall risk of infection and hospitalization is reduced. Thus, this week, beginning on March 8, schools re-opened (though I am not sure most teachers here have been vaccinated, though schools are staggering the return of classrooms perhaps to deal with this), some university students who need face-to-face learning are returning to their studies; one relative can visit another in a care home, and "people can leave home for recreation outdoors such as a coffee or picnic with their household or support bubble, or with one person outside their household".

The rest of the phases look like this:
From the 29th March
"Outdoor gatherings of either 6 people or 2 households will be allowed, providing greater flexibility for families to see each other. This includes in private gardens. Outdoor sports facilities, such as tennis and basketball courts, will be allowed to reopen, and people can take part in formally organised outdoor sports.
At this point, the Stay at Home order will end, although many lockdown restrictions will remain.
For example, you should continue to work from home where possible, and overseas travel remains banned, aside for a small number of reasons."

From the 12th of April



Non-essential retail, personal care premises, such as hairdressers and nail salons, and public buildings, such as libraries and community centres, will reopen.
Most outdoor attractions and settings, including zoos, and theme parks, will also reopen although wider social contact rules will apply in these settings to prevent indoor mixing between different households. Drive-in cinemas and drive-in performances will also be permitted.
Indoor leisure facilities, such as gyms and swimming pools, will also reopen - but only for use by people on their own or with their household.
Hospitality venues can serve people outdoors only. There will be no need for customers to order a substantial meal with alcohol, and no curfew - although customers must order, eat and drink while seated.
Self-contained accommodation, such as holiday lets, where indoor facilities are not shared with other households, can also reopen.
Funerals can continue with up to 30 people, and the numbers able to attend weddings, receptions and commemorative events such as wakes will rise to 15 (from 6).


From the 17th May


Outdoors, most social contact rules will be lifted - although gatherings of over 30 people will remain illegal.
Outdoor performances such as outdoor cinemas, outdoor theatres and outdoor cinemas can reopen.. Indoors, the rule of 6 or 2 households will apply - although we will keep under review whether it is safe to increase this.
Indoor hospitality, entertainment venues such as cinemas and soft play areas, the rest of the accommodation sector, and indoor adult group sports and exercise classes will also reopen.
Larger performances and sporting events in indoor venues with a capacity of 1,000 people or half-full (whichever is lower) will also be allowed, as will those in outdoor venues with a capacity of 4000 people or half-full (whichever is lower).
In the largest outdoor seated venues where crowds can spread out, up to 10,000 people will be able to attend (or a quarter-full, whichever is lower).
Up to 30 people will be able to attend weddings, receptions and wakes, as well as funerals. Other life events that will be permitted include bar mitzvahs and christenings.


From the 21st of June


t is hoped all legal limits on social contact can be removed.
We hope to reopen nightclubs, and lift restrictions on large events and performances that apply in Step 3.
This will also guide decisions on whether all limits can be removed on weddings and other life events.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/prime-minister-sets-out-roadmap-to-cautiously-ease-lockdown-restrictions

The plan is based on the assumptions that there will not be a new surge of cases, hospitalizations and deaths, that people will behave with reason, but cruciallly, that the vaccination programme will be effective, though the point I referred to at the beginning of this post still applies, though one assumes research will not take that long to find out how effective the vaccine is.

Thus, the news from parts of Europe sounds depressing, but:

"Several European countries have either suspended inoculations with the AstraZeneca (https://www.theguardian.com/business/astrazeneca) Covid vaccine or banned the use of a specific batch as a precautionary measure after blood clots formed in some people who had received the jab.
Both the Anglo-Swedish drug maker and Europe’s medicines regulator said the vaccine was safe as Denmark, Norway and Iceland (https://www.theguardian.com/world/iceland) announced on Thursday they were temporarily halting all AstraZeneca vaccinations to investigate the cases.
...Stephen Evans, professor of pharmacoepidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, told Reuters that the decision to suspend the shots was “a super-cautious approach based on some isolated reports in Europe”.
The problem with “spontaneous reports of suspected adverse reactions to vaccines is the enormous difficulty of distinguishing a causal effect from a coincidence”, Evans said, adding that Covid-19 was strongly associated with blood clotting."
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/mar/11/denmark-pauses-astrazeneca-vaccines-to-investigate-blood-clot-reports

We still have a long way to go, and are not as risky as the Governor of Texas who has lifted the mask mandate in the State even though only 16% of the population has been vaccinated.

[Stavros]

The two places that I'm happy to see reopening the most are movie theaters (for selfish reasons) .

Not germane to the thread, but what are you hoping to see at the movies? The BAFTA list was released this week and I haven't seen any of the films with nominations, a) because the cinemas are closed, and b) because I don't susbscribe to streaming channels.

As this is Poltics & Religion though, I would like to see Judas and the Black Messiah, though I believe the film avoids delving into Fred Hampton's Marxism (or was it Marxism-Leninism -not the same thing- ??).

Though risky for a while, I too want to be back in the cinema, and the Concert Hall, given that I have boycotted Covent Garden and can't go to opera houses in Europe and probably not until next year at the earliest.

[Stavros]

"Ireland is suspending use of the Oxford/AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine as a precautionary measure following further reports of blood clots in people who have received it, this time from Norway.
The deputy chief medical officer, Dr Ronan Glynn, said Ireland’s advisory body on vaccines had recommended that deployment of the AstraZeneca jab should be “temporarily deferred” with immediate effect. He stressed, though, that there was no proof that the vaccine had caused blood clots."

Like most of the people vaccinated in the UK I have had no problem with the AstraZeneca vaccine, but the key problem might be in this observation with regard to younger people, most of whom,not in front line servives, have yet to be vaccinated in the UK-

"Prof Karina Butler, the head of Ireland’s National Immunisation Advisory Committee (NIAC), said it was acting out of an abundance of caution but wanted to know more about the unexpected cluster of “very serious” clotting events in younger people; Norway said this happened in people under 50. In three cases, it had involved clotting in the brain. In one of them, it was fatal."
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/14/ireland-suspends-oxford-astrazeneca-covid-vaccine-over-blood-clot-concerns

[broncofan]

"Ireland is suspending use of the Oxford/AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine as a precautionary measure following further reports of blood clots in people who have received it, this time from Norway.
The deputy chief medical officer, Dr Ronan Glynn, said Ireland’s advisory body on vaccines had recommended that deployment of the AstraZeneca jab should be “temporarily deferred” with immediate effect. He stressed, though, that there was no proof that the vaccine had caused blood clots."
As this quote says it remains to be seen whether it is the result of the vaccine and not something that occurs rarely but at approximately the same rate in the general population. The vaccine has been administered to a lot of people, but it could be a very rare side effect.

If it is the result of the vaccine I am curious whether it is something tied to a defect in production or is inherent to the design of the vaccine. Maybe it is tied to certain batches or conditions those batches were in. We'll see what the scientists find.

[blackchubby38]

But would you not agree that schoolteachers should be vaccinated before the schools re-opened? I am not sure if all teachers in New York (state and city) have, or just some. Younger teachers might not be at risk, older ones who are say, in their 50s but not yet vaccinated, maybe.

Last nght on BBC-2's Newsnight, a Professor at the London Schoo of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said it was too early for the UK to consider the kind of 'Green App' or Vaccine passport as has been trialled in Israel, for three reasons:

1) Studies have yet to be completed and peer reviewed to determine if vaccinated people are still liable to be infected and thus become carriers of the virus;
2) the majority of the population has not been vaccinated; and
3) we still do not know how long the effectiveness of the vaccine lasts.

The British Govt is phasing in the relaxation of rules to take account of no 2) on the basis that once the majority of people, notably those in the most vulnerable categories are vaccinated, the overall risk of infection and hospitalization is reduced. Thus, this week, beginning on March 8, schools re-opened (though I am not sure most teachers here have been vaccinated, though schools are staggering the return of classrooms perhaps to deal with this), some university students who need face-to-face learning are returning to their studies; one relative can visit another in a care home, and "people can leave home for recreation outdoors such as a coffee or picnic with their household or support bubble, or with one person outside their household".

The rest of the phases look like this:
From the 29th March
"Outdoor gatherings of either 6 people or 2 households will be allowed, providing greater flexibility for families to see each other. This includes in private gardens. Outdoor sports facilities, such as tennis and basketball courts, will be allowed to reopen, and people can take part in formally organised outdoor sports.
At this point, the Stay at Home order will end, although many lockdown restrictions will remain.
For example, you should continue to work from home where possible, and overseas travel remains banned, aside for a small number of reasons."

From the 12th of April



Non-essential retail, personal care premises, such as hairdressers and nail salons, and public buildings, such as libraries and community centres, will reopen.
Most outdoor attractions and settings, including zoos, and theme parks, will also reopen although wider social contact rules will apply in these settings to prevent indoor mixing between different households. Drive-in cinemas and drive-in performances will also be permitted.
Indoor leisure facilities, such as gyms and swimming pools, will also reopen - but only for use by people on their own or with their household.
Hospitality venues can serve people outdoors only. There will be no need for customers to order a substantial meal with alcohol, and no curfew - although customers must order, eat and drink while seated.
Self-contained accommodation, such as holiday lets, where indoor facilities are not shared with other households, can also reopen.
Funerals can continue with up to 30 people, and the numbers able to attend weddings, receptions and commemorative events such as wakes will rise to 15 (from 6).


From the 17th May


Outdoors, most social contact rules will be lifted - although gatherings of over 30 people will remain illegal.
Outdoor performances such as outdoor cinemas, outdoor theatres and outdoor cinemas can reopen.. Indoors, the rule of 6 or 2 households will apply - although we will keep under review whether it is safe to increase this.
Indoor hospitality, entertainment venues such as cinemas and soft play areas, the rest of the accommodation sector, and indoor adult group sports and exercise classes will also reopen.
Larger performances and sporting events in indoor venues with a capacity of 1,000 people or half-full (whichever is lower) will also be allowed, as will those in outdoor venues with a capacity of 4000 people or half-full (whichever is lower).
In the largest outdoor seated venues where crowds can spread out, up to 10,000 people will be able to attend (or a quarter-full, whichever is lower).
Up to 30 people will be able to attend weddings, receptions and wakes, as well as funerals. Other life events that will be permitted include bar mitzvahs and christenings.


From the 21st of June


t is hoped all legal limits on social contact can be removed.
We hope to reopen nightclubs, and lift restrictions on large events and performances that apply in Step 3.
This will also guide decisions on whether all limits can be removed on weddings and other life events.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/prime-minister-sets-out-roadmap-to-cautiously-ease-lockdown-restrictions

The plan is based on the assumptions that there will not be a new surge of cases, hospitalizations and deaths, that people will behave with reason, but cruciallly, that the vaccination programme will be effective, though the point I referred to at the beginning of this post still applies, though one assumes research will not take that long to find out how effective the vaccine is.

Thus, the news from parts of Europe sounds depressing, but:

"Several European countries have either suspended inoculations with the AstraZeneca (https://www.theguardian.com/business/astrazeneca) Covid vaccine or banned the use of a specific batch as a precautionary measure after blood clots formed in some people who had received the jab.
Both the Anglo-Swedish drug maker and Europe’s medicines regulator said the vaccine was safe as Denmark, Norway and Iceland (https://www.theguardian.com/world/iceland) announced on Thursday they were temporarily halting all AstraZeneca vaccinations to investigate the cases.
...Stephen Evans, professor of pharmacoepidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, told Reuters that the decision to suspend the shots was “a super-cautious approach based on some isolated reports in Europe”.
The problem with “spontaneous reports of suspected adverse reactions to vaccines is the enormous difficulty of distinguishing a causal effect from a coincidence”, Evans said, adding that Covid-19 was strongly associated with blood clotting."
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/mar/11/denmark-pauses-astrazeneca-vaccines-to-investigate-blood-clot-reports

We still have a long way to go, and are not as risky as the Governor of Texas who has lifted the mask mandate in the State even though only 16% of the population has been vaccinated.

In a perfect world, I would say yes the teachers should be vaccinated before the schools are opened. But we don't live in a perfect world and considering the fact that there were many front line workers, retail and food service industry come to mind, that had to work during the pandemic and had even bigger risk of getting infected, than I think I teachers can do the same in a more controlled environment.


As for the teachers and other school officials who are over 50, hopefully they were in either the first or second wave of people who eligible to get vaccinated.

Another thing is this. When we talked about teachers prior to 2020, we often mentioned in them in the same breath as police officers, firefighters, EMS, doctors and other healthcare workers. You know the essential people who have been working over the past year to make sure our society doesn't completely fall apart. The risk they have faced/still face is probably higher than what teachers would be dealing with in classrooms.

I don't think the value of good teachers can be underestimated and I hope in the past year some parents realized that maybe it wasn't the teachers' fault that their precious little darling wasn't learning anything. But if they are an essential part of our society, then I think its time for them to return to the front lines.

Finally, I think the most important reason for children to return to full time in-person learning is because the impact the pandemic has had not only on their educational development, but their physical, social, and mental as well. Last year, the American Association of Pediatrics said that it was pertinent that children return to in person learning

[blackchubby38]

In a perfect world, I would say yes the teachers should be vaccinated before the schools are opened. But we don't live in a perfect world and considering the fact that there were many front line workers, retail and food service industry come to mind, that had to work during the pandemic and had even bigger risk of getting infected, than I think I teachers can do the same in a more controlled environment.


As for the teachers and other school officials who are over 50, hopefully they were in either the first or second wave of people who eligible to get vaccinated.

Another thing is this. When we talked about teachers prior to 2020, we often mentioned in them in the same breath as police officers, firefighters, EMS, doctors and other healthcare workers. You know the essential people who have been working over the past year to make sure our society doesn't completely fall apart. The risk they have faced/still face is probably higher than what teachers would be dealing with in classrooms.

I don't think the value of good teachers can be underestimated and I hope in the past year some parents realized that maybe it wasn't the teachers' fault that their precious little darling wasn't learning anything. But if they are an essential part of our society, then I think its time for them to return to the front lines.

Finally, I think the most important reason for children to return to full time in-person learning is because the impact the pandemic has had not only on their educational development, but their physical, social, and mental as well. Last year, the American Association of Pediatrics said that it was pertinent that children return to in person learning.

Just to finish that post off.

If we are supposed to listen to the doctors and the scientists, then we should be listening to all of them. If the data says that its safe for children to return to full time in person learning, that its important that they do, and its what parents and children want, as well as many elected officials, then I say its time.

[blackchubby38]

Man, when people pile on, they really do pile on:

De Blasio blames Gov. Cuomo for not closing NYC sooner as COVID-19 spread



nypost.com/2021/03/14/de-blasio-blames-cuomo-for-not-closing-nyc-sooner-as-covid-spread/

[blackchubby38]

Not germane to the thread, but what are you hoping to see at the movies? The BAFTA list was released this week and I haven't seen any of the films with nominations, a) because the cinemas are closed, and b) because I don't susbscribe to streaming channels.

As this is Poltics & Religion though, I would like to see Judas and the Black Messiah, though I believe the film avoids delving into Fred Hampton's Marxism (or was it Marxism-Leninism -not the same thing- ??).

Though risky for a while, I too want to be back in the cinema, and the Concert Hall, given that I have boycotted Covent Garden and can't go to opera houses in Europe and probably not until next year at the earliest.

Since it was leaving HBO Max tonight, I decided to watch Judas and the Black Messiah. Its one of those movies that I would have seen at home anyway. I thought the movie was good, but the acting of both Daniel Kaluuya and Lakeith Stanfield was fantastic.

The film does not avoid delving into Hampton's Marxism. Although he seemed to be more into Maoism than Marxism.

My plan is to go see Godzilla vs Kong in the theaters at the end of the month.

[fred41]

Another thing is this. When we talked about teachers prior to 2020, we often mentioned in them in the same breath as police officers, firefighters, EMS, doctors and other healthcare workers. You know the essential people who have been working over the past year to make sure our society doesn't completely fall apart. The risk they have faced/still face is probably higher than what teachers would be dealing with in classrooms.


Public school teachers have irrevocably allowed their unions to destroy their “brand”. They will never again be uttered in the same vein as those other jobs and the blame lies squarely on their own shoulders. From now on , they will be considered as just “another civil service job”... (which, in major cities like NY, is mostly what they were to begin with). It’s also become quite obvious to folks that believe their own eyes and ears, that the teacher’s unions own the Democratic Party at this point.

[Stavros]

As this quote says it remains to be seen whether it is the result of the vaccine and not something that occurs rarely but at approximately the same rate in the general population. The vaccine has been administered to a lot of people, but it could be a very rare side effect.

If it is the result of the vaccine I am curious whether it is something tied to a defect in production or is inherent to the design of the vaccine. Maybe it is tied to certain batches or conditions those batches were in. We'll see what the scientists find.


A robust defence of the AstraZeneca vaccine by David Spiegehalter in today's Guardian (he appears from time to time on Channel 4 News in the UK).

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/15/evidence-oxford-vaccine-blood-clots-data-causal-links

[Stavros]

In a perfect world, I would say yes the teachers should be vaccinated before the schools are opened. But we don't live in a perfect world and considering the fact that there were many front line workers, retail and food service industry come to mind, that had to work during the pandemic and had even bigger risk of getting infected, than I think I teachers can do the same in a more controlled environment.


If one were to be picky, one could suggest a distinction between 'front line workers' and 'emergency workers' or 'First Responders'. It might be easy for Fire Stations, but General Hospitals by their nature are not only risky environments for all who work in them, but just as hard to segregate staff within them, though I suppose you could expand the cordon around ICU's and isolate entire floors-?

Indeed, another, probably impractical solution is the Isolation Hospital, on Ellis Island or whichever island you have in New York that can be converted. Ultimately, everyone must be vaccinated, it is that basic. Priorities in the first phase has meant the most obvious have been vaccinated, but as with the UK, I think that education has become, like care homes, a major casualty of this pandemic.

I am not sure the teachers and their unions are entirely to blame but I don't know enough about the US situation to say more. Here, there seems to me a staggering indifference to the impact of Covid on education, made worse by the Secretary of State for Education, Gavin Williamson, who never fails to fail when promoting or defending Govt policy. I don't watch SNL, but the man is so devoid of character, SNL would probably have to rely on a plastic carrot to represent him, preferably one that doesn't talk. What damage has in fact been caused we don't yet know, and chidren are both flexible and resilient, but losing a good part of a year can have terrible consequences, something I have known personally for reasons I won't go into here.

As an aside from Covid, I am astonished that boh Lakeith Stanfield and Daniel Kaluuya are nominated for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar in Judas and the Black Messiah -was neither of them in a lead role? Kaluuya has the BAFTA nomination for Supporting Actor, but they could easily have dropped Anthony Hopkins to give Stanfield a nod for Best Actor if it really is that important.

And you are right to correct me on Maosim beig more relevant to Hampton than Marxism, though I am not sure what outside the Little Red Book he knew about it. There is a Trotskyist critique by Don Alexaner from 1993 of the welfare programmes the Panthers organized -the Breakfasts for example- which I think became the basis of their popularity, as they dd not just talk about revolution, but demonstrated practical things that benefited their communities. One wonders, had he lived, where Hampton might have taken the Panthers as they turned in on themselves, given his savage remarks about Stokely Carmichael. Ironically, if the -targeted- assassiations had not stripped them of their leaders, the Panthers like Hampton might have ended up running for Mayor and promoting climate change policies, as Bobby Seale has done.

A world away from Godzilla! And do you worry that an English actor plays an American? Are there no Americans who could play Hampton (not to take away Kaluuya's abilities) -?

[broncofan]

A robust defence of the AstraZeneca vaccine by David Spiegehalter in today's Guardian (he appears from time to time on Channel 4 News in the UK).

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/15/evidence-oxford-vaccine-blood-clots-data-causal-links
It is a very good defense. I just read it. The article really explains the major issues well.

I'm glad to see an analysis of it. Astrazeneca's vaccine is pretty important to world supply. Pfizer and Moderna are harder to deliver in places without a lot of cold chain technology and it is cheaper to produce.

[broncofan]

I've included two stories about the Oxford/Astrazeneca vaccine that have broken within the last 24 hours. First, Astrazeneca released data from U.S. trials showing very good efficacy and no increased risk of blood clots. Second, U.S. regulators noticed that they may have included outdated information in the data they released.

Since this is still unfolding we don't know if "may have" means they did but I think it's likely because Astrazeneca made a puzzling mistake in one of the earlier trials where they included data from people accidentally given a half dose of the first shot.

I suspect it is a very good vaccine mainly because of the work of Oxford researchers and that Astrazeneca has done a bumbling job managing clinical trial data.

Most of the scientists I pay attention to believe the az/oxford vaccine may be the most important when it comes to supply for most of the world. It's not quite as effective as Pfizer and Moderna's, but it's still very effective, cheaper to produce, and much easier to distribute in places without cold chain systems, which is probably most of the world.

https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-vaccines-astrazeneca/astrazenecas-us-trial-data-a-confidence-booster-for-covid-19-shot-idUSKBN2BE0IZ (https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-vaccines-astrazeneca/astrazenecas-us-trial-data-a-confidence-booster-for-covid-19-shot-idUSKBN2BE0IZ)

https://apnews.com/article/astrazeneca-may-have-used-outdated-info-vaccine-trial-a98ef616f4e861a4b7568891d06b7da8

[Stavros]

To repeat something I wrote a week ago, quoting a Professor at the LSHTM
1) Studies have yet to be completed and peer reviewed to determine if vaccinated people are still liable to be infected and thus become carriers of the virus;
2) the majority of the population has not been vaccinated; and
3) we still do not know how long the effectiveness of the vaccine lasts.

The first AstraZeneca vaccine was administered in January, so it is still too early to tell how points one and three above follow on from the vaccine we have -but are points that relate to all the other vaccines too. A lot of what is going on is politics, not medicine, and is an argument between the EU and AstraZeneca over the honouring of contracts with, it appears, the UK having got its orders in first. It is not really an EU-Uk spat, though some -Telegraph journalists, for example- using this as an example of EU incompetence, when the reality is that had the UK remained in the EU I doubt this woud have happened. For the record, AstraZeneca is an Anglo-Swedish company, and its CEO is French.

Either way, from the start, we needed a globally co-ordinated response that should have maximised the medical expertise and political will of governments everywhere to do the best for their citizens. Sadly, led by cretins in the US and Brazil the trajectory of the response was delayed and skewed with the result that millions have been infectd, variants of varyng strength have grown, and anyone wanting a foreign holiday or a 'return to normal' can say Ciao to that for at least another year. Sir Patrick Vallance, the UK Govermen's Chief Science Advisor, thinks we will be living with the consquences of Covid for the next 10 years.

[broncofan]

To repeat something I wrote a week ago, quoting a Professor at the LSHTM
1) Studies have yet to be completed and peer reviewed to determine if vaccinated people are still liable to be infected and thus become carriers of the virus;
2) the majority of the population has not been vaccinated; and
3) we still do not know how long the effectiveness of the vaccine lasts.
I agree with you with respect to point 1. While it may take a while to get the kind of robust proof that is required in clinical trials, there is some evidence emerging in places where lots of people have been vaccinated that vaccinated people are less likely to transmit as well. That doesn't mean that some vaccinated people don't get asymptomatic infections and transmit them but that the overall risk of spreading the disease appears lower in vaccinated people. First, symptomatic infections are less likely and it was noted before the vaccines were developed that true asymptomatics seemed to shed less virus. They can infect others but are believed to have a lower propensity to do so.

I am not saying there is sufficient data to form firm conclusions just that I've read that there are early indications that the vaccines provide some protection against disease spread. Obviously until point one is demonstrated to a satisfactory degree vaccinated people should behave as though they (personally) have some protection against disease but can still infect others.

Regarding point 2, it will be interesting to see what happens when demand for vaccines becomes the limiting factor in various countries. I think we are expecting that by early Summer in the U.S.

Regarding point 3, I agree and wonder what the standard protocol is for figuring that out. It's a dangerous virus and obviously we don't want lots of vaccinated people starting to get infected at higher rates to form firm conclusions but that may be the only way to determine when a booster is needed.

[Stavros]

Broncofan, with your rationa approach to this, some thoughts for you to comment on. In one scenario, I see Covid-19 becoming a chronic illness, that, along with Influenza, will kill thousands of people a year, probably the elderly with complicating conditions. There will be annual Covid jabs as we have with 'flu, modified and improved as more knowledge is acquired about the virus. This is an accommadation to reality, but begs the more cultural question allied to public health-
If Covid-19 becomes a permanent presence, do we not need as people to maintain some of the barriers to transmission that we have been using this past year? Returning to 'normal' for a lot of if not most people, will mean not wearing a mask in enclosed spaces. It would probably not be a major problem in concert halls, cinemas, or sports stadia, but I can't see many people wearing a mask in a club/bar/pub or a cafe and restaurant and indeed, lifting masks was allowed when cafes were open last year in the UK.

But will people want to maintain these barrier measures, and can they be made mandatory, for example on public transport and in stores/malls - and more to the point, will people wear them? As long as Covid-19 is an airborne virus, the danger of being infected remains high, until we have establshed the boundaries as per the three points in my previous post. For how much longer, as the vaccine takes effect, will people be willing to limit their activities, and will the politicians already divided over the issue, follow the science or what they hope is 'popular opinion'? Not least when some are campaigning on the basis that restrictions derived from the science of public health, are being used in law to restrict personal liberty.

[broncofan]

I think you're right that we will see covid for a long time but I think it's POSSIBLE things normalize more quickly. Once a greater number of people have some immunity and it's circulating less broadly, both the risk of hospitalization and death will be much lower. While I think at this moment it makes sense for vaccinated people to still wear masks in public places (for themselves and others), the calculus will change over time.

What if we get good data on mortality rate and find that once people are vaccinated their risk of death is lower than for influenza and everyone has an opportunity to be vaccinated? People don't wear masks to prevent seasonal flu. It is a risk of death for some people and I've gotten very sick from the flu but I don't take special precautions except to get a flu shot, which is not super effective.

Even people with a much greater risk of death from influenza than I have are generally willing to deal with that risk. Both the rates of hospitalization and death for flu are manageable enough that it doesn't alter people's behavior very much. My parents are in their seventies and I don't recall them thinking about the flu or worrying about it even though we know it kills people in their age group every year.

If we're not seeing a thousand deaths a day in the U.S for instance, but rather fewer than a hundred I can't imagine we won't see lots of social gatherings return.

None of this is to say that I disagree with the current guidelines for vaccinated people to wear masks. But some of those guidelines are based on the fact that not enough people have been vaccinated to sharply cut its prevalence, we lack data on certain things (your previous post highlighted that well), and we don't want to do anything prematurely that will prolong the pandemic.

[blackchubby38]

Broncofan, with your rationa approach to this, some thoughts for you to comment on. In one scenario, I see Covid-19 becoming a chronic illness, that, along with Influenza, will kill thousands of people a year, probably the elderly with complicating conditions. There will be annual Covid jabs as we have with 'flu, modified and improved as more knowledge is acquired about the virus. This is an accommadation to reality, but begs the more cultural question allied to public health-
If Covid-19 becomes a permanent presence, do we not need as people to maintain some of the barriers to transmission that we have been using this past year? Returning to 'normal' for a lot of if not most people, will mean not wearing a mask in enclosed spaces. It would probably not be a major problem in concert halls, cinemas, or sports stadia, but I can't see many people wearing a mask in a club/bar/pub or a cafe and restaurant and indeed, lifting masks was allowed when cafes were open last year in the UK.

But will people want to maintain these barrier measures, and can they be made mandatory, for example on public transport and in stores/malls - and more to the point, will people wear them? As long as Covid-19 is an airborne virus, the danger of being infected remains high, until we have establshed the boundaries as per the three points in my previous post. For how much longer, as the vaccine takes effect, will people be willing to limit their activities, and will the politicians already divided over the issue, follow the science or what they hope is 'popular opinion'? Not least when some are campaigning on the basis that restrictions derived from the science of public health, are being used in law to restrict personal liberty.

If Covid 19 becomes a permanent presence, then I think you allow individuals the right to decide for themselves if they want to continue to wear masks in enclosed spaces and continue maintaining the other barriers to transmission that we have been employing for the past year. Especially if we get to point where there is an acceptable and reasonable amount of people dying from it on a daily basis. Because I think the idea some people have of there being a 0 infection rate for us to get back to normal is unattainable.

We also have to take into consideration that we are in a much better place when it comes to treating cases of Covid 19 then we were a year ago.

[Stavros]

If Covid 19 becomes a permanent presence, then I think you allow individuals the right to decide for themselves if they want to continue to wear masks in enclosed spaces and continue maintaining the other barriers to transmission that we have been employing for the past year. Especially if we get to point where there is an acceptable and reasonable amount of people dying from it on a daily basis. Because I think the idea some people have of there being a 0 infection rate for us to get back to normal is unattainable.

We also have to take into consideration that we are in a much better place when it comes to treating cases of Covid 19 then we were a year ago.

I agree with your post completely The issue we have now, is one of timing. Just as the UK Govt is gambling on the phased lockdown coinciding with a decline of cases due to vaccination, so the fact that other countries are not in our position means that the relaxation of restrictions does not mean a return to 'normal' -UK citizens are not advised to go abroad for a holiday and even travelling within the UK should still be limited to essential trips -but with a heat-wave promised this is going to be a hard one to control. While it means I won't be going to Paris, Amsterdam or Rome for a weekend, I would assume this applies to US citizens being wary of visiting other parts of the country, not least those where there are few restrictions, and this is due to the fact that we still don't know the long term impact of vaccination, as discussed above. But yes, as long as we trust in the science we are on stronger ground, just as the ignorance and indeed, the repudiation of science has been one of the most depressing aspects of this pandemic.

But I for one will probably wear a mask on public transport, in retrospect I think a mask in the past might have spared me some bouts of 'flu or something similar. It might even help, should I ever fly again, to sleep on a plane, something I struggle to do.

[Jericho]

should I ever fly again

God, that's depressing.
I seriously doubt I'm as well travelled as you, Stavros but, I was thinking the same thing, recently.
"Will I ever get off of this Godforsaken little Island again"?

[Jericho]

In other news, I had my first dose of the AZ jab Saturday.
Holy shit, it knocked the crap out of me, Sunday!!!
I'm fine now, but I'm not looking forward to the follow up!

[Stavros]

In other news, I had my first dose of the AZ jab Saturday.
Holy shit, it knocked the crap out of me, Sunday!!!
I'm fine now, but I'm not looking forward to the follow up!

I wonder why it affected you so much? I assume you are fit and healthy, indeed, virile...I am still waiting for my No 2, as it were. I have to be realistic about the prospects of foreign travel, given the current situation in France and Germany, as a German friend is going home later this year having decided Brexit Britain is beyond hope. I have already conceded never seeing Syria again, and any trips across the Atlantic will depend on how they think of us, while them coming here -we were going to do a family trip to Spain before the lockdown- is delayed, possibly for years; but because of age and potential illness, it all does look rather bleak. But a friend of mine who is almost 90 was a keen traveller in his 80s so I should probably lighten up a bit. As for UK holidays, looks like Wales or Scotland, as I have cycled through Devon and Cornwall, and once was enough. I did aso visit friends in Plymouth, which is a dump and a rough naval town to be avoided on Saturday nights unless you like drunks, working class girls in micro-dresses- and fist fights, though the scenic Dawlish rail line out of the city to Bristol is worth seeing. One of those regions of the country that do nothing for me.

[Jericho]

Virile? Oh hell yes...I'm a god-damned sexual tyrannosaurus! :dead:

I don't know. Nothing I needed to notify them about, but it did knock me on my arse.
Just speshul I guess, one of the 1 in 10.

Parts of North Wales are nice (the south, not so much), though I would leave the bicycle at home! I've always wanted to visit the Orkney's but never got round to it, so this year could be the one, restrictions permitting of course.
Otherwise, It'll be a weekend in Rhyl...As if I wasn't depressed before! :hide-1:

[filghy2]

[QUOTE=Stavros;1963122But I for one will probably wear a mask on public transport, in retrospect I think a mask in the past might have spared me some bouts of 'flu or something similar. It might even help, should I ever fly again, to sleep on a plane, something I struggle to do.[/QUOTE]

Mask-wearing has long been common in Asian countries, even before Covid. I used to think of it as an odd cultural quirk, but now it makes more sense.

I assume that you Brits are still free to ignore government warnings and travel if you want. Us Australians haven't been able to travel anywhere for the past year, though it looks like the long-awaited travel bubble with New Zealand will finally be announced soon. Fortunately Australia is a much bigger country than the UK.

[Stavros]

Otherwise, It'll be a weekend in Rhyl...As if I wasn't depressed before! :hide-1:

Ah, Rhyl...look on the bright side...there must be a bright one.

[Stavros]

I assume that you Brits are still free to ignore government warnings and travel if you want. Us Australians haven't been able to travel anywhere for the past year, though it looks like the long-awaited travel bubble with New Zealand will finally be announced soon. Fortunately Australia is a much bigger country than the UK.

It is complicated by our restrictions, and those on the Continent and elsewhere, with the different phases of the vaccination campaign and surges in France and Germany limiting the options as the UK drags itself out of quarantine. Ignoring the rules is common, but I am not sure how far, but patience is wearing thin. We are in the midst of a mini-heat-wave with all that implies for beaches and parks.

Two links below offer the confusing array of conditions, but by May-June Greece and the Islands, or some of them might be a reasonable destination. I have friends who spend a month in Crete every May but I haven't spoken to them recently to find out of they are going this year. I have only been once but it is a splendid place to visit, should you ever make it to this part of the world.

These links are to articles/guides published in late March-
https://www.cntraveller.com/gallery/where-is-safe-to-travel

https://www.wanderlust.co.uk/content/coronavirus-travel-updates/

[filghy2]

The latest Republican cause in relation to this virus is banning of vaccination passports, and their use as a condition of access to services.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/apr/02/florida-vaccine-passports-banned-ron-desantis

It appears that vaccination sceptics (who are mostly Republican) not only want the right to avoid vaccination, but they want to ensure they can face no disadvantage as a result of their choice.

This could potentially affect the ability of Americans to travel, as some countries may require proof of vaccination as a condition of entry - as already applies to diseases like yellow fever if people have visited affected countries.

This example shows once again that the right these days is not so much about limited government as it is about using the power of government to enforce the preferences of the tribe. As this article notes, there are other instances where Republican states have limited the ability of private entities to restrict what their users can do, eg on guns.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/04/sudden-conservative-outrage-over-vaccine-passports/618476/

[Stavros]

The latest Republican cause in relation to this virus is banning of vaccination passports, and their use as a condition of access to services.


Vaccine passports are also the focus here in the UK of a rebellion against the Govt on the basis of personal data protection, but hasn't this ship sailed from port? How far can a US Citizen go without a Social Security number? US ciitizens on the whole don't need passports because they never leave the country, but if it is a case of data protection, who has the information on them derived from their Social Security number, their driving licence, their birth and marriage certificate, their email, Facebook et al accounts where one assumes at least one is in their real name?

I have ID cards in a country that has resisted attempts to create them -a British Library card with my photo and signature; a Senior Citizen Bus Pass also with my photo and signature; ID/Admission cards for two specialist libraries; a Debit Card from my bank; a membership card for a chain of shops called the Entertainment Centre should I want to sell them CDs and DVDs, which sometimes I do; loyalty cards for various shops and supermarkets -and a passport. I am not even sure there is anything wrong with Georgia wanting to smarten up its ID rules on voting, except that the State should automatically issue ID cards and if that means photographing every citizen who wants to vote, they should organize it and pay for it.

So if I were to have a problem with a Vaccine Passport that is my only guaranteed method of visiting relatives in a foreign country, at this stage of our lives, I must have a problem with all the other ID cards I have, but I don't. The only other problem that I could foresee would be some discriinatory ruling that means the EU or another country will not recognize the AstraZeneca vaccine so in that case a Vaccine Passport would not be doing its job.

The wider issue of Data and how it is used is an interesting one, it seems mostly to shape commerce allowing companies to ascertain who and where their customers are; and by governments who want to spy on me, for who knows what reason? But when it comes to existing data, I think we are on that ship that sailed, so what happens next?

[broncofan]

The latest Republican cause in relation to this virus is banning of vaccination passports, and their use as a condition of access to services.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/apr/02/florida-vaccine-passports-banned-ron-desantis

I just got my first Pfizer dose. I can't imagine thinking the decision (for an American) of whether to get a vaccine is even close. Incidentally, I had bad headaches for three days and a sore arm for about four days. Nothing severe but fairly obvious in the case of the headaches.

I've seen a couple of posts about traveling and I am thinking about it in the next couple of months or in the summer but there aren't a ton of places to go. What I mean is that many of the countries that allow Americans to enter have severe outbreaks. If, for instance, I went to Brazil, a lot of the enjoyment of going to Brazil is offset by whatever public health measures there are. Even if I could go to clubs in Rio or something, I'm not sure I want to do that where the virus is pretty rampant.

I'll post the recent New York Times link. South Korea might be a decent option, as they have a good system in place for controlling the virus and letting life proceed cautiously. But most countries that have their outbreaks under control are not allowing much discretionary travel. Sorry to be U.S.-centric but this was the search I did.

https://www.nytimes.com/article/coronavirus-travel-restrictions.html

[broncofan]

. I have friends who spend a month in Crete every May but I haven't spoken to them recently to find out of they are going this year. I have only been once but it is a splendid place to visit, should you ever make it to this part of the world.

These links are to articles/guides published in late March-
https://www.cntraveller.com/gallery/where-is-safe-to-travel

https://www.wanderlust.co.uk/content/coronavirus-travel-updates/
I had seen the other travel posts before my last post but missed this one. Good post. By summer travel might be a bit easier, even judging by some of the out of date links I found from last summer. So we'll see.

[broncofan]

Virile? Oh hell yes...I'm a god-damned sexual tyrannosaurus! :dead:

I'm thinking of telling women I'm a sexual tyrannosaurus. Then after sex when she says, "I thought you said you're a sexual tyrannosaurus!" I can say "yeah, I have short arms and am surprisingly quick. What did you think I meant?"

[Stavros]

I'm thinking of telling women I'm a sexual tyrannosaurus. Then after sex when she says, "I thought you said you're a sexual tyrannosaurus!" I can say "yeah, I have short arms and am surprisingly quick. What did you think I meant?"

Probably not a good idea to advertise yourself as a Dinosaur. Meanwhile, foreign travel is not advised, so you might want to save your money for another time, say 2022, given that the US is still mired in the virus. But if it is no longer the case 'no one is safe until everyone is safe' -how can you know if trip abroad is safe? The risk factor may determine our behavour over the next 1-5 years.

[Jericho]

I'm thinking of telling women I'm a sexual tyrannosaurus. Then after sex when she says, "I thought you said you're a sexual tyrannosaurus!" I can say "yeah, I have short arms and am surprisingly quick. What did you think I meant?"


Work when it's time to get a round in, too! :whistle:

[Jericho]

Ah, Rhyl...look on the bright side...there must be a bright one.

Gods know I've looked, but the only brightside I've ever found, is the A55 exit that'll take you somewhere decent!

[Ben]

Global rollout of vaccines is no longer a guarantee of victory over Covid-19:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/06/global-rollout-of-vaccines-is-no-longer-a-guarantee-of-victory-over-covid-19

[filghy2]

And why does no one ever want to talk about the cost of the lockdown? Suicides are at an all-time high. Depression is at an all-time high. Crime statistics are through the roof. The economy is suffering badly. We're now raising an entire generation of children who have lost a full year of education and social development; who can even calculate what the final cost of that will be? All this to save the lives of a relative handful of old people and lungers. Trump is not a genius - well, maybe an accidental one sometimes - but he's no dipshit either. He knew immediately that the cure would be worse than the disease.

Elvis appears to have left the building, but the data for 2020 are now in and they show that there was no increase at all in suicides (in fact, a small decrease compared to previous years). There was an increase in drug overdose deaths, but this was only a small fraction of Covid deaths.
https://www.vox.com/2021/4/6/22368210/suicides-covid-19-coronavirus-lockdown-2020

[Stavros]

Three articles from the press in India which expain how the country has gone from being in a situation where-

"...on January 29th, during his speech at the Davos forum (https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/wefs-davos-summit-economic-situation-will-change-swiftly-says-modi/article33685606.ece), PM Modi said that the country had won the war on COVID-19, something he repeated in Parliament a week later, and India won acclaim from around the world. At the time, India was seeing about 11,000 new cases a day nationwide and 1.5 lakh active cases. Today that number has grown to 3 lakh new cases and 24 lakh active cases on an upward trend."
https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/worldview-with-suhasini-haidar-what-went-wrong-with-indias-vaccine-diplomacy/article34394622.ece
(A lakh is 100,000)

"There are three key factors behind what went wrong: government response, public behaviour and variants"
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-04-24/how-did-indias-covid-disaster-unfold/100089732

Modi, out of touch, but not out of office-

"Despite the situation, Mr Modi urged states to avoid lockdowns if possible.
“In the current situation, we have to save the country from another lockdown,” he said on Tuesday. “I urge states only to use lockdowns as the last resort.” "
https://www.thenationalnews.com/world/india-s-coronavirus-crisis-what-went-wrong-with-the-country-s-second-wave-1.1208697

A friend in India is in despair at the behaviour of the Govt, if not surprised. It is time for India to ban all international travel, and for the UK at least, to ban all travel between the UK and India. Will people ever learn what makes it so easy for the virus to spread? The complacency in India has been sickening -literally.

[blackchubby38]

Mayor De Blasio: "NYC will be fully opened on July 1st".


Governor Cuomo: "Unzips pants, takes out dick, "All of NYS will be fully opened on May 19th".

[Stavros]

Mayor De Blasio: "NYC will be fully opened on July 1st".

Governor Cuomo: "Unzips pants, takes out dick, "All of NYS will be fully opened on May 19th".

Thank you for clarifying the situation in city and state...

[Stavros]

Meanwhile in the UK the end is in sight...or so we are told. The statistics look good right now, but in my pessimistic view, there are still dangers ahead because while the UK reaps the reward of a successful vaccine campaign -thank you NHS!- if we are not safe until all are safe, it is tempting to think of a weekend in Lisbon, a week on the Costa del Sol, or Mykonos, or Crete or...but the situation in India -and thousands enter the UK from India each week- and Brazil is scary. New variants will complicate the overall picture, a new surge of cases cannot be ruled out. But at least in the UK we can be thankful for not having an idiot like Tucker Carlson pouring scorn on the vaccination of children, indeed, scorning most rational forms of behaviour.

So we may be booking that restaurant for late May -asuming they can get the staff to serve customers (I think NYC also has this staffing shortage) - and while there are limited seating arrangemens for concerts in Symphony Hall from late May to July, I would be cautious about changing my behaviour, though I hope to go to at least two of the concerts if I can get tickets, as I know from previous exprience the audience will not be crowded together.

The Guardian has a summation of the current UK situation which starts like this-

"The handling of the coronavirus crisis in the UK has provided few moments to celebrate, but the day we reach zero deaths from the disease will clearly be one to toast. That day may not be far off. On Tuesday, the UK reported four Covid deaths within 28 days of a positive test. On Monday it was only one. Months of painful lockdown, in the face of more transmissible variants, and the rapid rollout of effective vaccines, have proven their worth. We have good reason to feel optimistic for the months ahead."
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/04/uk-nears-zero-covid-deaths-good-reason-for-optimism

[broncofan]

All of the countries that have been able to vaccinate a large part of their population have benefited from greater epidemiological control. The problem is mobilizing the efforts everywhere before the virus mutates and new rounds of vaccines are needed and we face another race to vaccinate. I think the mrna platforms can be used to quickly develop new vaccines but it takes a while for manufacturing to ramp up and vaccinating billions of people once is obviously difficult, let alone distributing a third dose.

It is a shame that in the U.S. we are getting closer to a point where supply of the vaccine exceeds demand. The efforts of Fox News and other propaganda mills to sow confusion about the vaccine will cost more lives. The decision about whether to vaccinate should be very straightforward for almost every adult. I am all for weighing the costs and benefits of a medical decision but when the benefits exceed the risks by so much it looks like misinformation and dogma are interfering with public health.

[Stavros]

I can understand Trump's postion, because his is plain ignorant, and has no intellectual curiosity to enable him to change his views. What puzzles me is Carlson, who has a degree in history, claims to be a fan of Grateful Dead, if that means anything, and has four children -have any of them been vaccinated against measles and polio? It seems to me an almost deliberate attack on science, not because of the science, but politics, and politics that is cheap and nasty. Obama encourages young people to get vaccinated so there must be something wrong, because Obama said it. Dr Fauci does the same, and it is 'child abuse'. There is something of the 'dark arts' of Murdoch here -never report news when you can create it. The danger is that there are enough people there (and sadly here in the UK too) who regard vaccinations as a conspiracy to sterilize the population or infringe the liberty of the individual, all of whom have been vaccinated as children and, I assume, none of whom want Polio, or want their children to die from Measles.

[filghy2]

Meanwhile in the UK the end is in sight...or so we are told. The statistics look good right now, but in my pessimistic view, there are still dangers ahead because while the UK reaps the reward of a successful vaccine campaign -thank you NHS!- if we are not safe until all are safe, it is tempting to think of a weekend in Lisbon, a week on the Costa del Sol, or Mykonos, or Crete or...but the situation in India -and thousands enter the UK from India each week- and Brazil is scary. New variants will complicate the overall picture, a new surge of cases cannot be ruled out. But at least in the UK we can be thankful for not having an idiot like Tucker Carlson pouring scorn on the vaccination of children, indeed, scorning most rational forms of behaviour.[/url]

The end has been in sight in Australia for several months now but somehow we never quite get there - if by end you mean a complete return to normal. This is in a country with only one Covid death so far this year.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-05-06/covid-live-updates-nsw-premier-gladys-berejiklian-local-case/100119776

That said, things are pretty much back to normal for the great majority of people for the great majority of the time (apart from overseas travel). The authorities here are generally applying a zero tolerance strategy, which means restrictions are reimposed for short periods whenever there is a small number of community transmission cases. Most people are still accepting of these temporary inconveniences.

One policy that has attracted a lot of criticism is the banning of travel from India (currently until May 15). There is a real question as to the morality of leaving your own citizens stranded in a vulnerable situation. Apparent inconsistencies in the treatment of different countries don't help - there was no ban on flights from the US or Europe when they had higher per capita infection rates previously.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-05-05/australians-health-high-commission-india-supplies-covid-19/100117620

It's not as if these people would be moving around freely as they would have had to spend 2 weeks in quarantine.

[Stavros]

I think we can agree that had countries such as the US and UK banned entry into the country in January or even February 2020, the incidence of infection would not have been so great. It didn't take long for Trump in office to impose bans on selected 'majority Muslim' countries, and while the US air space was shut down for 'only' two days after 9/11, it has been estimated it took six years for the aviation industry to recover from the shock.

In the case of Covid, I think it is a matter of Geography rather than politics -Australia is in a postion where it knows the situation in India has not so much deteriorated, as collapsed, in spite of previous successful efforts to contain the virus. Throw in the potential for variants, and the logical position is to ban entry from India until India has control of the situation. I would also have thought Australia could fly its citizens from India into the country somewhere, test them, or hold them in a hotel until they are satisfied they are not infected, or if they are, quarantine them- and vaccinae them- for the required time. It would be easier to handle a limited number of people than just trust to luck and test every say, 50th person arriving fom India. We are all still vulnerable, so it makes sense to do things that are practical and safe for all.

[filghy2]

I would also have thought Australia could fly its citizens from India into the country somewhere, test them, or hold them in a hotel until they are satisfied they are not infected, or if they are, quarantine them- and vaccinae them- for the required time. It would be easier to handle a limited number of people than just trust to luck and test every say, 50th person arriving fom India.

That is what happens already. With the exception of New Zealand, international arrivals are strictly limited and 2 weeks quarantine is mandatory.

Anyway, the government has already announced that flights from India will recommence. They are arguing that the pause was needed to avoid the system being overwhelmed with infections. The problem is that forcing Australian citizens to remain in India would have put them in an even worse situation.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-05-07/india-covid-travel-ban-scott-morrison-repatriation-flights/100123156

What the flight ban really suggests is that the government lacks confidence in the quarantine arrangements. As this has been going on for 14 months now I think more should have been done to strengthen the quarantine facilities. This is unlikely to be the last pandemic, so we should have moved past the point of relying on stop-gap arrangements.

[Stavros]

In a perfect example of box-ticking, the UK Govt has now released the 'Green List' of countries UK citizens can visit without having to quarantine upon return, they include Tourist Hot Spots -well, maybe not always hot- such as St Helena (for all you Napoelon fans), Ascension Island, Trista da Cunha, the Falkland Island and the South Georgia and Sandwich Islands...then there is Gibraltrar -two streets, duty free shops and those disgusting monkeys; Iceland (for all you Game of Thrones geezers), and those hop-on-a-plane destinations such as Singapore, Australia and New Zealand. That leaves Portugal and Israel -but presumably not the illegaly occupied Palestinian territories, or the Gaza District where you find the typical Mediterranean getaway -sun, sea, sand and falafel. Maybe next year.

So no Greece or Spain, and with Turkey on the Red List, EUFA are being asked to re-consider Istanbul as the venue for the Champions League final between two clubs based in England -Manchester City and Chelsea.

I did a check and there is a city break in Lisbon in early June from Expedia with a return flight at £113 which is not bad. But I am not making any plans.

The list is here-
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/explainers-52544307

[blackchubby38]

Thank you for clarifying the situation in city and state...

Their latest installment of who has the biggest one revolves around the safety in the subways as it relates to crime and the homeless problem.

Cuomo: "I wouldn't let my daughters ride the subway".

De Blasio: "The subways are safe and its the MTA (Metropolitan Transit Authority) and the media blowing things out of proportion".

Meanwhile, this happened at 5:00 in the afternoon in Times Square:

www.cnn.com/2021/05/08/us/new-york-times-square-shooting-3-injured/index.html

This city is so screwed.

[Stavros]

Their latest installment of who has the biggest one revolves around the safety in the subways as it relates to crime and the homeless problem.

Cuomo: "I wouldn't let my daughters ride the subway".

De Blasio: "The subways are safe and its the MTA (Metropolitan Transit Authority) and the media blowing things out of proportion".



Solution: the bus network! --?

[Vladimir Putin]

As of mid-April I am fully vaccinated. Exactly two weeks after my second dose, I had a private session with a female GG bodybuilder. It was my first hug in 14 months.

[Stavros]

As of mid-April I am fully vaccinated. Exactly two weeks after my second dose, I had a private session with a female GG bodybuilder. It was my first hug in 14 months.

I assume it was a Bear Hug...? Anyway, you are still breathing. But if in Russia, and a bodybuilder, are you sure she was GG?

[Vladimir Putin]

I assume it was a Bear Hug...? Anyway, you are still breathing. But if in Russia, and a bodybuilder, are you sure she was GG?

It was Marilyn Yee, she’s from Hong Kong. Google her.

[blackchubby38]

Some of the best news that I have heard all year:

People vaccinated against Covid-19 can go without masks indoors and outdoors, CDC says

http:// https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/13/health/cdc-mask-guidance-vaccinated/index.html

[Stavros]

Some of the best news that I have heard all year:

People vaccinated against Covid-19 can go without masks indoors and outdoors, CDC says


On one level, yes, good news. But as a matter of personal choice, will you wear a mask in certain places, for example, on a bus or on the Subway?

The UK enters a more relaxed era next Monday, but concerns are rising about the 'Indian Variant' because of claims in India that it is infecting people who have been vaccinated, more so because in some parts of the UK, Bolton in particular, new 'Indian Variant' Covid cases have surged and most of them in the younger age group that has yet to be vaccinated, though one notes the cases have so far not led to hospitalization or death -but even the Prime Minister is 'anxious' about it, so the possbility of renewed but 'local' lockdowns being re-imposed is still an option for the Govt.

The details are in the reports from Sky (scroll down for the specifics on Bolton)-
https://news.sky.com/story/covid-news-live-latest-updates-us-expands-use-of-pfizer-vaccine-to-children-as-young-as-12-as-uk-look-ahead-to-lifting-of-coronavirus-lockdown-restrictions-12302400

[blackchubby38]

On one level, yes, good news. But as a matter of personal choice, will you wear a mask in certain places, for example, on a bus or on the Subway?

The UK enters a more relaxed era next Monday, but concerns are rising about the 'Indian Variant' because of claims in India that it is infecting people who have been vaccinated, more so because in some parts of the UK, Bolton in particular, new 'Indian Variant' Covid cases have surged and most of them in the younger age group that has yet to be vaccinated, though one notes the cases have so far not led to hospitalization or death -but even the Prime Minister is 'anxious' about it, so the possbility of renewed but 'local' lockdowns being re-imposed is still an option for the Govt.

The details are in the reports from Sky (scroll down for the specifics on Bolton)-
https://news.sky.com/story/covid-news-live-latest-updates-us-expands-use-of-pfizer-vaccine-to-children-as-young-as-12-as-uk-look-ahead-to-lifting-of-coronavirus-lockdown-restrictions-12302400

As of right now, I still have to wear a mask on the bus or on the subway.

But as soon as that gets lifted, I will no longer continue to do so.

[Stavros]

As of right now, I still have to wear a mask on the bus or on the subway.

But as soon as that gets lifted, I will no longer continue to do so.

That's your choice, but for my part I shall wear a mask if I am on a crowded bus or train, and if I am on the London Underground when I am there. I think it is a question of how close I am to others, and so far I don't know what I shall do if I return to the cinema, opera house, concert hall -I can get to the cinema for afternoon shows where there aren't so many people.

In the UK we now have the potential that the 'Indian variant' may not allow the 'final stage' of the lockdown in June to proceed as hoped, but it is still to early to say. That said, it does mean Governments need to factor in the risk or be caught out. I tend to be more cautious than a lot of people, but that doesn't meant I am right.

[broncofan]

I am similar Stavros but I've given in a few times. I was at a function and everyone was vaccinated. Everyone took off their mask and I kept mine on most of the time but did have the mask off at times. I've had a couple of situations like this.

In my view, I am okay with the idea of people who are vaccinated having their masks off but I don't actually trust people to be honest about whether they've been vaccinated (unless I know them). We've had a pretty wild anti-mask movement in this country and these people have shown they have no compunction about lying and don't give a shit about anyone else's health.

As a matter of practicality, a vaccine that reduces mortality for covid by about 95% should bring the mortality rate to levels similar to what we accept without masks. It's just that I don't mind wearing one given that lots of people are still dying and the virus is circulating a lot in my area.

Stavros is also right about the variants. What percent of the circulating virus is either the South African variant or the newer variant from Brazil? Probably low but still it is out there. I've had pfizer shots and the only studies of the effectiveness against the SA variant (b.1.351) is in vitro and the antibodies showed reduced neutralizing ability....so we know it's less effective, but in the real world, not how much. As filghy had pointed out a ways back, might be different types of effectiveness v plain old disease as opposed to severe disease as opposed to death, but I don't want to find out.

[broncofan]

As a matter of practicality, a vaccine that reduces mortality for covid by about 95% should bring the mortality rate to levels similar to what we accept without masks.

This is a simplification but I think generally applies. The complexity includes what Stavros said about variants and also special populations. I would wear a mask around my nieces and nephews and my uncle who is older and very weak.

I wear it generally just because I feel a bit safer that way and I don't mind wearing it but I think people should consider wearing them if they're in a setting with a lot of vulnerable people. It makes them feel better probably. But I did anticipate we get to a point where vaccinated people will mostly not be wearing masks and while I'm okay with it I still keep it on as an additional layer of safety.

[Stavros]

This is a simplification but I think generally applies. The complexity includes what Stavros said about variants and also special populations. I would wear a mask around my nieces and nephews and my uncle who is older and very weak.

I wear it generally just because I feel a bit safer that way and I don't mind wearing it but I think people should consider wearing them if they're in a setting with a lot of vulnerable people. It makes them feel better probably. But I did anticipate we get to a point where vaccinated people will mostly not be wearing masks and while I'm okay with it I still keep it on as an additional layer of safety.

Key points -a) if I continue to wear a mask on public transport it is a more general protection against other people's smells and expectorations; and b) the problem with the 'Indian variant' is that we don't know enough about it, whether vaccinated people infected need hospitalization, whether it is lethal, or just a nuisance, and its threat to young people. In general I think a lot is now know about the virus, how it behaves when it enters the body, and how to combat it -each variant will have a unique character, but I don't think the variants are unbeatable, it is just a matter of time as the experts monitor its behaviour, just as 'flu vaccines are amended every year to take account of variants.

We are still in the thick of this pandemic, even if we can see the light. And by 'we' I mean the more advanced economies, I don't know how it is effecting people in rural areas of the world where health care is rudimentary or even non-existent. Indeed, I believe at this stage of the epidemiology of Covid, the key issues are political, economic and social, rather than medical -the three former conspiring to provide the latter with a home.

[blackchubby38]

Considering how badly the CDC botched this whole thing about vaccinated people no longer having to wear masks indoors and outdoors. Along with certain governors all of sudden saying they're not going to follow the science and data and say they're going to decide for themselves when mask mandates can be lifted, I now wish the CDC hadn't said anything in the first place.

[Stavros]

Considering how badly the CDC botched this whole thing about vaccinated people no longer having to wear masks indoors and outdoors. Along with certain governors all of sudden saying they're not going to follow the science and data and say they're going to decide for themselves when mask mandates can be lifted, I now wish the CDC hadn't said anything in the first place.

I was not aware of this situation so I googled it and found the article linked below. I think there are a number of issues here, which I can't verify. One would be the historic one of the pandemic beginning, and maturing when Trump was President and either indifferent to its impact, or more concerned to play it down for political reasons, controlling what the CDC could say in public. The other is the crisis in policy making and implementation that affected the US but also places like the UK, Brazil, and India where the profile of this viral pandemi exposed a failure at the level of service and technical provision, by which I mean the fatal decisions made with regard to Care Homes (in the UK in particular), the initially inadequate supply of PPE, and most of all the management of lockdowns, which in some parts of the US never happened, and which in some parts of the UK were probably extended long beyond the need to, but which may have to return on a local basis, if that makes any sense -can the police stop people leaving or entering Bolton?

Basically, the vaccine has become a 'get out of gaol free' card, with the novel situation that people can claim to be vaccinated when they haven't beeen, but where it is unreasonable to ask shop or restaurant workers to become 'vaccine police' and where there is already an online trade in fake vaccination cards such as the one I -and probably you too- have.

One of the curious factors here, is that the States that have handled the pandemic well have tended to be those with an existing or historic authoritatian government -Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore spring to mind. Israel may be a democratic and open society but most of its citizens are also military reservists, and can be mobilized -'co-ordinated'- quickly and effectively, and also because, the Haredi aside, citizen loyalty to the State exists on a level probably ridiculed and opposed in parts of the US, where defying 'the Feds' is a badge of honour for some, or some childish tantrum with Democrat Governors and Mayors, themselves of varying quality.

As remarked on above, this has been a poor example in too many places of politics failing to protect the citizen. The oddities too are places like Australia which has handled the pandemic well in terms of the numbers and rate of infection, but where, as with Japan, the rate of vaccination of the population has been poor -do people think they just don't need it?

The UK is going to have a public enquiry into the pandemic, but it won't begin its work until 2022, and as these things take at least 1-2 years, I doubt a report will be published until 2025 by which time few people will be interestd if Covid is something that happened 'years ago'- I guess Congress will also spend a year or more investigating it, and in both cases the question that must be asked -'What can we learn from this?' may produce answers that are either ignored or become clauses in legislation and regulations.

But yes, when a major institution issues contradictory advice, it doesn't encourage confidence. Maybe as an advocate of behaviour at the policy makking level, the CDC needs reform?


https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/14/cdc-cheered-and-criticized-for-new-mask-guidance-retail-workers-dont-want-to-be-vaccine-police.html

[filghy2]

The oddities too are places like Australia which has handled the pandemic well in terms of the numbers and rate of infection, but where, as with Japan, the rate of vaccination of the population has been poor -do people think they just don't need it?

It's hard to work out why the vaccination rate if so low in Australia, especially with the blame-shifting that has been occurring around the division of responsibilities between federal and state government. Part of the reason is that low case numbers have meant that there has not been the same urgency as elsewhere. There have also been supply constraints due to countries restricting vaccine exports.

A big part of the problem is that the federal government placed too much reliance of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which is presently the only one manufactured locally. As a result of the blood clot problems they had to advise against people under 50 getting it. As supplies of other vaccines are still limited that means anyone over 50 (which includes me) can only get AstraZeneca, and I guess some are reluctant.

It looks like the more centralised NHS system in the UK may have done a better job of rolling out vaccines efficiently. I was recently surprised to learn that I am now eligible to be vaccinated, which I only found out because I checked the website on a whim. I had been assuming that I would receive some official notification.

[Stavros]

'Vaccine hesitancy' is to my mind a slippery term, because it implies that those refusing to be vaccinated now might do so later, whereas I wonder if they intend to be vaccinated at any time. The current problem with the 'Indian variant' in places like Bolton and Bedford, is that some are accusing those now hospitalized, including in intensive care, of having refused the vaccination, while others claim that many cases are of people under 40 who have not been eligible for vaccination. On top of that, the Govt is being criticized for not restricting entry into the UK from India, and given that it can take up to 3 hours for travellers to be processed through passport control at Heathrow, one wonders how they distance people in those queues.

As for Australia, I think that one consequence of the Covid experience may be to signficantly improve its domestic manufacture of vaccines, to relieve the country of any dependence on external sources when, in a pandemic, the demand for vaccines may limit supplies. It is discussed in this article-

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/feb/23/australia-urged-to-manufacture-mrna-covid-vaccines-onshore-to-guard-against-supply-disruption

[broncofan]

My uncle who I described as older and weak in my last post just passed away. He had deteriorated over years and though I loved him the circumstances meant it didn't hit me as hard as other deaths in my family.

But the reason I bring this up is because his daughter, who is my cousin, is coming to town for the funeral. My father just told me that she is "vaccine hesitant". Although a certain percent of the population has not gotten the vaccine I didn't personally know anyone who hadn't. I believe someone who I worked with had an anaphylactic reaction to another kind of vaccine and this gave her a bona fide reason for not getting vaccinated. My cousin, on the other hand had no such reason and is going to be interacting with our entire family, including dozens of people in their seventies.

I do think people have a right to make their own health decisions but I can't help but judge that kind of ignorance and selfishness. Ignorance because her chance of having a bad reaction to a Pfizer vaccine is about one in a million but her chance of dying from covid, at 42 years old, is about 3 in a thousand. Her behavior also has an impact that gets magnified throughout the population and endangers even those who have been vaccinated. People like my cousin are a bigger obstacle on the path to normalization (in the U.S.) than any administrative mistakes thus far.

[blackchubby38]

If anyone is interested:

http:// www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/world/covid-vaccinations-tracker.html (http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/world/covid-vaccinations-tracker.html)

I'm actually surprised that most of the countries with the lowest fully vaccination rates per population are European countries.

Also, there is a pro domme that I follow on Twitter who resides in the UK I believe. She said she got her first vaccination shot the other day and should be getting the next one in 4 months. I don't know if she meant to say 4 weeks, but if it is 4 months, that seems odd to me

[Stavros]

A 12 week interval is now common-

https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/exclusives/92117

[broncofan]

A couple of articles out right now asserting that three researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were sick in November 2019. The original source of the claim is a U.S. intelligence report. First, if there is such a report I don't know whether it's accurate. If it is that is definitely suggestive (though not definitive proof) of a lab leak given the timeline.

Republicans seem to think that such a leak would support their theories that China developed the virus as a weapon and intentionally released the virus. It doesn't so I'll just ignore them. If their claim is that the idea of a leak wasn't investigated carefully enough because it could be politically contentious that's a possibility. There are a number of virologists who have been warning about the safety of such labs saying that while the risk of contamination might be low at each lab, cumulatively the global risk is quite high and constitutes a hazard we need to collectively address.

At no point during the pandemic would the information about the virus' origin have helped to eradicate the virus or deal with it medically. Knowing of its origin right now would help us make safety procedures at such labs and institutes a pressing global matter and transparency about what kind of research is taking place at each lab essential.

We know that at least 3.4 million people are dead because of this virus. Understanding its origins is crucial to helping prevent future incidents, particularly if it mutated in a petri dish instead of crossing over from bat to unknown intermediate species to human.

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/u-s-intel-report-identified-3-wuhan-lab-researchers-who-n1268327 (https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/u-s-intel-report-identified-3-wuhan-lab-researchers-who-n1268327)

https://www.wsj.com/articles/intelligence-on-sick-staff-at-wuhan-lab-fuels-debate-on-covid-19-origin-11621796228 (https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/u-s-intel-report-identified-3-wuhan-lab-researchers-who-n1268327)

[blackchubby38]

A couple of articles out right now asserting that three researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were sick in November 2019. The original source of the claim is a U.S. intelligence report. First, if there is such a report I don't know whether it's accurate. If it is that is definitely suggestive (though not definitive proof) of a lab leak given the timeline.

Republicans seem to think that such a leak would support their theories that China developed the virus as a weapon and intentionally released the virus. It doesn't so I'll just ignore them. If their claim is that the idea of a leak wasn't investigated carefully enough because it could be politically contentious that's a possibility. There are a number of virologists who have been warning about the safety of such labs saying that while the risk of contamination might be low at each lab, cumulatively the global risk is quite high and constitutes a hazard we need to collectively address.

At no point during the pandemic would the information about the virus' origin have helped to eradicate the virus or deal with it medically. Knowing of its origin right now would help us make safety procedures at such labs and institutes a pressing global matter and transparency about what kind of research is taking place at each lab essential.

We know that at least 3.4 million people are dead because of this virus. Understanding its origins is crucial to helping prevent future incidents, particularly if it mutated in a petri dish instead of crossing over from bat to unknown intermediate species to human.

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/u-s-intel-report-identified-3-wuhan-lab-researchers-who-n1268327 (https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/u-s-intel-report-identified-3-wuhan-lab-researchers-who-n1268327)

https://www.wsj.com/articles/intelligence-on-sick-staff-at-wuhan-lab-fuels-debate-on-covid-19-origin-11621796228 (https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/u-s-intel-report-identified-3-wuhan-lab-researchers-who-n1268327)

I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss not knowing the origins of the Corona virus during the pandemic wouldn't have been beneficial in some way.

I think it coming from a lab is a credible theory. But I don't think it was something that China developed as a weapon or if they did something they released intentionally. Because if they did, I think that is a legit reason for a declaration of war or some sort of military action. Not only by the United States, but some other countries as well. I do think that once it was leaked, China wasn't as forthcoming about it as they should have been.

I think if it was leaked from a lab, it was something that happened purely by accident. Either due to negligence or someone making a very costly mistake.

[broncofan]

I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss not knowing the origins of the Corona virus during the pandemic wouldn't have been beneficial in some way.

I know it sounds dismissive and I don't have any expertise here but what could the knowledge do unless the scientists developed a treatment during the research. The only options are suppression strategies and medical treatment. When they're working on it in a petri dish they should be decked out in hazmat type because they don't have an antidote. If they get infected and they infect others, it's out there...

There is an epidemiologist I follow on twitter named Marc Lipsitch who has been saying for a while that he's concerned about lab safety generally at these types of labs. His basic math was that even if it's a rare event at each one, it's not that unlikely cumulatively and the possibility of horrible events like this is too great.

We're on the same page about it being an accident and the fact that it's a genuine possibility. Also, agree China has not been forthcoming at all. I have been hesitant because on the right they don't know how to criticize China without being inflammatory but they've been as opaque as authoritarian societies often are. And it's selfish and harmful but an investigation will have to take place.

[broncofan]

I have been hesitant because on the right they don't know how to criticize China without being inflammatory but they've been as opaque as authoritarian societies often are. And it's selfish and harmful but an investigation will have to take place.
Apologies because I realize I already stated Lipsitch's view in the previous post.

I also want to say there was never any benefit from the "China flu" comments or the "Kung Flu" type comments. If we wanted people to discuss a potential accident or a lack of transparency, these comments have been an impediment. They not only endangered Asian-Americans (first priority concern), they also put a cloud over any attempt to discuss the issue because people didn't want to be associated with the kind of racial animus being trafficked on the right.

I know I sure as hell didn't and don't. And the comments have played out in the form of violence all over the place against Asian-Americans.

[Stavros]

A summary of the evidence Dominic Cummings gave yesterday. An epidemiologist argued that had someone from his discipline been in charge the Covid policy would have been simple: shut everything down, but that this would have not been politically acceptable. Cummings is candid about the failures of the Johnson govt, and at their worst they are a savage indictment of incompetence in Govt, not least when a risk exercise was carried out in 2016- Exercise Cygnus- to assess the UK’s ability to manage a major crisis such as a pandemic, though I don’t think Cummings referred to it. In other regards, the UK govt was as reluctant to take immediate action as many others, and it may be because of their prior experience with SARS that countries like Taiwan and South Korea acted swiftly and effectively, and it will be left to posterity to decide if the UK govt could have created an effective test and trace system earlier than the botched system it created in March 2020.

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/9-explosive-claims-boris-johnson-163154529.html

[broncofan]

In Ohio they have a lottery that they enter people into if they get vaccinated. I understand from an international perspective this can all seem in poor taste. Vaccines have not been equitably distributed around the world and the U.S. and several other countries did get priority. Now our citizens don't think free vaccines that could save their lives are incentive enough they need financial incentives.

Still, I'm for using whatever reasonable incentives can get people vaccinated. Using the supply we've secured will only save lives particularly as we get exponential benefits in going from 50% of the population vaccinated to 60+ percent.

Personally, I think states should consider tax incentives to get people to get their families vaccinated. It would pay for itself in terms of its benefits.

https://www.vox.com/2021/5/28/22458637/ohio-covid-19-vaccine-lottery-incentives-coronavirus-pandemic

[broncofan]

https://www.courant.com/coronavirus/hc-news-coronavirus-facebook-earla-dawn-dimitriadis-20201214-lf5ca7ozofgxfeauukxps55fyq-story.html

There are probably many stories like this but I found this woman's decency and heart to be very touching. The story of the last social media posts of someone who died of covid. She was very sweet but the ending makes me sad.

Now that things are opening up again and case levels are dropping I hope people remember the horrible toll this has taken on some families. Earla Dimitriadis is one of over 600,000 people in the U.S who died (3.7 million worldwide). Stories like this are taking place in India every single day by the thousands right now:(.

[blackchubby38]

So much for following the science.

COVID-19 state of emergency will last beyond June 15, Newsom says

www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-06-04/covid-19-state-of-emergency-will-last-beyond-june-15-newsom-says

[filghy2]

Now that things are opening up again and case levels are dropping I hope people remember the horrible toll this has taken on some families. Earla Dimitriadis is one of over 600,000 people in the U.S who died (3.7 million worldwide). Stories like this are taking place in India every single day by the thousands right now:(.

Unfortunately this pandemic may not be over until it is under control everywhere, and we are a long way from achieving that. The more it continues to circulate in parts of the world, the more the risk that it might mutate in dangerous ways.

[broncofan]

Unfortunately this pandemic may not be over until it is under control everywhere, and we are a long way from achieving that. The more it continues to circulate in parts of the world, the more the risk that it might mutate in dangerous ways.
You're right. It is still raging in many places and each new variant brings slightly new properties, including partial, though incomplete evasion of some types of immunity. We don't know how long the vaccines immunize us for and most importantly how long against each variant.

I follow a scientist named Shane Crotty on twitter and have found some of his explanations helpful. In the first article he talks about booster shots and variants. The second is a research study showing the durability of different types of immunity beyond antibodies in people with natural infection. Several scientists I follow say those who were vaccinated generally have more robust immune responses than those with natural infection.

We're going to know we need boosters when there are more breakthrough infections. I think the breakthrough infections are being sequenced to see whether certain variants are overrepresented as well.

https://www.kpbs.org/news/2021/jun/03/covid-19-booster-shots-recommended-winter/

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/371/6529/eabf4063

[broncofan]

Unfortunately this pandemic may not be over until it is under control everywhere, and we are a long way from achieving that. The more it continues to circulate in parts of the world, the more the risk that it might mutate in dangerous ways.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2021-06-08/coronavirus-strategy-forever-virus

This article really underlines the point you're making. It talks not just about the variants we've seen but the ones we will see and the impossibility of ever eradicating this virus, particularly given the fact that it is now identified in multiple species including monkeys, cats, and deer. I wonder if those animals ever worried about disease carrying domesticated humans.

The lead author of the article is Larry Brilliant who worked with the WHO to help eradicate smallpox. Another author is vaccine maker Rick Bright who Trump fired for saying he didn't think there was evidence hydroxychloroquine works. They paint a fairly ominous picture and offers recommendations.

[filghy2]

This article really underlines the point you're making. It talks not just about the variants we've seen but the ones we will see and the impossibility of ever eradicating this virus, particularly given the fact that it is now identified in multiple species including monkeys, cats, and deer.

Thanks. This does raise a tricky question for Australia, given we've relied so much on tight controls on international travel - which the government has indicated will remain for at least another year. At some point presumably we have to take a calculated risk as we can't stay cut off from the rest of the world for ever. Only 21% of the population has been vaccinated so far, which is way behind the US or UK. I only got my first shot this week.

I had to chuckle about the two authors' names being Brilliant and Bright.

[Stavros]

A quick review of some issues:

1) The UK Govt plan to end lockdown measures on June 21st may be delayed by a month owing to the surge of new cases in some parts of the country-
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/08/uk-considers-delaying-21-june-lockdown-easing

2) Scientists have yet to find the precise link in the zoonosis claim- so far analysis of samples does not show a direct link between Bats and Humans, but there might be an intermediary link, eg Mink. The link looks at the various theories, ie
1) Direct Spillover from animals to humans
2) Spillover via Intermediary host
3) Introduction via refrigerated or frozen food
4) Labratory leak
-In other words, there is still a lot of research to be done before we can know where Covid-19 originated.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/we-still-dont-know-the-origins-of-the-coronavirus-here-are-four-scenarios

3) The claim the virus leaked from a Lab in Wuhan remains unproven. If it didn't happen, there will be no proof. If it did and the Chinese Govt has destoyed the evidence, again, there will be no proof. But some argue the sample analyses show no trace of human manipulation as one would find with lab-created materials. Moreover, the US Biologist, David Baltimore has rowed back on a claim he says was over-stated with regard to the Wuhan Laboratory as a/the source of the virus-
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/us/us-scientist-says-he-overstated-wuhan-lab-leak-smoking-gun-1.4588965

What we do know:
Masks work
Social/Physical Distancing works
Vaccnes work

The question now is will the G7 and other States co-ordinate a truly Global vaccination campaign -it has been done before with Smallpox even if at first it suffered from some of the fractured decision-making and financial constraints we see today-
https://www.cdc.gov/smallpox/history/history.html

[broncofan]

I had to chuckle about the two authors' names being Brilliant and Bright.
:tongue: I paused at the name Brilliant but I can't believe I overlooked Bright. Long history of achievement in the Bright and Brilliant families.

I got my shots a little while back and I've gotten more comfortable over time. The people I come across have become very comfortable very quickly. A bit too comfortable in my view. While no one decision is outrageous, lots of people entirely back to normal. I try to avoid large crowds but have been forced to attend two functions. I am satisfied being out and about, socializing with people I know and I don't really mind wearing a mask indoors or avoiding congregated settings when I can...

Thanks for the info about Australia. I've been curious but haven't kept up with it. You guys did such a great job, especially with isolating people with covid while they recovered and keeping the case load and death toll low. 21% is not a bad start at all and maybe when you are at numbers like 50% or so, the combination of some population immunity with your good health controls will encourage your govt to open up travel again.

[broncofan]

BTW, I'm sure you've probably seen this link but it has the rates Australia is vaccinating at daily. 140,000 shots a day is about .5% of Australia's population in a day. That is a pretty good pace, as we may have gotten to 1% at peak here but what really matters is demand once you get more coverage. At this rate, in two months Australia will have administered 8 million more shots as long as you have the supply. I imagine it's one of the two shot vaccines but still it looks like the pace there right now is good.

We noticed major effects on case levels once we crossed the 40% threshold and exponentially it seems with each 10% increase. But with only about a dozen cases a day in Australia that aspect won't be as noticeable.

https://www.health.gov.au/initiatives-and-programs/covid-19-vaccines/australias-covid-19-vaccine-rollout (https://www.health.gov.au/initiatives-and-programs/covid-19-vaccines/australias-covid-19-vaccine-rollout)

[broncofan]

I know this is the third post in a row but bear with me. Australia looks like it's in good shape supply-wise. 40 million doses of Pfizer, 50 million doses of Astrazeneca, and when Moderna is approved 25 million doses, 15 million of which are their variant-specific boosters. I commend your government on having really organized information about covid. You compare that to any of our local or federal sites it's incredible how transparent everything is in Australia.

What matters is not how quickly everyone gets vaccinated but how many people are willing to get vaccinated. I hope you have better demand there than we've had here.

https://www.health.gov.au/initiatives-and-programs/covid-19-vaccines/covid-19-vaccine-government-response/australias-vaccine-agreements

[filghy2]

Thanks for the info about Australia. I've been curious but haven't kept up with it. You guys did such a great job, especially with isolating people with covid while they recovered and keeping the case load and death toll low. 21% is not a bad start at all and maybe when you are at numbers like 50% or so, the combination of some population immunity with your good health controls will encourage your govt to open up travel again.

I'm confident we will eventually get to a higher percentage that the US, given atttitudes to the virus have not been politicised here. A lot of the vaccine hesitancy has probably been due to the small incidence of blood clots with AstraZeneca, with some people preferring to wait until more Pfizer supplies available. For most people the risk of catching Covid is low, though the recent outbreak in Melbourne may have changed some minds.

We do have some idiots here, but at least this one got stopped from spreading falsehoods. He also failed to get elected despite outspending the major parties in the last Federal election. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/jun/09/clive-palmer-anti-vaccine-ads-pulled-over-false-claims-about-hundreds-of-deaths

[broncofan]

I'm confident we will eventually get to a higher percentage that the US, given atttitudes to the virus have not been politicised here. A lot of the vaccine hesitancy has probably been due to the small incidence of blood clots with AstraZeneca, with some people preferring to wait until more Pfizer supplies available. For most people the risk of catching Covid is low, though the recent outbreak in Melbourne may have changed some minds.

We do have some idiots here, but at least this one got stopped from spreading falsehoods. He also failed to get elected despite outspending the major parties in the last Federal election. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/jun/09/clive-palmer-anti-vaccine-ads-pulled-over-false-claims-about-hundreds-of-deaths
I think not seeing covid spreading all over your communities would probably change the urgency with which people want to get vaccinated. I am sure it has an impact early in the process because people don't feel the palpable sense that they can go from feeling a constant threat to safety nearly overnight. So I'm sure there are plenty of people who aren't vaccine hesitant but also aren't updating their health links daily to find out their eligibility.

Just from looking at your government websites I can tell the process is more organized there. It also seems like age is being used as a more important qualifying criterion than pre-existing conditions. There were a lot of people who recommended we change our rubric because age IS a much more important determining factor for risk than conditions. Anyhow I wish you guys well.

In the U.S. we really have a tale of two cities phenomenon (I don't know if I got the reference right but let me have it jk). Some places have more than 60% of people have at least one shot while some places in the south barely breaking 30 percent.

[sukumvit boy]

Finally , a comprehensive ,balanced and easy to understand article on the whole "lab-leak" hypothesis. In the 17 June 2021 issue of Nature magazine entitled "The Covid Lab-Leak Hypothesis : What Scientists Do And Don't Know"

[Stavros]

Finally , a comprehensive ,balanced and easy to understand article on the whole "lab-leak" hypothesis. In the 17 June 2021 issue of Nature magazine entitled "The Covid Lab-Leak Hypothesis : What Scientists Do And Don't Know"

Thanks, Sukumvit boy, for referencing a fascinating article.

[sukumvit boy]

Thanks! Nice to see you back.
I would have pasted a link to that "Nature" magazine article but my copy and paste functions have gone out on my desktop computer and I'm having the devil of a time fixing it without completely resetting my computer to factory settings.

[sukumvit boy]

In developed countries such as the UK,the US and Israel Covid is becoming a disease of the young and unvaccinated and the Delta Variant is producing hospitalizations and deaths in young people ,more so than the original strain.

[Stavros]

In developed countries such as the UK,the US and Israel Covid is becoming a disease of the young and unvaccinated and the Delta Variant is producing hospitalizations and deaths in young people ,more so than the original strain.

Agree with all except the death rate. Figures from June-

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/29/who-is-most-at-risk-from-the-delta-variant.html

https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/zero-deaths-from-delta-variant-for-double-jabbed-under-50s-figures-show-1071527

[sukumvit boy]

Yes,thank you for that clarification.

[Stavros]

Yes,thank you for that clarification.

The clarification in itself is of minor importance as the grim reality is that even before the 'Freedom Day' that was re-branded as 'Caution Day' -July19th- new infections were, and are rising in the UK, mostly in the younger people and others not yet vaccinated, while the prospect of 'vaccine resistance' must also now be factored in to suggest that over time, existing vaccinations may, as with flu, require annual upgrades -that Covid-19 is here to stay.

Yesterday I spoke with a Consultant whose head dropped when I mentioned Covid, as in his hospital -he is not directly involved in Covid- there were 6 Covid patients a month ago, there are 14 today. It is only relevant to me because I am waitig for an operation which might be delayed if hospital resources are diverted from other areas, though I can live with what I have and do not mind if Covid cases take priorty.
There is a sense among those on the front line that the Govt has lost control of the agenda, that the science continues to urge caution while the politics, besieged by the commercial world where a diverse range of policies makes no sense when workers in one sector are expected to self-isolate while others are not, has in effect abandoned rational policy for an ideological commitment to indivdual liberty. This is a collective crisis, and yes, even in my small town there was a demonstration -albeit made up of 10 people and two banners- against vaccinations, but one wonders what people use for brains these days. For this reason I expect the infection rate to worsen over the next month, and just hope that more peoplle are vaccinated, and that fewer people die than was the case last year.

It no longer makes sense to say 'I am glad I don't live in Texas' when the idiots in charge there are not much worse than the idiots we have here. Covid-19 has exposed a failure of leadership across the world, and an indifference to science tha is as scary as it is incredible, and it there are few signs it will get better soon or any time

Vaccine Resistance-
https://www.theweek.co.uk/news/uk-news/953430/what-are-the-chances-of-a-new-vaccine-resistant-variant

The eluusive claims of 'Herd Immunity'-
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00728-2

[filghy2]

Covid infections are also on the rise again in the US, corresponding with a slowing in the rate of vaccination. Are we about to throw away the chance of beating this virus simply because some people have decided to resist vaccination for political reasons? And not for any reason of rational self-interest, but because ignoring expert advice and dismissing Covid risks and has become a marker of tribal affinity.

As this article notes, Republicans used to sell themselves as the party of personal responsibility. Now they seem to be about promoting irresponsible behaviour and shielding people from any consequences.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jul/30/republicans-used-to-laud-personal-responsibility-not-with-covid

The question is what should be done if persuasion does not deliver a sufficiently high percentage of the population to reach herd immunity. Vaccination passports seem a logical move to encourage vaccination as well as allowing normal activities to resume safely as far as possible. However, a portion of the population not only want the right to refuse vaccination but are also vehemently opposed to facing any disadvantage relative to the vaccinated as a consequence. This is going to be a big political battleground - there have been violent protests in France against recent measures there.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9847261/Thousands-anti-vaxxers-march-Paris-opposition-compulsory-jabs-vaccine-passports.html

One thing I find astounding is that there are health workers opposing vaccination mandates. Perhaps those people need to find a more suitable career.

[Stavros]

Covid infections are also on the rise again in the US, corresponding with a slowing in the rate of vaccination. Are we about to throw away the chance of beating this virus simply because some people have decided to resist vaccination for political reasons? And not for any reason of rational self-interest, but because ignoring expert advice and dismissing Covid risks and has become a marker of tribal affinity.

As this article notes, Republicans used to sell themselves as the party of personal responsibility. Now they seem to be about promoting irresponsible behaviour and shielding people from any consequences.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jul/30/republicans-used-to-laud-personal-responsibility-not-with-covid

The question is what should be done if persuasion does not deliver a sufficiently high percentage of the population to reach herd immunity. Vaccination passports seem a logical move to encourage vaccination as well as allowing normal activities to resume safely as far as possible. However, a portion of the population not only want the right to refuse vaccination but are also vehemently opposed to facing any disadvantage relative to the vaccinated as a consequence. This is going to be a big political battleground - there have been violent protests in France against recent measures there.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9847261/Thousands-anti-vaxxers-march-Paris-opposition-compulsory-jabs-vaccine-passports.html

One thing I find astounding is that there are health workers opposing vaccination mandates. Perhaps those people need to find a more suitable career.


In aggregate terms, Covid cases are not as bad here as the local experience suggests, though I believe we are still vulnerable to variants of the disease and have yet to assess the full impact of the relaxation that began on July 19th. We may be looking at a perod over the next 5 years when we 'settle down' to an annual occurrence of non-lethal/hospitalised infectons with accompanying vaccines, as with 'flu, but other countries are behind the curve, so I doubt international travel is a good idea for some of us.

Re: Australia -a few weeks ago I read that while Australia has done well with the management of Covid-19, yet barely 14% of the population has been vaccinated -do you know why?

[broncofan]

Filghy, we went from about 10 cases per day in my county to 140 per day in a matter of two weeks. This has been going on all over the place. The CDC told people if they were vaccinated they did not have to wear masks indoors. Of course people who are unvaccinated at this point are probably also unlikely to wear masks.

The Delta variant is more transmissible. The CDC claims it spreads as readily as chickenpox although virologists I follow claim that's an overstatement and the r0 is between 5 and 6, still much more transmissible than the original strain. There are also more breakthrough cases with Delta, though the vaccines are supposed to maintain their protection against severe disease and death longer than they do against infection. There have been studies showing that although vaccinated people who get breakthrough infections tend to have less serious symptoms they still have similar amounts of virus in their nasal passages so they're presumably able to spread the virus as readily.

Among those who haven't been vaccinated there are several camps. Some can be reached and some can't. There are those who say they are waiting for more information, are waiting for full fda approval, or need some impetus (maybe a family member getting sick) to get vaccinated. Then there are the indoctrinated masses who watch Fox news whose political tribalism tells them death is better than prudence. In my view the fda trials and the data about vaccination provide enough information for anyone, but at least people who claim they want to know more have not ruled out the possibility of getting vaccinated.

Right-wing media here pumps out bullshit about the vaccines all day and night. They're heavily invested in having a fractured society...they no longer seem to have a plan except to amplify fake grievances, misunderstand data, and to confuse gullible people.

[filghy2]

Re: Australia -a few weeks ago I read that while Australia has done well with the management of Covid-19, yet barely 14% of the population has been vaccinated -do you know why?

Most Australians would also like to know. The figure is now up to 23%, but it's still one of the lowest in the developed world. There is a lot of dissatisfaction about this with much of the country recently going back into lockdown due to delta strain outbreaks.

There are a number of factors. One has been supply constraints, with AstraZeneca being to only vaccine that is manufactured locally. However, the government seems to have erred in putting to much reliance on AstraZeneca initially and then moving too slowly to obtain mRNA vaccine supplies.

Second, the low incidence of blood clots for AstraZeneca has contributed to vaccine hesitancy, which may not have been helped by mixed messaging from official sources. I know there is an argument that the balance of risks changes with the incidence of Covid infections, but I think this goes over many peoples' heads and they are left with a sense of confusion and an exaggerated impression of the blood clot risks.

Third, the low incidence of transmission until a few weeks ago led to complacency on the part of both governments and the public. Many people thought the risk was low, so why not wait for the better and apparently less risky Pfizer vaccine. The government only recently started strongly pushing a message that people should get vaccinated ASAP.

Fourth, the federal government insisted on taking charge of the vaccination rollout because it had been left on the sidelines by the states and wanted to get credit for a success story. The problem is that they don't have much expertise in major logistical exercises like this and they made a hash of it.

Finally, we have our own Fox News equivalent, which has been busy spreading misinformation. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-01/sky-news-suspended-youtube-for-one-week-covid-19-misinformation/100341386
Fortunately, their audience reach is much less than Fox, but they do appeal to a certain segment of the public.

[filghy2]

[Duplicate post]

[filghy2]

Right-wing media here pumps out bullshit about the vaccines all day and night. They're heavily invested in having a fractured society...they no longer seem to have a plan except to amplify fake grievances, misunderstand data, and to confuse gullible people.

The question I often ponder is why the Murdochs condone this. I know they want want right-wing governments for low taxes and regulation, but promoting political/social/economic disorder would not appear to be good for business on the face of it. A more conventional Republican Party would seem to better align with their interests.

Perhaps they think that going down this route is the only way that Republicans can win nowadays, and undermining the recovery will work against the Democrats. They might also think that the news/entertainment business won't be much affected if the pandemic is prolonged.
Or perhaps there is no coherent plan, just a monster they have lost control of but must keep feeding because they can't afford to lose the target audience.

[KnightHawk 2.0]

Covid infections are also on the rise again in the US, corresponding with a slowing in the rate of vaccination. Are we about to throw away the chance of beating this virus simply because some people have decided to resist vaccination for political reasons? And not for any reason of rational self-interest, but because ignoring expert advice and dismissing Covid risks and has become a marker of tribal affinity.

As this article notes, Republicans used to sell themselves as the party of personal responsibility. Now they seem to be about promoting irresponsible behaviour and shielding people from any consequences.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jul/30/republicans-used-to-laud-personal-responsibility-not-with-covid

The question is what should be done if persuasion does not deliver a sufficiently high percentage of the population to reach herd immunity. Vaccination passports seem a logical move to encourage vaccination as well as allowing normal activities to resume safely as far as possible. However, a portion of the population not only want the right to refuse vaccination but are also vehemently opposed to facing any disadvantage relative to the vaccinated as a consequence. This is going to be a big political battleground - there have been violent protests in France against recent measures there.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9847261/Thousands-anti-vaxxers-march-Paris-opposition-compulsory-jabs-vaccine-passports.html

One thing I find astounding is that there are health workers opposing vaccination mandates. Perhaps those people need to find a more suitable career.Completely agree that health workers who are opposing vaccination mandates should find a more suitable career.

[Stavros]

The question I often ponder is why the Murdochs condone this. I know they want want right-wing governments for low taxes and regulation, but promoting political/social/economic disorder would not appear to be good for business on the face of it. A more conventional Republican Party would seem to better align with their interests.

Perhaps they think that going down this route is the only way that Republicans can win nowadays, and undermining the recovery will work against the Democrats. They might also think that the news/entertainment business won't be much affected if the pandemic is prolonged.
Or perhaps there is no coherent plan, just a monster they have lost control of but must keep feeding because they can't afford to lose the target audience.

Murdoch's view was summarized by Ronald Reagan in his 1981 Inauguration address: "Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem."

Thus Murdoch has campaigned against Govt/State regulations in the US, the UK and Australia since the 1960s -hence his victory in persuading Reagan in 1987 to abandon the Fair Broadcasting agreement that has created a sectarian media, to replace balanced reporting and debate with propaganda. And on the Murdoch principle applied to newsapers and other media- don't report the news when you can create it. Hence a lot of what claims to be news is in fact a futile response to some outrageous statement by Laura Ingraham or Tucker Carlson, neither of whom venture into the streets to report on say, homelessness, or poverty, or education.

Murdoch doesn't believe in Big Government, but his appeal to the kind of minimalist State found in the first decades of the US, and above all his belief that Markets are superior to Governments cannot deal with a national crisis such as the current Pandemic, which requires the mobiization of Government and Non-Governmet agencies in a public health campaign. The best he can offer is some sort of temporary military response to be disbanded when the crisis is over. But in the US where there is no national health service provision and up to 31% of the public reject vaccination, it appears Markets -ie a world in which individuals make the decisions free of Govt/State- one man's freedom may be another's avoidable death or illness.

As for Mudoch himsef, an Australian born US citizen who lives in the UK, if his UK newspaper that published photos of topless 16 year-olds had been published in some US States, he would have served time in prison, and be on the sex offenders register. But hey, Page 3 was just a 'bit of fun'. much as Love Island is about virile young men and horny young women who never talk about sex...and allegedly never do it either, a sort of Puritan Ibiza. Funny old world, innit?

[broncofan]

I still have trouble finding any coherence in what they're doing. While they may reject government solutions, collective action, and paternalism they haven't proposed any kind of private market solution. Why not downplay government funding for warp speed and instead praise Pfizer and Moderna as private companies who have exploited a profitable market? Pfizer has, after all, made 33 billion so far this year. They don't have to share those profits with anyone.

Anyhow, they could have conceded a modest role for government and tried to get past this crisis as smoothly as possible so they could focus on their agenda items. By digging in during a pandemic, probably the worst scenario for their utopian selfish corporatist society, they amplify the weakness of their ideology and look like giant buffoons.

I agree they distrust government and don't like asking people to make sacrifices for society (except the military) but I see them as following an instinct for contrarianism and allowing it to lead them in a fight against modernity and decency. Also, the sensationalism that fox news depends on makes it hard not to play some card. They can't simply ride out this crisis and acknowledge that in rare circumstances people do need to cooperate. So there is some of that play to sensationalism.

[broncofan]

https://twitter.com/BenjaminMMeier/status/1422185570122584064

How can anyone think that people doing this are on the right side of history? I recall reading it was conservative student groups promoting this idiocy.

[filghy2]

I still have trouble finding any coherence in what they're doing. While they may reject government solutions, collective action, and paternalism they haven't proposed any kind of private market solution. Why not downplay government funding for warp speed and instead praise Pfizer and Moderna as private companies who have exploited a profitable market? Pfizer has, after all, made 33 billion so far this year. They don't have to share those profits with anyone.

There is a lot of cognitive dissonance and doublespeak going on here. Vaccination sceptics complain about big pharma being in league with government to push vaccination for financial gain, yet in other contexts the same people have no problem with corporations making profits - indeed, they back policies that make the rich richer. They also normally support gutting regulation to stop corporates engaging in practices that actually harm people. If Trump had won the election I'm sure most of these people would now be touting the vaccination program as a great success.

I think what is happening can be seen as a combination of mass psychology with the behavioural incentives that operate within right-wing circles. People are adopting positions as a badge of tribal affinity rooted in 'us versus them' psychology. Any mainstream criticism, censorship of misinformation or talk of things like vaccination passes allows them to adopt the mantle of persecuted victim. The incentives for right-wing politicians and commentators are to feed this process rather than resisting, creating a feedback loop. The Republican Party has chosen to double down on appealing to existing supporters and rely on electoral manipulation to win, rather than trying to broaden its appeal. Fox News seems to have made a similar decision.

[Stavros]

I still have trouble finding any coherence in what they're doing. While they may reject government solutions, collective action, and paternalism they haven't proposed any kind of private market solution. Why not downplay government funding for warp speed and instead praise Pfizer and Moderna as private companies who have exploited a profitable market? Pfizer has, after all, made 33 billion so far this year. They don't have to share those profits with anyone.

Anyhow, they could have conceded a modest role for government and tried to get past this crisis as smoothly as possible so they could focus on their agenda items. By digging in during a pandemic, probably the worst scenario for their utopian selfish corporatist society, they amplify the weakness of their ideology and look like giant buffoons.

I agree they distrust government and don't like asking people to make sacrifices for society (except the military) but I see them as following an instinct for contrarianism and allowing it to lead them in a fight against modernity and decency. Also, the sensationalism that fox news depends on makes it hard not to play some card. They can't simply ride out this crisis and acknowledge that in rare circumstances people do need to cooperate. So there is some of that play to sensationalism.

An additional point I coulld have made re Murdoch and the libertarians, is that they have a vested interest in demeaning the institutions of government, to strengthen their case for Markets, so that Trump was (not literally), a 'godsend' as he has demeaned the Office of the Presidency, just as they argue the Democrats in Congress have turned it into a partisan vehicle -in fact, although they want Markets to Rule, you have exposed the weakness of this Utopian belief, for a pandemic is not by definition local, but requires national action, though on this occasion 'every State for itself' has made a co-ordinated response to Covid across the US impossible- incidentally, it has also exposed the failure in the UK to do the same, indeed, what has dismayed me is the lack of co-ordinated respond nationally and Globally, and has in my view contributed to the expansion rather than the contraction of the virus.

I thought we learned lessons from the plagues of the past, from co-ordinated campaigns against Smallpox, Polio, Measles and TB, but a generation of politicians with an ideology as fixed and impervious to reason as Marxism-Leninism or Marxism-Leninism-Maoist Thought has decided to oppose the very measures that would help control and even end this viral attack on all of us. In the same States where a 'Mask Mandate' is the 'Mark of the Beast' or a violation of a person's bodily freedom, a woman becoming pregnant after being gang-raped by 10 men has no right to control her body. Where is her freedom?

But if what were once extreme ideas on the fringe are now occupying the centre ground, is it because the centre shifted because of the incompetence of former Democrats and Republicans, that voters became so disenchanted with Bush and Obama they needed to 'shake things up' a little or a lot -or is it that in the US, elections cn be rigged through gerrymandering of district boundaries so that in fact, policy is now made by minority administrations?

Most Americans believe in and abide by science based rules, but it only needs 30% to disengage to perpetuate the pandemic -and where do these 30% live? And where are the worst cases currently recorded?

[blackchubby38]

www.newsweek.com/no-unvaccinated-arent-selfish-ignorant-heres-why-im-not-vaxxed-opinion-1617993


http://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/12/nyregion/covid-vaccine-black-young-new-yorkers.html

[filghy2]

This passage in the Newsweek article is a serious misunderstanding or misrepresentation:
"But even while the experts push the vaccine, they have undermined it by arguing that vaccinated individuals spread the virus as effectively as unvaccinated individuals. It begs the question: If everyone now has to wear a mask because everyone is now back to being suspected asymptomatic carriers, why get the vaccine at all?

The personal risk/benefit analysis still plays a role and preventing serious illness is definitely important, but getting the vaccine to protect others (and calling unvaccinated adults selfish) no longer seems to be relevant if the vaccinated can spread it, too. In fact, some experts have advised only individuals at high risk of serious illness from COVID-19 to get vaccinated, in order to prevent the evolution of even more vaccine resistant variants."

The article she linked actually says:
"scientists who studied a big COVID-19 outbreak in Massachusetts concluded that vaccinated people who got so-called breakthrough infections carried about the same amount of the coronavirus as those who did not get the shots."

This is a conditional statement. It is not saying the vaccinated are equally likely to be infected.

In fact, what the experts are saying is that vaccines do significantly reduce the likelihood of infection but there is a significant incidence of breakthrough infections (hence the continued need for masks). This is consistent with data showing that recent cases are disproportionally occurring in states with lower vaccination rates.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-briefs/fully-vaccinated-people.html

Even if vaccines were only 60% effective in preventing infection that is still a huge deal because the virus spreads exponentially. The difference in infection numbers between an R0 of 5 and an R0 of 2 over period of time is massive.

[broncofan]

I'm kind of shocked Newsweek printed that. Scientists have found that in those breakthrough infections (for Delta variant) the amount of virus in the sinuses of vaccinated people is similar to that of the unvaccinated. However a subsequent study showed that viral loads tend to go down more quickly as the vaccinated are usually infectious for much shorter periods of time.

Also, as you say, if they maintain efficacy of let's say 60%, that is fewer cases and makes an enormous difference.

She makes a throw away comment about vaccines creating dangerous variants but most scientists think the risk of dangerous variants arising is greater with more viral spread. The article she links to in order to support her point is written by Robert Malone and Peter Navarro. Navarro was a Trump adviser who promoted the use of hydroxychloroquine and made all sorts of outlandish claims during the pandemic. Malone claims he invented mrna vaccines though he plainly didn't. He seems to be friends with and appear on podcasts with Bret Weinstein who has been touting the benefits of ivermectin, which is the new hydroxychloroquine (placebo pill for nutjobs). Ivermectin can treat headlice but it has not been shown to be effective against covid. https://www.logically.ai/factchecks/library/3aa2eefd

She also links to this article when she claims scientists have been blacklisted for recommending covid treatments https://www.onedaymd.com/2021/05/dr-peter-mccullough-harvey-risch-george-fareed.html?m=1 . Anyone who reads this article and thinks it has merit is probably a fool.

Basically the author of the newsweek piece is a crank. Hospitals are being filled up with people who believe the sort of nonsense she is peddling.

[Stavros]

The tragedy of this situation is that there is no debate on the merits of the science. In some, perhaps many cases, masks don't work, vaccines don't work -or are themselves conduits of illness- and if a friend or relative who did not wear a mask and was not vaccinated is admitted to hospital with Covid-19, it doesn't change minds. One even expects an American Christian to say 'it is God's will'. On the BBC news last night a reporter in Louisiana and Mississipi asked and was told vaccines don't work, in one case as a woman walked to church. I can imagine Jesus returning to Earth and in her church preaching a gospel of human love and fellowship, of the selfless caring for others and the moral duty we have to end suffering -and being denounced from the pulpit as a 'woke' liberal responsible for all society's failngs.
Science is constantly challenging itself and being challenged, but by intelligent debate, not the denial one recalls from those who, from the 19th century to today, rejected Darwin's theory of evolution because they didn't like it -or understand it. This is not even a dialogue of the deaf, as there is no dialogue, merely the echoing sounds of a confederacy of dunces.

[blackchubby38]

I think what those two links (The NYT one is an article and the one from Newsweek is an opinion piece) that I posted show is that while the Trump/Republican voter/supporter maybe the loudest anti-vaccine people in the room, there are a good portion of people that are hesitant to get the vaccine for various reasons. Some of them legitimate. Some of them are based in paranoia and misinformation.

While it look likes the the fear of the Delta variant has led to a raise in vaccination rates, I think its time to adopt a new message when it comes to vaccinations.

Tweak the message. Keeping stressing that the vaccines are safe and the importance of getting them. Say that while at the moment they have only been approved for emergency use by FDA (Something I didn't know when I got fully vaccinated in February. But even if I did, I would still had gone through with it), so are some of the other courses of treatment for Covid 19.


While you're saying that, address people's concerns about getting the vaccine by saying the following:

"Don't listen to politicians. Don't listen to the media. Don't listen to celebrities. Don't even to listen public health officials. Talk to YOUR doctor about any concerns you may have and they will explain to why its important to get vaccinated".

[filghy2]

That all sounds reasonable, and I understand that hectoring people can be counter-productive. However, at some point we will likely have to face the question of what do to if we can't persuade enough people to get vaccinated to allow us to get on top of this virus.

This is not a situation where peoples' choices affect only themselves. Even if people are fully-vaccinated, protection against serious health impacts is less than 100% and that may decline over time, especially if there are new variants because the virus is still circulating freely.

This isn't about forcibly vaccinating people. It's about the right mixture of incentives and whether people should face different restrictions for some purposes depending on their vaccination status.

I think some analogy can be made with road safety. We don't take the view that people should be allowed to do as they like in the name of freedom, because that obviously creates risks for others. We don't put the onus solely on people to protect themselves. We don't take the view that it's no big deal because only a small percentage of the population is affected.

[sukumvit boy]

True to the climate of corruption in Putin's Russia I see that now not only fake vaccination certificates are freely available as well as another vaccine ,EpiVacCorona , which cannot be shown to produce ANY antibodies against Sars CoV-2 but was rushed to market by a government consortium anyway.

[Stavros]

Meanwhile, back at the Ranch...

"Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick deflected criticism of the COVID-19 outbreak in his state by placing the blame on Democratic leaders failing to get enough Black Americans vaccinated."
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/texas-lt-gov-dan-patrick-152705838.html

Someone help me here, did they abolish slavery in Texas? Or is the place run by the clinically incompetent? At what point does Greg Abbott when he is not compaigning to replace the US Constitution with the Ten Commandments get sued for Criminal Negligence over the State's Covid Infection policy?

Maybe the State motto should be 'Abandon Hope, all Ye who Enter Here;...?

[filghy2]

Useful article on the latest research on vaccine effectiveness (Pfizer and Moderna).
https://www.vox.com/coronavirus-covid19/22630979/covid-19-vaccine-booster-shots-delta-variant

The main findings are that effectiveness in preventing infections has fallen from around 90 per cent to 80 per cent with the delta strain. However, effectiveness at preventing serious illness requiring hospitalisation has remained at around 90-95 per cent.

[filghy2]

I see that Trump was recently booed by the MAGA crowd for encouraging them to get vaccinated. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/aug/22/donald-trump-rally-alabama-covid-vaccine

It seems that vaccine scepticism has morphed into outright hostility toward vaccination as a sort of badge of tribal identity.

[broncofan]

I hadn't checked this thread and mentioned the Trump booing in our other conversation. It's an interesting phenomenon because he was the leader of this movement. And now he looks for a moment like he is betraying the movement he started. Of course he doesn't have enough character to double down. The feedback goes both ways maybe.

I think Biden has done a mostly mediocre job with covid. The types of things I criticized Trump for: poor coordination of testing, inability to promote better testing tech such as home tests, and lack of initiative in collecting and analyzing data on breakthrough infections have been just as bad with Biden. We are at different points in the pandemic but I can make guesses about how Biden would have responded to the start of the pandemic. People were on Trump's ass for not invoking the National Defense Act and building ventilators and manufacturing ppe. It's not provable but I'm not getting a great sense of organization from Biden's team. Maybe many of these problems have to do with federal agencies that are not staffed with the type of people who can accomplish top down coordinated tasks and that problem is long-standing.

Part of the problem with Trump was that he literally added insult to a bad situation. He tried to barter with ventilators based on which governors were nice to him. He made insulting statements about doctors and nurses who were risking their lives. He encouraged people to violate the orders of their governors. So doing a somewhat average/poor job is an improvement.

[Stavros]

Part of the problem with Trump was that he literally added insult to a bad situation. He tried to barter with ventilators based on which governors were nice to him. He made insulting statements about doctors and nurses who were risking their lives. He encouraged people to violate the orders of their governors. So doing a somewhat average/poor job is an improvement.

What negotiations? It was a fix from the start. The key point is that the Trump admiistration considered developing a National Strategy But key people -allegedly Jared Kushner and Trump himself- decided against it so that they could blame Democrat Governors for failing their State and get a better press for themselves.
https://www.businessinsider.com/kushner-covid-19-plan-maybe-axed-for-political-reasons-report-2020-7?r=US&IR=T

What could have/shoud have been a National Co-ordinaed Defence against Covid, became a squalid act of Sabotage designed to use illness and death to elevate Trump and his party of Sedition, Sleaze and Lies above all others.

It was a policy that has fed into the growing realization that the US is no longer a Union of 50 States, but 50 separate countries whose Governors choose which laws to respect and which to discard. Just as the Constitution is seen by Trump's party of Sedition, Sleaze and Lies as an irrrelevance, and Congress and the Separation of Powers are the handcuffs on deciision-making in the State, so Joe Biden looks impotent because the power he has- that he is not even using- is being repudiated by States such as Florida and Texas.

These Governors are it is argued, guilty of Criminal Negligence, as health services in the State are overwhelmed with Covid cases that vaccination would have prevented, now caused deliberately by indifference to science and common sense - but as we have seen, the former President and his Apostles are not to be subject to the Rule of Law. The US is thus losing the unique characeristics that held it together since 1776, as New Wave Fascists take over with their intense belief in a 'Strong Leader', the Holy Bible, and White Privilege.

There is an absence of rational thinking, about the alternative to the effective secession of Florida and Texas, and as a conciliator and a believer in compromise and bi-partisan politics, Biden's failure may give the Enemies of the USA the tools they are usig to dismatle the Union as you once knew it. Liberal Democracies, after all, when they die, die from internal injuries.

[filghy2]

I hadn't checked this thread and mentioned the Trump booing in our other conversation. It's an interesting phenomenon because he was the leader of this movement. And now he looks for a moment like he is betraying the movement he started. Of course he doesn't have enough character to double down. The feedback goes both ways maybe.


I think Republican politicians have created a monster which now controls them. As a result, they have lost the capacity or willingness to govern effectively because the monster only wants red meat in the form of demonisation of enemies, as well as denial of any inconvenient facts. This is a good article on what is happening in Texas, where all sorts of bread-and-butter issues are just being ignored.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/22618486/texas-abbott-legislature-voting-covid-immigration

I think the basis of the differences is that Democrat supporters care mostly about government delivering outcomes they think will improve peoples' lives; whereas Republican supporters don't believe in government and seem to care mostly about performative rhetoric. This creates an asymmetry. Democratic supporters become disillusioned when their leaders under-deliver, as also occurred under Obama. Republican supporters are less likely to become disillusioned as long as they getting the rhetorical red meat, which is easier to deliver.

I think a big part of your problem is that federal government capacity, apart from defence/security, has been run down over a long period. They struggle to do anything complex because they don't have enough people with the know-how and experience. It also doesn't help that senior management consists of political appointees who are replaced every time the administration changes. This is obviously a bigger problem for Democrats who want governments to do things that it is for Republicans who don't.

[blackchubby38]

How CDC data problems put the U.S. behind on the delta variant


http://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/08/18/cdc-data-delay-delta-variant/

[KnightHawk 2.0]

Meanwhile, back at the Ranch...

"Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick deflected criticism of the COVID-19 outbreak in his state by placing the blame on Democratic leaders failing to get enough Black Americans vaccinated."
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/texas-lt-gov-dan-patrick-152705838.html

Someone help me here, did they abolish slavery in Texas? Or is the place run by the clinically incompetent? At what point does Greg Abbott when he is not compaigning to replace the US Constitution with the Ten Commandments get sued for Criminal Negligence over the State's Covid Infection policy?

Maybe the State motto should be 'Abandon Hope, all Ye who Enter Here;...?LT.Governor Dan Patrick is a Trump Enabler,and his comments shows that him and Greg Abbott don't believe in science and did a terrible job of handling the pandemic in Texas. And agree that should be the motto for the state of Texas.

[KnightHawk 2.0]

I see that Trump was recently booed by the MAGA crowd for encouraging them to get vaccinated. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/aug/22/donald-trump-rally-alabama-covid-vaccine

It seems that vaccine scepticism has morphed into outright hostility toward vaccination as a sort of badge of tribal identity. Yep Donald-D.A.M.N-Trump was booed by the MAGA Crowd for telling them to get vaccinated,and for over a year he was telling them that COVID 19 was a hoax by the democrats and that they should inject themselves with disinfection and
take a drug that doesn't work. and now he's trying to have it both ways. And indeed it has.

[broncofan]

I think a big part of your problem is that federal government capacity, apart from defence/security, has been run down over a long period. They struggle to do anything complex because they don't have enough people with the know-how and experience. It also doesn't help that senior management consists of political appointees who are replaced every time the administration changes. This is obviously a bigger problem for Democrats who want governments to do things that it is for Republicans who don't.
I'm not sure what to add to this but it's a problem. The political appointees are often useless and often have no experience within the agency and aren't even capable managers. Probably an issue of underfunding for the career employees as well, made worse by the fact that Republicans don't actually believe in the missions of many of these agencies.

[broncofan]

A few things I've seen: Data came back and shows that not only is delta more transmissible it's associated with double the risk of hospitalization as Alpha in unvaccinated people.

I've also noticed that Ivermectin has now completely replaced Hydroxychloroquine as the science denier's ineffective pharmaceutical of choice against covid. It also seems to be causing unvaccinated people to place a certain amount of faith in it that if they get covid it will save them. Instead, its users are buying it from veterinary medicine outlets and poisoning themselves with it, but also dying from covid which it doesn't treat. I wonder what kind of mania could cause a person to turn down a clinically test, safe and effective vaccine for a medicine that is toxic when used improperly and has not been proven effective for covid?

It seems nearly every day a new "right-wing radio host" or Republican official or outspoken opponent of the covid vaccine is being intubated or dying of covid. There even seems to be a widening partisan split in infection rates though unvaccinated people jeopardize the health of the vaccinated too.

[trish]

It’s no longer about science, masks, vaccines, politics nor issues. The Trumpizoids are a tribe. Their identity is at stake. To make a turn-around on any of the ridiculous stands they have taken is to deny whom they have fundamentally become and reject the sacred ties with the tribe they have joined.

[filghy2]

I've also noticed that Ivermectin has now completely replaced Hydroxychloroquine as the science denier's ineffective pharmaceutical of choice against covid. It also seems to be causing unvaccinated people to place a certain amount of faith in it that if they get covid it will save them. Instead, its users are buying it from veterinary medicine outlets and poisoning themselves with it, but also dying from covid which it doesn't treat. I wonder what kind of mania could cause a person to turn down a clinically test, safe and effective vaccine for a medicine that is toxic when used improperly and has not been proven effective for covid?


It's bizarre that the same people who claim that the vaccines are unproven risky technology are happy to embrace unproven alternative cures. The only consistency is opposing whatever the medical establishment advises.

The psychological roots of this mania seem to be a sort of mass euphoria about being liberated from the constraints of evidence, logic, morality or even law. Trump and the right-wing media bubble have given them free reign to indulge their instinctive impulses, and if they stop pandering to them they will be rejected as well. They are like children freed from any adult constraints, as in Lord of the Flies. The id is in control and the ego and super-ego have been sidelined.

[broncofan]

They are like children freed from any adult constraints, as in Lord of the Flies. The id is in control and the ego and super-ego have been sidelined.
Side topic but what a book that was. It was one of those books that American kids were "forced" to read for class because its lessons were rendered clear enough that teachers could let Golding do the teaching. But it also scared the crap out of me because I had seen the movie when I was 10 and was sure I would have been outcast and hunted by those little fuckers (I'm sure that's common tho).

But back to what you and Trish are saying. They are impervious to evidence based reasoning, completely unable to apply rules and laws in neutral, fair ways, and are showing their willingness to die for their fantasies while denying the cause of their deaths. Social media helps amplify this because it allows for very misleading pieces of information to be broadly distributed and no real chance for response or correction.

As you have pointed out their radicalization has taken place over time but to me Trump represented the idea that once you normalize a sociopath there can really be no call for any restraint or limit any more. Respecting the norms and traditions of democracy means you can't treat him like an outcast, you have to work with him at times. In working with him you come into contact with the fantasist, the narcissist, and the sociopath and his supporters have no choice but to venerate that behavior or abandon him. They decided that fantasies served their interests better than reality.

The studies on Ivermectin make it tough to believe any good faith actor could believe it's effective given the (unsuccessful) struggle to separate its effects from placebo. Could you imagine if the results of clinical trials for vaccines were close to the margin of error for the sample?

A recent analysis of Israeli data showed that on average immunity from infection conferred better protection than pfizer's vaccine. Someone said this means vaccines are irrelevant and a scientist piped up and said "if we had clinical trials for an equally effective vaccine whose side effects caused 650,000 deaths in the American public should it get approved?" We're so blessed to have access to vaccines and cursed that not enough people are taking advantage of them.

I'll conclude by saying, Delta was a bad break. Yes variants were and are inevitable, but delta changed the course of the pandemic for sure.

[broncofan]

https://www.ft.com/content/66adc278-7191-4b8b-a0fc-b33e915d4631

I'm not knowledgeable about ip rights but initially I thought people who wanted waivers of patent rights were being unreasonable. At the time I didn't know Pfizer would make 33 billion dollars from its vaccine. Now I support waiving patent rights because I don't see how it would be much disincentive to create vaccines given the windfall companies are making from their shots. If a billion more doses of the mrna vaccines can be made by waiving patent rights I'm for it. Pfizer and Moderna would still be making enormous profits that far exceed r and d costs. The article talks about production capacity in South Korea.

Edit: the article says pfizer and moderna are being asked to waive ip rights by granting licensing deals. So it is likely they would be compensated for the vaccines South Korea makes, in addition to the shots they produce at their own plants that there is still ample demand for.

[natina]

your on Point Broncofan

check these threads out
http://www.hungangels.com/vboard/showthread.php?111124-Antivaxxers-and-people-in-red-states-Dieing-like-flies





A few things I've seen: Data came back and shows that not only is delta more transmissible it's associated with double the risk of hospitalization as Alpha in unvaccinated people.

I've also noticed that Ivermectin has now completely replaced Hydroxychloroquine as the science denier's ineffective pharmaceutical of choice against covid. It also seems to be causing unvaccinated people to place a certain amount of faith in it that if they get covid it will save them. Instead, its users are buying it from veterinary medicine outlets and poisoning themselves with it, but also dying from covid which it doesn't treat. I wonder what kind of mania could cause a person to turn down a clinically test, safe and effective vaccine for a medicine that is toxic when used improperly and has not been proven effective for covid?

It seems nearly every day a new "right-wing radio host" or Republican official or outspoken opponent of the covid vaccine is being intubated or dying of covid. There even seems to be a widening partisan split in infection rates though unvaccinated people jeopardize the health of the vaccinated too.

[filghy2]

I'll conclude by saying, Delta was a bad break. Yes variants were and are inevitable, but delta changed the course of the pandemic for sure.

A bad break, but a foreseeable one, just as the original virus was foreseeable. Once again, we've been caught out by complacency and the desire to declare victory prematurely. With a high reproduction rate the penalty for failing to act early is huge.
It's only the vaccines that are keeping this manageable at all. And now we have reports of a new variant in South Africa that may be even more infectious and more vaccine-resistant.
Delta also encourages a sort of perverse logic that if nothing we do is fully effective then why try. Some people struggle to think in terms of counterfactuals.

[Stavros]

I recommend this article by Larry Brilliant and others. It offers a delineation of the virus and goes further into the political realm. It argues that on the one hand, there has been a lamentable failure by politicians to co-ordinate a global- in some cases even a national- response to the pandemic, while on the other hand science has been able to map the genome sequence of the virus and produce an effective vaccine, albeit one that has not been distributed equally. Telling comparisons are made between Covid-19 and the global campaigns against Smallpox and Polio.

in addition, the science suggests we must learn to live with Covid-19 and it’s astonishing ability to mutate (see page 83 for their scary description), to the extent that variants may become the permanent challenge, for while most mutations may not have a devastating or any effect on people, some have such a potential. The assumption is that the science can deal with the variants, but that it is the politics that is weak.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2021-06-08/coronavirus-strategy-forever-virus

[filghy2]

As you have pointed out their radicalization has taken place over time but to me Trump represented the idea that once you normalize a sociopath there can really be no call for any restraint or limit any more.

It was building for a long time, but it went over the edge remarkably quickly once certain tipping points were passed. As you suggest, the Trump takeover and the sidelining of the adults in the Republican room was the critical trigger in normalising what was previously unthinkable. Fox News and social media then provided the feedback loop.

This is a classic example of how a system that appears to be stable over a long period can quickly turn unstable when the right triggers interact with pre-existing conditions. This happens a lot in the natural world but also in human societies, because peoples' attitudes are so influenced by the leaders of the group they identify with and by other members of the group. The internet and the siloisation of the media have turbocharged this process.

[broncofan]

Delta also encourages a sort of perverse logic that if nothing we do is fully effective then why try. Some people struggle to think in terms of counterfactuals.
This is a common theme among right wing demagogues. One shmuck said "lambda variant is easier than saying vaccines don't work." The thing is vaccines have "worked" for every variant so far, but slightly less effectively which makes sense. You may have already posted an article about the effectiveness against delta, but one reason breakthrough transmission is taking place is because antibodies neutralize it less efficiently so waning levels matter more. The protection against hospitalization and death erodes more slowly and is probably more resistant to variants.

I'm rather tired of this argument that if something doesn't completely eliminate a problem it is ineffective. If the unvaccinated are still more than 10 times more likely to die that SHOULD make the argument by itself.

Nobody is wearing masks indoors where I live (except me and a few others). It doesn't really make much sense. 6 months out pfizer may only be 50% effective against symptomatic disease, plenty of people aren't vaccinated, and the disease numbers are obviously climbing here. Also, it's so fucking easy to wear a mask while getting a starbucks. These people want to get back to normal but you don't get there by playing pretend.

I was all for scrapping the mask for vaccinated people before delta when numbers of cases were cratering. That's not been the case for months really. People are probably going to get boosters with the current shots but one scientist lamented the fact that the boosts aren't taking place with mrna vaccines adapted for delta.

[blackchubby38]

Disagreement With WH Over Booster Shots Prompt Senior FDA Directors to Step Down

ttps://www.newsweek.com/disagreement-wh-over-booster-shots-prompt-senior-fda-directors-step-down-1624750


Covid-19 Booster-Shot Access May Be More Limited, CDC Committee Signals


https://www.barrons.com/articles/covid-19-booster-shots-cdc-acip-access-51630413273

[filghy2]

Nobody is wearing masks indoors where I live (except me and a few others). It doesn't really make much sense. 6 months out pfizer may only be 50% effective against symptomatic disease, plenty of people aren't vaccinated, and the disease numbers are obviously climbing here. Also, it's so fucking easy to wear a mask while getting a starbucks. These people want to get back to normal but you don't get there by playing pretend.

It's probably mainly complacency, but there are arguments out there that say masks are ineffective. I haven't looked at it closely, but it sounds like another example of the "if it's only partially effective it's useless" fallacy. For something that is low cost the effectiveness threshold for it to be worth doing is not high. Even if masks reduce transmission by only 10-20 per cent that is still probably worthwhile in combination with other measures. The absurd implication of this argument is that if we had 10 measures that each reduced a problem by 10% we should not do any of them.

This argument also implies that the medical establishment has been engaged in some conspiracy to force people to wear masks for no apparent reason. It's a conspiracy without any clear motive.

[broncofan]

The absurd implication of this argument is that if we had 10 measures that each reduced a problem by 10% we should not do any of them.

And yet even among those who aren't acting in bad faith it is difficult to get people to adopt multiple levels of protection against a risk. So I do think that in addition to people being disingenuous jackasses there is some baseline inability to understand risk.

I realize it's probably difficult to study mask effectiveness empirically but there are theoretical reasons why even a porous mask worn by one person could protect them. It's because the number of virions someone breathes in sets a probability they get infected (if infectious dose is the average "viral dose" needed for someone to get infected). The infectious dose may be so low in unvaccinated people that a mask that blocks 50% of the particles does not make a difference most of the time. But people who have been vaccinated have circulating antibodies that wane over time. The reason circulating antibodies are considered the most important proxy for protection from symptomatic disease is that the other parts of the immune system that are primed by a vaccine (memory b cells and t cells) tend to take at least a few days to mobilize and as such are considered more relevant to prevent severe disease.

There is also an unresolved issue of whether viral dose correlates with disease severity. It's been proven to be the case for many viruses. It's unknown whether it is for sars-cov-2 and animal models did not yield any obvious correlation but it's still possible.

Ultimately, the issue is that we have incomplete information and as you say we know mask wearing is a pretty low cost measure. The fact that it might work means it makes sense to adopt when cases are spiraling out of control.

[broncofan]

Disagreement With WH Over Booster Shots Prompt Senior FDA Directors to Step Down

ttps://www.newsweek.com/disagreement-wh-over-booster-shots-prompt-senior-fda-directors-step-down-1624750

I haven't read the newsweek article yet but will later. If the world shared vaccines and they were mobilized in ways that were likely to end the pandemic or save the most lives it would be more efficient to give the shots to people who are not yet vaccinated.

The US has purchased and is keeping a large enough store of vaccines to be able to give two shots to every eligible American. We know there are at least about 40% of people who for one reason or another are not getting their shots. We could give the vaccines to countries that need them more, but we can't use them for people who don't want the vaccine.

The data from Israel shows that effectiveness of Pfizer against symptomatic disease wanes pretty significantly after 6 months (moderna does a bit better). The protection against severe disease and death lasts longer than that. But protection against symptomatic disease does have the potential to help control the pandemic and slow spread. For immunocompromised people the booster shot makes a lot of sense and if we are not going to give away our stockpiles the booster makes sense for everyone else.

The data coming in from Israel shows that the booster does restore efficacy pretty well, even when comparing people with three shots to people who have gotten two shots. I'd say these are my preferences: 1. give vaccines away; 2. give boosters ; 3. let them sit there in the hopes people decide to get vaccinated and risk expiration of the vaccines.

[KnightHawk 2.0]

Here's a link to an article from the US Food And Drug Administration on why people should not use Ivermectin to treat or prevent COVID-19. https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/why-you-should-not-use-ivermectin-treat-or-prevent-covid-19

[sukumvit boy]

Here is a link to the official (Phase One) report from the joint WHO/China team on the origins of SARS-CoV-2 including the 'lab leak' hypothesis.
Includes some interesting subtilties at the intersection of science and politics but overall the team performed admirably ,in my humble opinion.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02263-6

[Stavros]

The New York Times reports that various officials of the GOP are protesting Biden's vaccine mandates, and Mike Wallace confronted the Governor of Nebraska-

"Interviewing Ricketts on Fox News Sunday, Wallace asked the governor why he was fighting the administration’s new COVID-19 rules, especially since Ricketts insisted that he’s been encouraging vaccines and believes they work in combatting the pandemic. The Nebraska governor, meanwhile, said he felt the government shouldn’t be mandating vaccinations.
“I've talked to a number of people,” Rickets declared. “They've told me, if they make me take the vaccine, I'm just going to be fired.”

Wallace retorted that Nebraska’s school system actually requires students to be vaccinated against a series of diseases, wondering aloud why Ricketts appeared to be fine with those requirements but not a mandate for the COVID-19 shots."
https://www.thedailybeast.com/chris-wallace-grills-gop-gov-pete-ricketts-on-oppostion-to-covid-19-vaccine-mandates

Meanwhile in the UK, the Government, for now, has ditched the idea of creating 'Covid Passports' to show when entering various establishments....so I guess they will abolish driving licences too...? Oh, and in the US agan, Voter ID?

[blackchubby38]

So are we getting a booster shot or not:

Tensions mount between CDC and Biden health team over boosters

http://www.politico.com/news/2021/09/13/cdc-biden-health-team-vaccine-boosters-511529

Departing FDA regulators pan Covid boosters in paper

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/09/13/fda-covid-vaccine-boosters-research-paper-511638

[KnightHawk 2.0]

So are we getting a booster shot or not:

Tensions mount between CDC and Biden health team over boosters

http://www.politico.com/news/2021/09/13/cdc-biden-health-team-vaccine-boosters-511529

Departing FDA regulators pan Covid boosters in paper

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/09/13/fda-covid-vaccine-boosters-research-paper-511638Agree. And not surprised at all that there's tension mounting between the CDC and President Biden's Health Team over booster shots,and the infighting between them sure isn't helping with getting important information to the american people .

[filghy2]

“I've talked to a number of people,” Rickets declared. “They've told me, if they make me take the vaccine, I'm just going to be fired.”

I'm sure some of these claims are fake bravado, but you have to wonder about the mentality of someone who not only refuses to get a potentially life-saving vaccine, but is also prepared to lose their job over it. When it came to restrictions they weren't prepared to sacrifice any income to reduce the risks of Covid. When it comes to vaccines they are actually prepared to sacrifice income to increase the risks of Covid and/or to avoid some grossly inflated risks from vaccination.

[Stavros]

So are we getting a booster shot or not:

Tensions mount between CDC and Biden health team over boosters

http://www.politico.com/news/2021/09/13/cdc-biden-health-team-vaccine-boosters-511529

Departing FDA regulators pan Covid boosters in paper

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/09/13/fda-covid-vaccine-boosters-research-paper-511638

I thnk the CDC is still reeling from the assaults of the ignorant, savage and seditious Trump Presidency, but to me a lot of the problems here are mostly political, rather than science-based, and that is true for most countries not just the US. In the 1990s I used the CDC's database a lot and it remains a major source of information, so it is tragic to see how bad politics has disrupted what ought to be one of the most reliable US institutions of learning and research.

The question of boosters is a diffcult one -Boris Johnson is to confirm that Boosters will be available to over-50s from December, just as the existing Covid vaccines are to be made available for 12-15 year olds -the December date reflects the anxiety in the UK Government that the coming winter months will see an increase in infections. Also, your second link doesn't, to me, suggest there is a medical/scientific problem with boosters, thus-

""Even in populations with fairly high vaccination rates the unvaccinated are still the major drivers of transmission and are themselves at the highest risk of serious disease," wrote the authors, which also include World Health Organization scientists.

Even if booster shots were shown to lower the risk of serious disease, they said, existing supplies would be better off deployed to unvaccinated corners of the world, rather than boosting vaccinated populations, to head off the development of more variants."

That said, Boris Johnson has no grip on policy -we were going to have Vaccine Passports, now they have been 'delayed', his plan to reform social care turns out to be anything but, linking social care to NHS funding and limiting the overhaul at a time when the 'Winter is Coming' fear seems to be as ominous as it was in Game of Thrones.

If I am offered a boost I will take it, though I would prefer to see existing vaccines and resources extended to those who don't have it, with surplus supplies given free to countries that need it. I don't know what to do about the militants who reject basic, elementary science -to me this is not based on any knowledge of medical science but a fetish for the politics that rejects Government as if it were a sinister organiation determined to take over people's lives, which right now is as likely to be found in Texas as Afghanistan, contradicting the fears expressed by loopy fanatics ike Lin Wood. As for vaccine passports, people need a licence to drive a car, is that an infringement of their liberty?

All round, sober reflection on what is needed, but as noted so many times in the last 18 months, co-ordinated leadership and organization of the kind that seems to be lacking.

Right now it is not the politicians to admire, but the continuing dedication and hard work of health care workers dealing with the reality on the ground 24/7, without whom some of us would not be here.

[filghy2]

Here's some more info on the Israeli data that is behind the push for booster shots. https://www.politico.com/news/2021/09/14/covid-israel-data-vaccine-efficacy-511777

I think the media often overplay these stories about disagreement in official circles. A certain amount of disagreement is a normal, healthy part of the process of moving knowledge forward. There has to be a balance between this and avoiding unnecessary confusion, but too much enforced consensus can be counterproductive because it feeds a perception that alternative views are being suppressed. We should actually be more worried if officials never disagree, because that is a sign of group-think which leads to poor decisions.

[blackchubby38]

FDA scientists skeptical of COVID-19 booster evidence ahead of key meeting

hehill.com/policy/healthcare/572436-fda-scientists-skeptical-of-covid-booster-evidence-ahead-of-key-meeting (Thehill.com/policy/healthcare/572436-fda-scientists-skeptical-of-covid-booster-evidence-ahead-of-key-meeting)

[blackchubby38]

Is disagreement and positive discourse in official circles good for a democratic government, Yes. But there is also the issue of who should have the final say in approving a drug and when it shall be administered. From the article I just posted:

"The FDA's independent panel of experts on Friday will review the evidence from Pfizer and will likely vote on whether there's enough evidence to show boosters are necessary.

The FDA does not have to follow the agency's advice, but if the agency breaks with the panel's recommendation it would likely stoke public confusion and raise major questions about political interference."

Then there is this:

"In an unusual move last month, President Biden and top health officials publicly announced a booster shot program would begin the week of Sept. 20, well before the FDA and CDC examined the evidence.

While officials have been careful to say the booster program is contingent on the FDA and CDC giving the green light, they have been criticized by some public health experts for speaking as if the approval was a given."

Its up to the CDC to devise public health guidelines, the FDA to approve the necessary treatments to to combat the disease, and the government to take everything into consideration and then implement those guidelines and treatments in order to fight the pandemic.

But with the booster shots, it seems like the Biden administration jumped the gun on the plan and now its up to the FDA and the CDC to try to make it work. Even if the evidence doesn't wind up supporting it.

Another thing, why are we just getting Pfizer's evidence tomorrow and not Moderna's as well.

Moderna releases new data on Covid breakthrough cases it says supports need for booster shots

http://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/15/covid-booster-shots-moderna-releases-data-on-breakthrough-cases-backing-need-for-third-doses.html

"The group, called the agency’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, is scheduled to debate administering third doses of Pfizer and BioNTech’s vaccine as federal health regulators say they need more time to review Moderna’s application for extra doses."

So if the third booster shot for Pfizer is approved, those who got the Moderna one have to wait to get their booster shot. Even if there is a good chance that their efficacy is waning. Because from what I understand, you can't mix vaccines.

[broncofan]

I think Pfizer had better data simply because Israel only used Pfizer and had kept pretty careful records of its effects over time. I'm sure Moderna is tracking the use of its drug as well but the Israeli data was the first to indicate a need for boosters.

We'll see what the FDA and CDC say. Immunocompromised people, such as organ transplant recipients and people on immunosuppressant drugs have already been given access to boosters. I've seen some data indicating a benefit for older people, not just from symptoms but also serious disease. If our stockpiles are just sitting there and more people will not get the vaccine, even a benefit against mild disease can help slow the spread and provide benefits to us.

Even effective boosters will never provide the value that using the shots for unvaccinated people has. The question is how much benefit, for whom, and whether we can as an alternative convince new people to get shots or give them away.

[broncofan]

Because from what I understand, you can't mix vaccines.
This is trickier. It's likely you can mix vaccines and get good benefits but unless there are studies showing that nobody will recommend an unregulated use. People who got the Johnson and Johnson shot were encouraged to get boosters with an mrna vaccine after delta appeared. On the other hand, going from an mrna vaccine to az or Johnson & Johnson is seen as less effective. But there is likely a lot of compatibility between Moderna and Pfizer and probably an effective boost but data awaits.

A good example of the hesitancy is that many countries were reluctant to recommend scheduling the second shot 8 weeks after the first shot so that there would be more coverage before people finished their two shot regimen. It turns out waiting longer between shots probably causes a better response to the second shot but because they were tested in 3 or 4 week intervals many scientists advised against it. I'll see if I can find anything on the mix and match boosting.

[broncofan]

Because from what I understand, you can't mix vaccines.
Sorry. If what you meant is that regulators probably won't let people, you might be right. I was vaccinated with pfizer and if I had the option for a third shot with moderna when it's indicated to be effective I would probably prefer that to waiting. But maybe regulators won't allow it.

[sukumvit boy]

I received my 3rd Pfizer vaccination last week because I was directed to do so by my physician . I was instructed to get the same brand as my first 2 injections and they stamped my Vaccination card with the date of the 3rd shot.

[Stavros]

The FDA does not have to follow the agency's advice, but if the agency breaks with the panel's recommendation it would likely stoke public confusion and raise major questions about political interference."

Its up to the CDC to devise public health guidelines, the FDA to approve the necessary treatments to to combat the disease, and the government to take everything into consideration and then implement those guidelines and treatments in order to fight the pandemic.

But with the booster shots, it seems like the Biden administration jumped the gun on the plan and now its up to the FDA and the CDC to try to make it work. Even if the evidence doesn't wind up supporting it.


Your concern suggests the relationship between science and politics is not as secure as it could be owing to the view I think politicians have that results are not just medical, but political. We have a similar disconnect in the UK where the Johnson Govt is keen to 'move on' from Covid through a sweeping relaxation of rules, travel arrangements, and so on, even as the scentific advisors it has have recommend caution. Johnson's impatience is part of his character, famously uninterested in detail, he chases headlines with more zeal than a corrupt lawyer chasing ambulances.

Is Biden an old man in a hurry? Is there an impatience to his policy-making that is creating risks for the US as well as its people? I am quite relaxed about the Boosters, and am not too concerned about mixing vaccines either, but in a febrile atmosphere, notably in the US where anti-vaccination ignorance and hysteria is in some places destroying lives, I think the President needs to show more balance, or he risks leaving people behind, or confused, and that is not good for the desired outcome.

I suspect that if the States that adore Trump had not decided they no longer respect the Presidency, Congress, the Constitution, the Rule of Law, and elementary indeed, advanced science produced by the USA's once proud institutions, you would not be so anxious. Trump now claims that, in effect, if he is not re-elected President in 2024, it will mean the end of the USA, even as he did more than most to hasten that demise, on the basis that L'état, c'est moi, as anti-scentific as you can get, and lethal to democracy.

[blackchubby38]

Sorry. If what you meant is that regulators probably won't let people, you might be right. I was vaccinated with pfizer and if I had the option for a third shot with moderna when it's indicated to be effective I would probably prefer that to waiting. But maybe regulators won't allow it.

I was under the impression that the scientists/doctors weren't going to let people mix with vaccines. But if we are allowed to, like you I want my third shot to be with Moderna.

[filghy2]

The FDA panel has decided to recommend booster shots at this stage only for 65+ and other high risk groups. https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/fda-panel-approves-pfizer-biontech-203847937.html

It sounds like expert opinion is somewhat divided on the case for booster shots, and maybe also on the mixing of vaccines. That is not surprising because it involves weighing the risks of giving approval when there may be incomplete information against the potential benefits in combating the pandemic. Even with the same clinical information, different experts might come to different judgements on that balance. "Following the science" doesn't always give a clear-cut answer.

I understand that it is generally desirable for the regulators to be able to make decisions without political pressure, although a degree of pressure is unavoidable because of the consequences. The FDA were under a lot of political pressure to give early approval to vaccines last year. Maybe that was undesirable, but if there had been no pressure would they have been as willing to give emergency approval as early as they did?

My sense is that regulators are generally inclined to err on the side of caution because the consequences are asymmetric. If they approve and there are problems they get the blame, but if they don't approve then nobody sees the counterfactual. Sometimes this can cause problems.

For example, the advisory panel in Australia contributed to vaccine hesitancy earlier this year through their advice on AstraZeneca, which was then the only widely available vaccine here. The problem was that their advice seemed to focus too narrowly on the very low risk of blood clots from AZ, and not enough on the broader risks of Covid. As a result, we've struggled to deal with the Delta outbreak over the past 2-3 months because the initial vaccination rate was low.

[broncofan]

That is not surprising because it involves weighing the risks of giving approval when there may be incomplete information against the potential benefits in combating the pandemic. Even with the same clinical information, different experts might come to different judgements on that balance. "Following the science" doesn't always give a clear-cut answer.

Doctors in clinical practice frequently prescribe drugs off-label based on their judgment as to risks and benefits and can use the existing evidence as a guidepost without rigid mandates. In a pandemic it's understandable that regulators want to be more careful about decision-making without a strong evidence base. A bunch of scientists saying they don't think there should be a problem boosting with a different vaccine is not as compelling as a study showing it. Scientists saying using half the dose of moderna might be almost as effective and save vaccine isn't as good as data. I can see why caution is taken when an error can cause systematic harm and loss of confidence in vaccines.

There's also the fact that the booster decision isn't a "pure" medical decision. It's one dealing with the scarcity of supply and best allocation given that constraint. There's also the different goals that we have for vaccine use. One being to stem transmission and another to prevent hospitalization and death. Both are valid of course but it's a complex issue. I doubt we're going to be transparent about the fact that our regulators are probably thinking in completely nationalistic terms and the only opportunity cost is vaccinating unvaccinated Americans.

[filghy2]

To be clear, I'm not saying that the recommendation is wrong; it may well be the right balance of different considerations at this time. I was getting at the more general issues around what "following the science" means and how much authority a democracy should cede to unelected experts. Like all three-word slogans, it raises as many issues as it resolves.

I've been thinking about this lately because Australian governments have ceded more authority to medical officials in this pandemic than almost any other country, and consequently we've had about the most restrictive regime of any democracy. This worked fairly well until recently, because we were able to eliminate community transmission so that most of the country had only limited periods of lockdown.

It's not working so well with the delta variant, with much of the country now in seemingly never-ending lockdowns that have limited the rise in cases but haven't been able to suppress the virus. The current plan is that restrictions will be eased once they reach the 70% vaccination target, which is expected around the end of October. However, some outside experts claim that even this is too risky, and restrictions may be reimposed if cases start to rise too rapidly. State governments are also taking different approaches, so interstate travel restrictions are likely to continue for longer.

This raises issues about democratic legitimacy and whether officials are making decisions that extend beyond their area of expertise. Medical advisors are experts is assessing the risks associated with the virus under different scenarios. It's not clear that this makes them experts in balancing these risks against the negative impacts of lockdowns and other restrictions. That is the de facto situation when governments say they must defer to medical advice.

It is true that this delegation of authority is being made by elected governments who can be defeated at the next election if voters are unhappy with the outcomes. However, the longer that extraordinary emergency powers are extended the more we seem take on some of the attributes of technocratic dictatorship.

[broncofan]

I understand all of your points and agree with them. Follow the science is a useless slogan when public policy decisions don't just depend on descriptions of what is but also what people value and want. Sometimes in regulation the description of what is leads very clearly to a response which is probably the only place where following the science is straight-forward. But at least part of the decisions elected officials make with respect to policy involve social sciences and are always normative anyway.

I also understand both the problems with legitimacy when it comes to experts who were not elected and people's unreasonable expectation that the policy preferences of experts are deferred to in all cases. This is particularly the case when there's so much pressure for them to be lock-step with scientists that they are accused of denying reality if they choose an alternative.

Just to offer an off-hand opinion I don't think lockdowns make a lot of sense at this point simply because we know it's very unlikely delta is going to disappear unless the world gets a lucky break (a less deadly variant people get more durable immunity to). Maybe they would make sense if hospitals were overrun. Wearing masks and getting vaccinated is probably going to be the way forward until things change, as they have many times.

[Stavros]

Damn those pesky experts...! If the people no longer trust science because they choose to believe Climate Change science is at least not proven, or total rubbish; if people no longer trust the Generals who say the invasion of Iraq is 'doable' (Dick Cheney's word) but don't plan for the aftermath, and get their 'invasion lite' wrong anyway; and if people no longer trust the bankers who lend and borrow more than they earn, why trust the scientists when it comes to Covid-19?

I think, in general terms, the logic of face masks and vaccinations as antidotes to Covid-19 is irresistible, and that only cranks and those with an extreme anti-Government agenda oppose the science. But as frustration grows at the length of time it is taking to 'get back to normal' then even rational people begin to query the extent which science is shaping policy.

I am a bit of a Priest on this, and take the faith as well as the medicine, but I cannot officiate on other people's behalf, and can only plea for more time and obedience. Or the hallowed ground of normal life will take even longer to return, though I am confident it will happen before the return of Jesus, and no, that's not the Mexican taxi-driver who never showed up to return me to my LA hotel all those years ago.

[filghy2]

Just to offer an off-hand opinion I don't think lockdowns make a lot of sense at this point simply because we know it's very unlikely delta is going to disappear unless the world gets a lucky break (a less deadly variant people get more durable immunity to). Maybe they would make sense if hospitals were overrun. Wearing masks and getting vaccinated is probably going to be the way forward until things change, as they have many times.

The best argument for lockdowns (combined with border controls) is that going early and hard could allow the virus to be eliminated until vaccines became widely disseminated. This way you could limit the death toll while also limiting the economic disruption over time. Australia was able to achieve this previously, but it's much harder with the more infectious delta strain, which must change the benefit-cost calculus. Compliance with restrictions also declines when people can't see an end in sight.

[filghy2]

But as frustration grows at the length of time it is taking to 'get back to normal' then even rational people begin to query the extent which science is shaping policy.

I am a bit of a Priest on this, and take the faith as well as the medicine, but I cannot officiate on other people's behalf, and can only plea for more time and obedience.

The issue is that the right approach is not just a question of science, but also involves consideration of economics, ethics and human psychology. Medical scientists will always focus on the question of how to limit the health impacts below a certain level, because that is what they are trained to do. But we also have to consider what must be sacrificed to achieve this outcome, as well as peoples' willingness to accept restrictions, given their effectiveness depends on a high degree of voluntary compliance.

I would make a distinction between policy decisions being informed by scientific advice and policy decisions being based purely on scientific advice. It is not anti-science to say that scientific advice sometimes needs to be balanced against other considerations. The right balance between freedom and risk is ultimately a social/political question rather than a technocratic question.

[blackchubby38]

Now the question becomes do I go ahead and just get the 3rd Pfizer shot or wait for the CDC and the FDA to make up its mind about mix and matching:


CDC 'starting to see mix-and-match data' for COVID-19 vaccines: Director

finance.yahoo.com/news/cdc-starting-to-see-mix-and-match-data-for-covid-19-vaccines-director-131034795.html

[sukumvit boy]

Now the question becomes do I go ahead and just get the 3rd Pfizer shot or wait for the CDC and the FDA to make up its mind about mix and matching:


CDC 'starting to see mix-and-match data' for COVID-19 vaccines: Director

finance.yahoo.com/news/cdc-starting-to-see-mix-and-match-data-for-covid-19-vaccines-director-131034795.html (http://finance.yahoo.com/news/cdc-starting-to-see-mix-and-match-data-for-covid-19-vaccines-director-131034795.html)
Yes , get your Pfizer booster, I did.
Or , for the hands down best antibody response, catch Covid ,get your Moderna or Pfizer #1 and #2 ,than throw in a mixed booster. Oh ,and don't forget your flu shot!

[broncofan]

Sukumvit I am sure will be interested in this since he spoke of new antivirals at the beginning of the pandemic.

Merck developed a new antiviral drug called molnupiravir and the phase iii trials show significant reduction in hospitalization and death. In fact, the results of the study were so strong that the study was stopped on recommendations of regulators. I assume this means there were enough signs of efficacy that it would be considered unethical to continue giving the control group placebo.

The article also said that the pill is likely to work against new and old covid variants with similar effectiveness.

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/mercks-covid-19-pill-cuts-risk-death-hospitalization-by-50-study-2021-10-01/

[sukumvit boy]

Wow ,you have a prodigious memory ,broncofan. Thanks.
Yes, back in May 2020 on page 31 of the "Corona Virus" thread I posted this excellent "New Yorker" magazine article about the pressing need to develop 'broad spectrum' antiviral medications as opposed to the "whack a mole" approach of the astronomically expensive and time consuming method of creating a bespoke vaccine for every new virus that pokes it's head up in the coming years.
Here's the article again.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/04/13/the-quest-for-a-pandemic-pill

[blackchubby38]

Yes , get your Pfizer booster, I did.
Or , for the hands down best antibody response, catch Covid ,get your Moderna or Pfizer #1 and #2 ,than throw in a mixed booster. Oh ,and don't forget your flu shot!

The flu shot was a given. Since my job will begin administering that and the Pfizer booster this week, I will probably just wind up getting both of them out of the way by Friday.

The only reason why I'm interested in the Moderna booster as an option is because one article I recently read described it as a "sledgehammer", while calling Pfizer a "hammer."

Then there was this article:

Did Pfizer Peak Too Soon?

www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/10/pfizer-won-vaccine-race-was-there-downside/620276/

It would be interesting to see the data on "breakthrough" cases (Although from the evidence that I have seen they're are still not as common as first time infections) and how many people were vaccinated with Pfizer vs Moderna.

[filghy2]

Merck developed a new antiviral drug called molnupiravir and the phase iii trials show significant reduction in hospitalization and death.

It will be interesting to see what attitude the hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin spruikers take toward this.

[filghy2]

I had to laugh after reading that Ron De Santis has suggested breaking off diplomatic relations with Australia over its Covid restrictions. Apparently he is unaware that the US is close allies with actual dictatorships like Saudi Arabia.
https://www.news.com.au/world/coronavirus/australia/off-the-rails-florida-governor-ron-desantis-blasts-australias-covid-restrictions/news-story/9aea5a9f5df3c82cbf4bdcbdd62a8cd5

[broncofan]

It will be interesting to see what attitude the hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin spruikers take toward this.
The interesting thing is there are all shades of this. Some people don't want to sound like cranks so they take a middle position even when the middle position is still unreasonable.

Some of those who don't want to get vaccinated insist they will take regeneron's zillion dollar monoclonal antibody cocktail at the first sign of illness. Monoclonal antibodies were interesting before there were vaccines and when there was hope they could be administered in severe disease (they were ineffective in severe disease). They are only effective if given early on though probably not as much as regeneron and lilly hoped. Still, at least it's a treatment.

But I bet the hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin nutters will be looking to play up any side effect they can find for molnupiravir. And the FDA warns against having unprotected sex while taking it because it can lead to birth defects. My guess is they're going to be making broader claims about dangerous side effects than the evidence supports...

[broncofan]

I had to laugh after reading that Ron De Santis has suggested breaking off diplomatic relations with Australia over its Covid restrictions. Apparently he is unaware that the US is close allies with actual dictatorships like Saudi Arabia.
https://www.news.com.au/world/coronavirus/australia/off-the-rails-florida-governor-ron-desantis-blasts-australias-covid-restrictions/news-story/9aea5a9f5df3c82cbf4bdcbdd62a8cd5
Some Republicans have made puzzling claims about Australia including comparisons to China in terms of personal liberties. Quite sad and delusional.

[sukumvit boy]

The flu shot was a given. Since my job will begin administering that and the Pfizer booster this week, I will probably just wind up getting both of them out of the way by Friday.

The only reason why I'm interested in the Moderna booster as an option is because one article I recently read described it as a "sledgehammer", while calling Pfizer a "hammer."

Then there was this article:

Did Pfizer Peak Too Soon?

www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/10/pfizer-won-vaccine-race-was-there-downside/620276/ (http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/10/pfizer-won-vaccine-race-was-there-downside/620276/)

It would be interesting to see the data on "breakthrough" cases (Although from the evidence that I have seen they're are still not as common as first time infections) and how many people were vaccinated with Pfizer vs Moderna.
Nice article from "The Atlantic". thanks blackchubby38. You pose some very interesting questions ,the answers to which will become available as time goes on and more studies are done. But for now at least we that have been vaccinated can at least be reasonably sure of avoiding hospitalization and death from Covid .

[blackchubby38]

Looks like its a good thing I went ahead and just got the Pfizer booster shot.

Reuters
U.S. FDA staff says Moderna did not meet all criteria for COVID-19 boosters

www.yahoo.com/news/moderna-seeks-covid-19-vaccine-130758511.html

[Stavros]

¡Hola! Rafael! Will Senator Cruz run for the White House, or run away in embarrassment? Is he ever embarrassed by himself?

"Chief Minister Michael Gunner has hit out at a controversial US politician who bashed the introduction of the Northern Territory’s wide-ranging Covid vaccine mandate.
Last week Texas Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican, criticised the Australian government’s handling of the pandemic, labelling it “disgraceful and sad” in a scathing post.
He shared a video footage of a press conference from Mr Gunner, in which the Chief Minister announced fines for people who didn’t comply with tough vaccine rules (https://www.news.com.au/world/coronavirus/australia/nightmare-choices-why-the-northern-territory-is-so-strict-with-covid/news-story/9aa5f58ce8f142e1330edce951c672e1).
“I love the Aussies. Their history of rugged independence is legendary; I’ve always said Australia is the Texas of the Pacific,” Mr Cruz said.
“The Covid tyranny of their current government is disgraceful and sad. Individual liberty matters. I stand with the people of Australia.”
His post attracted a massive response online, and on Monday Mr Gunner joined in, defending his approach to Covid.
“Hey Ted Cruz, g’day from the Northern Territory in Australia. Here are some facts. Nearly 70,000 Texans have tragically died from Covid. There have been zero deaths in the Territory. Did you know that?” he wrote." (My emphasis in Bold).
https://www.news.com.au/technology/online/social/nt-chief-minister-michael-gunner-spars-with-texas-senator-ted-cruz-over-vaccine-mandate/news-story/6bd94f4c23e248e937313ee65b68fab6

[filghy2]

“I love the Aussies. Their history of rugged independence is legendary; I’ve always said Australia is the Texas of the Pacific,” Mr Cruz said.
“The Covid tyranny of their current government is disgraceful and sad. Individual liberty matters. I stand with the people of Australia.”

Aside from anything else, her evidently doesn't understand that Australia is a federation with multiple governments - though I'm sure they would all qualify as tyrannies on his criteria. But I doubt that embarrassment is even possible in today's Republican Party.

[Stavros]

Now for the morre serious content, from the UK where cases have been rising, and the argument now is that vaccinations are effective but need to be repeated, in part because of the Delta variant, in part because the effect just wears off. We may be moving to a scenario where, as with the 'Flu jab an annual shot is recommended. That the Govt is resisting any attempt to reimpose restrictions is typical -I wear a mask outside and in shops and on transport, but I note many now do not, which shocks people on the Continent. The UK may have got ahead of others on the vaccination front, but that clearly does not mean we have left the pandemic behind. But then Boris Johnson is a man who both leads from behind and often with his too. It is not a pretty sight.

"Infections have been rising sharply since the start of October but the government is resisting introducing the extra restrictions set out in its winter plan (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/14/winter-plan-what-does-governments-toolkit-to-combat-covid-include) such as masks, vaccine passports and advice to work from home.
On Tuesday the UK reported 223 Covid deaths recorded within 28 days of a positive test - the highest for seven months – while the seven-day average for Covid-19 cases stands at 44,145 a day. The UK now has one of the highest weekly rates of new reported cases in the world."
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/oct/19/implement-plan-b-winter-measures-now-or-risk-nhs-crisis-johnson-warned

"ONS data (https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/bulletins/coronaviruscovid19infectionsurveycharacteristicsof peopletestingpositiveforcovid19uk/6october2021#reinfections-of-covid-19-uk)published on 6 October says that among 20,262 Britons who tested positive for Covid-19 between July 2020 and September 2021, there were 296 reinfections – defined as a new positive test 120 days or more after an initial first positive test – with an average (median) time of 203 days between positive tests.
However, the reinfection risk appears to have been higher since May 2021 when Delta took over as the predominant variant.
Further data from the US, where various states have now started tracking and reporting on reinfection rates, supports the idea there is a substantially higher risk of re-infection with Delta."
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/oct/19/without-covid-19-jab-reinfection-may-occur-every-16-months-say-scientists

[filghy2]

I'm confident we will eventually get to a higher percentage that the US, given attitudes to the virus have not been politicised here.

As I predicted a few months ago, the vaccination rate in Australia has now passed that in the US, despite being well behind earlier.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-03-02/charting-australias-covid-vaccine-rollout/13197518

[blackchubby38]

Fuck you! I'm getting a Moderna shot next time:

Pfizer CEO says fourth Covid vaccine doses may be needed sooner than expected due to omicron


/www.cnbc.com/2021/12/08/omicron-pfizer-ceo-says-we-may-need-fourth-covid-vaccine-doses-sooner-than-expected.html

[broncofan]

Fuck you! I'm getting a Moderna shot next time:

Pfizer CEO says fourth Covid vaccine doses may be needed sooner than expected due to omicron


/www.cnbc.com/2021/12/08/omicron-pfizer-ceo-says-we-may-need-fourth-covid-vaccine-doses-sooner-than-expected.html (http:///www.cnbc.com/2021/12/08/omicron-pfizer-ceo-says-we-may-need-fourth-covid-vaccine-doses-sooner-than-expected.html)
Omicron data is still coming in and while there's good reason to question Bourla's objectivity I think he probably is right. From the data I've seen (and experts' interpretation of it) 2 shots of Pfizer doesn't neutralize Omicron at all but three shots provides 75% protection against infection. Given how much less effective our antibodies neutralize Omicron, the protection against infection probably wanes pretty quickly.

There's been a lot of debate about whether Omicron is less virulent than other variants-that is causes less death and severe illness. The numbers from South Africa indicate that it is less deadly but there are a number of confounds that make it possible it's similarly virulent. One possibility is that a lot of people in South Africa have previously been infected and while that may not protect much against subsequent infection with omicron the protection against severe disease (which depends more on t cell response) might be better than to infection. Data from Denmark and the UK are starting to come in and we'll hear more about its virulence and the duration of immunity from boosters.

Given the fact that Israel boosted earlier than everyone else it will be interesting to see what kind of breakthrough percentage there is with omicron in Israel. If they are 4 or 5 months from their boosters, we can get a sense of how much that 75% effectiveness has waned.

[filghy2]

Interesting article on the spate of fraudulent scientific studies relating to Covid-19, notably on therapeutics like Ivermectin. https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22776428/ivermectin-science-publication-research-fraud

You have to wonder about the motives of these researchers, and whether money or political leanings were involved. The rate of fraud seems more than might be explained by the usual motive of people trying to publish attention-getting results to advance their career. Some of the fraud is so blatant it looks like people haven't cared about the likelihood that it would be uncovered eventually. Perhaps the whole point was to generate enough attention that the fake results became accepted truth in some circles.

[blackchubby38]

I'm glad someone finally said it:

Health expert: Surge in COVID-19 cases should no longer be 'major metric' of pandemic.


https://thehill.com/homenews/587329-health-expert-surge-in-covid19-cases-should-no-longer-be-major-metric-of-pandemic

[blackchubby38]

As someone who works in health information management, I agree with this:

NY makes major adjustment to COVID hospitalization reporting during omicron surge.

www.yahoo.com/news/ny-makes-major-adjustment-covid-153923006.html


I think he has a point:

'We can't vaccinate the planet every six months,' says Oxford vaccine scientist.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/04/health/andrew-pollard-booster-vaccines-feasibility-intl/index.html


Finally, I'm glad he said it:

Fauci said 'focus on COVID-19 hospitalizations, not case numbers' just before US cases smashed records to top 1 million.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/fauci-said-focus-covid-19-125919639.html

[Nick Danger]

Speaking of hospitalizations as opposed to infections - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-59873833

In a relatively small country that’s above 90% vaccinated, there were 271,686 new Covid cases yesterday.

I think the question we ought to be asking at this point is, if the Omicron variant were the full extent of the Covid problem, would we still be destroying lives via policy? Because Omicron now IS the full extent of the problem, and it’s just...not that bad if we’re being honest.

What I think is that the governments of the world are now addicted to mandates, lockdowns, and generally just harassing the fuck out of their constituents. You don’t get into the business of governing people unless you’ve got a lust for power.

I hate to say it, but I think there’s going to have to be some murderous rampaging before we regain our freedom from these people. There will have to be a high-profile assassination, or a mass shooting that’s easily traced to Covid madness, or multiples of those, before our power-mad overlords will relinquish their unprecedented control over the lives of their fellow humans.

[broncofan]

There have been no lockdowns where I live since omicron has been the main variant and in fact there have been no lockdowns for quite a long time before that. It seems like you have trouble with chronology and I don't see anyone having their life ruined by anything except their own choices.

I hate to say it but I think you want there to be a mass shooting because you sympathize with the senseless rage of people who use violence when they don't get their way. But I have no idea what you're talking about as nothing has been locked down here and the average number of deaths per day from covid has been 1200 for the last week.

I know you seem to think you win these debates but if it comes to saying things that are true rather than things you want to be true, your posts are riddled with falsehoods.

[Nick Danger]

There have been no lockdowns where I live since omicron has been the main variant and in fact there have been no lockdowns for quite a long time before that. It seems like you have trouble with chronology and I don't see anyone having their life ruined by anything except their own choices.

I hate to say it but I think you want there to be a mass shooting because you sympathize with the senseless rage of people who use violence when they don't get their way. But I have no idea what you're talking about as nothing has been locked down here and the average number of deaths per day from covid has been 1200 for the last week.

I know you seem to think you win these debates but if it comes to saying things that are true rather than things you want to be true, your posts are riddled with falsehoods.

BRONCO!! WB man. I'm snowed in in Nashville right now so I'd be more than happy to address your allegations of falsehood in my posts. Allegate away.

Yeah, I'd agree lockdowns are not happening right at this moment in the USA. But the threat looms ominously over every daily activity. I go to the gym. Will I be able to go to the gym next week? Tomorrow? I don't know, I honestly don't. I told you my extended family's in NYC. I can't do shit in NYC, can't eat, can't drink, hell, it took me 7 or 8 hours just to get tested to leave JFK last time I was there, which was Thanksgiving.

Schools are locked down indefinitely, in many liberal hellholes anyway, Chicago, Philly, many other places.

Mask nazis are relentless and everywhere. Some getting knocked the fuck out, and rightfully so. Probably end up tagging me one or two before it's all over. Vaccine-shaming is the norm now, even though the vaccine doesn't do anything but protect the individual who has it at this point.

The whole thing has become a statistical dick-measuring contest between politicians. And people are tired of it, it's definitely not just me. IIRC you live in Pittsburgh. Yeah, a liberal city, undoubtedly people there are bending over backwards to virtue-signal virus behavior.

In other countries it's much much worse. Australia, Netherlands, Canada, Austria, all those countries are either locked down or just recently came out of lockdown. Over what? 1200 deaths a day? Jesus titty-fucking Christ, there are 300,000,000 people in this country, 1200 deaths a day is nothing, if it went on like that for a full year it would still be only 438,000 deaths - .14% of the population and I used a calculator this time. That's one person in 684 - OVER A FULL YEAR! Sorry, but there's nothing you can say that will convince me saving 1 person in 684 justifies shattering 300,000,000 people's mental health, destroying the economy, and ruining our children's formative years. Absolutely ridiculous, laughable.

And BTW, Bronco, why do you think that I think I always win these arguments. Is it because I'm always claiming victory? Or is it the celebratory Macarena I do after every post?

Let me know about those lies. I'll be around all day, I'm too old for sledding. (I can still do it! I just don't want to.) :loser:

[filghy2]

Over what? 1200 deaths a day? Jesus titty-fucking Christ, there are 300,000,000 people in this country, 1200 deaths a day is nothing, if it went on like that for a full year it would still be only 438,000 deaths - .14% of the population and I used a calculator this time. That's one person in 684 - OVER A FULL YEAR! Sorry, but there's nothing you can say that will convince me saving 1 person in 684 justifies shattering 300,000,000 people's mental health, destroying the economy, and ruining our children's formative years. Absolutely ridiculous, laughable.

Actually, it's around 2,500 deaths a day at the moment, so you seem to be a few months out of date.

Aren't you the same guy who's been telling us the US is in crisis due to an upsurge in violent crime? I looked up the data and there seems to have been something over 20,000 murders in the latest year, which is about 60 per day or 0.007% of the population. How can that be a crisis, yet something 40 times worse is no big deal?

[broncofan]

Actually, it's around 2,500 deaths a day at the moment, so you seem to be a few months out of date.


We have huge day of the week effects in our reporting so I use the 7 day moving average on worldometer. If you look at the last week we had 2500 reported deaths on January 5th, which was Wednesday but only about 575 reported deaths on January 1st and 520 on January 2nd (though New Year's may have caused even more weekend reporting problems than usual). The average right now is closer to 1500 per day and probably going up.

[Ben]

WHO Says Omicron Variant Is Not “Mild” as ER Doctor Describes New COVID Wave Overwhelming Hospitals:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SRaR_xnnlU

[filghy2]

In other countries it's much much worse. Australia, Netherlands, Canada, Austria, all those countries are either locked down or just recently came out of lockdown. Over what? 1200 deaths a day? Jesus titty-fucking Christ, there are 300,000,000 people in this country, 1200 deaths a day is nothing, if it went on like that for a full year it would still be only 438,000 deaths - .14% of the population and I used a calculator this time. That's one person in 684 - OVER A FULL YEAR! Sorry, but there's nothing you can say that will convince me saving 1 person in 684 justifies shattering 300,000,000 people's mental health, destroying the economy, and ruining our children's formative years. Absolutely ridiculous, laughable.

As a follow up I did some research on causes of death in the USA, because I know how much you value facts. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm
Here are the top 5 causes in the latest year:
Heart disease: 659,041
Cancer: 599,601
Accidents (unintentional injuries): 173,040
Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 156,979
Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 150,005

So I guess according to your logic none of these things can be a real problem. In fact, nothing at all causing death can be a problem, given that less than 1% of the population dies in a year.

[Nick Danger]

So I guess according to your logic none of these things can be a real problem. In fact, nothing at all causing death can be a problem, given that less than 1% of the population dies in a year.

Flighty! WB bud. Glad to hear you had an accident-free holiday season. Or at least I assume you did, nothing seems to have knocked any sense into your head since last we spoke.

There are all kinds of ways to die, Flighty. Just read an article today that almost brought a tear to my eye, 10th-grade boy in Connecticut playing ice hockey got his throat slashed by a skate blade and bled out.

Now, not in any way to make light of that situation, that's a real tragedy, he looked like a smart, handsome lad with a bright future. But are we going to stop playing hockey now? No we are not. Are we going to dull the blades? No we are not. Why? Because the continuation of the game of hockey is more important to society than the problem of an occasional hockey death, and you can't play hockey properly on dull blades. Same could be said of all sports, there are occasional deaths in all of them, but we don't let death stop us from living life.

Except over this virus.

As I'm sure you know, I could go on and on and on about the things humans do despite the potential loss of life. Quality-of-life matters. More than life itself? More than life itself. I present the automobile as conclusive evidence of this already self-evident fact. We are all going to die, what matters is what you do UNTIL THEN.

What's funny to me is how people keep throwing Covid death statistics out there. "Look at all the people dying! Everyone must keep doing what they're doing but moreso!" The battle against the virus is over. We lost. We tried to come up with a vaccine but it's a failure. It IS going to run its course. ALL OUR EFFORTS HAVE BEEN IN VAIN. So let's double down, right? Australia has had some of the most stringent restrictions in the world all along, they have put themselves through hell with lockdowns and restrictions. And they've flattened the curve all right. Unfortunately, though - along the wrong axis.

1359524

So yeah it's a farce. It's an unbeatable virus. It's going to kill more old people and lungers. And nothing we are doing is helping so it's time to acknowledge and move forward. Who was it that said insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results? Was that Einstein? What a loser, we're smarter than that!

1359525

[filghy2]

I'm surprised you haven't told us that death doesn't concern you because you are an immortal superhero.

Here's a few facts which may not have penetrated to your part of the world.
- There have been no lockdowns anywhere in Australia for more than 2 months.
- The 7-day average for daily deaths here is 12, which would equate to 170 for the US population. That is one-ninth of the current US death rate.
- The current unemployment rate is 4.6%, compared to 3.9% in the US. The economy has not exactly been destroyed in either case.

It's good that you mentioned automobiles, because even though we let people drive they are subject to a bunch of rules because their driving affects other peoples' safety. We don't let them drive at whatever speed they like. We don't let them drive under the influence of alcohol or drugs. We don't leave obeying traffic lights or stop signs to their own judgement.

As to your claim about vaccines being ineffective, it's already been refuted more than once. As You are obviously uninterested in any evidence that contradicts your priors I'm not going to waste further time on it.

There's no clear evidence that Einstein ever made that quote about insanity. https://checkyourfact.com/2019/06/26/fact-check-albert-einstein-definition-instanity-same-thing-over-different-results/ A better definition would be something like insanity is the inability to form views based on objective reality. Perhaps your concerns about this pandemic affecting mental health are not misplaced.

[Nick Danger]

I'm surprised you haven't told us that death doesn't concern you because you are an immortal superhero.

Here's a few facts which may not have penetrated to your part of the world.
- There have been no lockdowns anywhere in Australia for more than 2 months.
- The 7-day average for daily deaths here is 12, which would equate to 170 for the US population. That is one-ninth of the current US death rate.
- The current unemployment rate is 4.6%, compared to 3.9% in the US. The economy has not exactly been destroyed in either case.

It's good that you mentioned automobiles, because even though we let people drive they are subject to a bunch of rules because their driving affects other peoples' safety. We don't let them drive at whatever speed they like. We don't let them drive under the influence of alcohol or drugs. We don't leave obeying traffic lights or stop signs to their own judgement.

As to your claim about vaccines being ineffective, it's already been refuted more than once. As You are obviously uninterested in any evidence that contradicts your priors I'm not going to waste further time on it.

There's no clear evidence that Einstein ever made that quote about insanity. https://checkyourfact.com/2019/06/26/fact-check-albert-einstein-definition-instanity-same-thing-over-different-results/ A better definition would be something like insanity is the inability to form views based on objective reality. Perhaps your concerns about this pandemic affecting mental health are not misplaced.

Never change, Flighty.

Interesting that your cases are at an all-time high but your deaths are at an all-time low. It's almost as if the current mutation of this virus isn't dangerous at all to anyone who isn't a bag of bones on a respirator and could easily be quarantined for their own safety so the rest of us could get on with our lives.

I get the vaccine thing, Flighty. It's a shitty, second-rate, experimental vaccine that's pumping hundreds of billions of dollars into the pockets of our pharmaceutical overlords. It won't stop you catching or transmitting the virus but it might help mitigate the symptoms. That's why I'm SO curious as to why it matters AT ALL to some other human who ISN'T ME whether or not I GET THE FUCKING VACCINE! I'm almost violently curious about that. BTW not only do I "get" the vaccine, I am also getting the vaccine. For travel, but strictly against my better judgment. I was supposed to get it today but got snowed in.

The governments of the world are addicted to this virus, Flighty. At some point we're going to have to stand against them on the matter. They are never going to relinquish this level of control voluntarily, there will always be some justification for keeping up the farce. Until enough people say "Okay, you know what? We're done with your shit."

I swear to Christ if I thought I could get away with it, I'd put a bullet in Anthony Fauci for the good of all mankind.

You think I'm angry? You should hear what some of my friends are saying. They've simply gone way...too...far!

[broncofan]

Your post is insane Nick. I'll just address one thing though. Omicron is not the first variant and unfortunately will probably not be the last. The vaccine did prevent infection for every previous variant and it's possible it will for future variants. There's also no way to know for sure whether future variants will be more or less virulent. The selective pressure for virulence in viruses is not very strong so we could be dealing with something deadlier three months from now.

Your obsessive hatred of Dr. Fauci is as repulsive as it is irrational. The costs you've born during the pandemic have been virtually nil. You sound like a crybaby...to think you've previously said racism is a thing of the past...imagine if you actually had a legitimate gripe.

[Nick Danger]

Your post is insane Nick. I'll just address one thing though. Omicron is not the first variant and unfortunately will probably not be the last. The vaccine did prevent infection for every previous variant and it's possible it will for future variants. There's also no way to know for sure whether future variants will be more or less virulent. The selective pressure for virulence in viruses is not very strong so we could be dealing with something deadlier three months from now.

Your obsessive hatred of Dr. Fauci is as repulsive as it is irrational. The costs you've born during the pandemic have been virtually nil. You sound like a crybaby...to think you've previously said racism is a thing of the past...imagine if you actually had a legitimate gripe.

Prepare your asshole for the giant penis of enlightenment, Bronco. Many people - in fact, ALL the people I know personally, which, I'll admit, nearly all my friends are middle-aged Republicans - would say that you are the insane one.

As for Fauci, trust me, it's not racism. I'm Italian, if anything I was rooting for the smug asshole. Until I found out the whole damn pandemic is his fault in the first place. I guess the media's all done talking about Fauci's funding of the gain-of-function research that led to this shitstorm, his subsequent denials, and the smoking gun documents that proved him a liar. But I haven't forgotten. Maybe a bullet is too humane.

[Stavros]

Your post is insane Nick. I'll just address one thing though. Omicron is not the first variant and unfortunately will probably not be the last. The vaccine did prevent infection for every previous variant and it's possible it will for future variants. There's also no way to know for sure whether future variants will be more or less virulent. The selective pressure for virulence in viruses is not very strong so we could be dealing with something deadlier three months from now.

Your obsessive hatred of Dr. Fauci is as repulsive as it is irrational. The costs you've born during the pandemic have been virtually nil. You sound like a crybaby...to think you've previously said racism is a thing of the past...imagine if you actually had a legitimate gripe.

Not irrational, given his reply to you in the other thread-

“We will never see eye-to-eye because you consider 800,000 deaths to be a lot of deaths. 800,000 is a gift, with a big bow on it.”

Hitler, Stalin and Mao would be proud to associate themselves with such views. One wonders if the admiration is mutual.

[Nick Danger]

Not irrational, given his reply to you in the other thread-

“We will never see eye-to-eye because you consider 800,000 deaths to be a lot of deaths. 800,000 is a gift, with a big bow on it.”

Hitler, Stalin and Mao would be proud to associate themselves with such views. One wonders if the admiration is mutual.

What's 800,000, Stavros? It's a number. What if I tell you something cost $800,000 and asked you if that was cheap, or expensive? Your instinctive reaction would be to say "Expensive" because $800,000 is a lot of money to you, probably way more than you've ever had, based on some things you've said about your finances. You couldn't buy something for $800,000 no matter what it was, and I don't say that as an insult, simply for illustrative purposes.

But if you were Jeff Bezos you'd say that's cheap. Because you make $800,000 every 4 and a half minutes. It wouldn't matter to you what it was, it could be a paper clip, it still only represents 4 and a half minutes of sitting around on your yacht.

But in full context, whether $800,000 is cheap or expensive depends on what you're buying with it, yes?

So you start throwing a number like 800,000 around, it sounds like a big number to most people. But it's a very, very tiny number to Mother Earth because Mother Earth cranks out 800,000 brand new people approximately every 2 days. We could sacrifice 800,000 people a week to the Volcano God and still end up with way more people by the weekend than we had on Monday.

Those numbers are pure propaganda. They absolutely do not represent a health emergency of any kind, this is the least deadly pandemic in the history of the planet.

And it's funny that you act as if our measures are saving lives. Are they? Or would this whole debacle have been over 2 years ago with fewer deaths if we had just let the thing happen instead of dragging it out, injecting ourselves with experimental vaccines, and watching it mutate time after time after time? Can't answer that, can you. Nobody wants to pick that ball up and run with it, it would mean politicians admitting shit-tier decision-making and failure. Trump had it right from the very start - let it run its course. Now it's too late.

You're a puppet, Stavros. Don't walk under any low overpasses or you'll go limp and get run over. And they'll probably count you as a Covid death.

[filghy2]

I hate to say it, but I think there’s going to have to be some murderous rampaging before we regain our freedom from these people. There will have to be a high-profile assassination, or a mass shooting that’s easily traced to Covid madness, or multiples of those, before our power-mad overlords will relinquish their unprecedented control over the lives of their fellow humans.


Mask nazis are relentless and everywhere. Some getting knocked the fuck out, and rightfully so. Probably end up tagging me one or two before it's all over.


I swear to Christ if I thought I could get away with it, I'd put a bullet in Anthony Fauci for the good of all mankind.

Your willingness to rationalise violence that serves your political cause is very revealing. As I said before, you are well on the way to becoming a fascist.

Here's one prediction I will make without fear of contradiction - no matter what people on your side of politics do over the coming years, you will be willing to rationalise or minimise it.

[filghy2]

Interesting that your cases are at an all-time high but your deaths are at an all-time low. It's almost as if the current mutation of this virus isn't dangerous at all to anyone who isn't a bag of bones on a respirator and could easily be quarantined for their own safety so the rest of us could get on with our lives.

No idiot, deaths are not at an all-time low. They are not the highest ever, but they are approaching those levels. Why the fuck is it so hard for you to check simple facts?
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/australia/

I know maths is not your strong suit, but even if a variant is less deadly it can still be big problem if enough people are getting infected.

[filghy2]

The costs you've born during the pandemic have been virtually nil. You sound like a crybaby...to think you've previously said racism is a thing of the past...imagine if you actually had a legitimate gripe.

Our grandparents' generation lived through two world wars and the Great Depression. This guy is whining and threatening violent revolution because he has to wear a mask sometimes or get a needle in his arm. Talk about spoiled and entitled.

[Nick Danger]

Who's the fascist, Flighty? The guy who wants to be left alone to do what he wants? Or the guy who wants to tell that guy what to do? Liberals calling conservatives fascists is the most consistent and laughable irony of the current era. When they throw the occasional Orwell reference in as well it's just icing on the cake.

We are at war, Flighty. Just because we're not shooting at each other, never think you aren't my enemy. You want my obedience. You want to take my money and give it to the lazy masses. You want to seize and use the social currency of middle-class American conservatives, but without accepting the social responsibility that put us in that position in the first place. Liberals are parasites, plain and simple. Doesn't mean you personally are a parasite, Flighty, I'm fairly sure you have a job and pay your own way. It just means you've chosen to align yourself with a passenger philosophy. Only you know how you fell into that trap. Most likely it's some kind of savior complex combined with a low capacity for abstract thought, but you'd know better than me.

You won't win. For one thing, we've got all the money. Yeah, Flighty, that's right - while your liberals have been crying in their pillows and working out their pronouns, we conservatives have just kept doing what we always do. Banking all the money. In November we are going to take back the House AND the Senate. In 2024 we are going to take back the White House. We already own the Supreme Court for the next 30 years. It's over. "Violent revolution" won't be necessary. But it sure would be fun, I'll be damned if I've ever seen a group who could use a good old-fashioned all-afternoon country ass-whupping more than the current crop of fatherless Democrats.

Meanwhile though, it's all about damage control. I'm actually quite disappointed. I thought we were going to see some real social change from this administration. Turns out though, that they were just as full of shit as their constituents all along.

[filghy2]

So whatever happened to the idea that if you don't like certain policies you persuade a majority of voters to agree with you at the next election? Whether you agree with that or whether you are willing to resort to violence or non-democratic manipulation to get your way is the fundamental criterion for whether you are a fascist or not.

[Stavros]

Our grandparents' generation lived through two world wars and the Great Depression. This guy is whining and threatening violent revolution because he has to wear a mask sometimes or get a needle in his arm. Talk about spoiled and entitled.

You say ‘grandparents’ but for me it is my parents, both of whom were born before the First World War, both of whom suffered because of those wars, of which I am a direct consequence. My parents’ story is not unique but is of no concern to Nigel who translates 800,000 human beings into dollars to strip them of, indeed, deny them their humanity, which suggests that in the broad scheme of things, six million was and is, just a number. The context in which six million died, or 800,000 is decreed to be either irrelevant or misleading, because the details that illuminate that context to make it relevant to us today, are an obstacle to his individual needs and desires.

One can also attempt to unravel the contradictions in language that enable him to describe me as a Liberal, which I have never been because I believe a moral economy is superior to a market economy, and that the State plays a crucial role in protecting my liberty, and that international co-operation is superior to international conflict.

Fascists thrive on conflict by engaging in a form of identity politics where one single identity does not subordinate all others in the State, but seeks to eliminate them as threats, it is the existential dilemma posed by a multi-cultural society,but one where for centuries, reality has collided with an ideal, the consequence measured in deaths. Not 800,000 but say, in the case of the Americas, 100 million.

The tragic irony of the so-called Conservative today, is that it bases its ideology not on the 1776 Revolution and its Constitution, but the fact that for approx 250 years after Jamestown, the European settlers who we are told made the America they are exclusively entitled to own were a minority. Thus as immigration changes the complexion of America, Conservatives intend to use whatever means they have to ‘conserve’ minority rule, but do so with Fascist language, such as ‘America First’, ‘Drain the Swamp’, and by elevating ‘Patriots’ over citizens they don’t approve of.

What Covid has done on one level is beg the question: is the life of that person worth more than my own? But as soon as a process of selection enters the frame, the edifice indeed the process of the democratic state is shaken, because if everyone in a democracy has the equal right to vote, a sense of equality must inform that system, but for Nigel and people like him, equality is neither a reality, nor a desired outcome if it means Black and other Minority people are not just Americans but Americans with the same rights he has.

He once challenged me and others to prove the existence of Institutional Racism, as if the laws that were passed in the defeated, anti-American Confederacy between 1865 and 1918 that created segregation on the basis of race, did not still exist, which they do. But why should I have to tell an American his own history when it is of no interest to him when it so obviously details the flaws in American democracy, flaws that demand to be repaired?

Covid is a reality, it compels Americans to find a collective, as well as an individual response, to save lives. To make lives impacted by the virus durable in terms of the quality and the length of life left to live. We can stand together or fall, it is that simple.

[filghy2]

This might be another apocryphal quote, but it has been attributed to Joseph Stalin: "A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is just a statistic."

This seems like Nick Danger's version: "If someone like me dies at the hands of a black/brown person that is a crisis justifying strong measures against black/brown people; if a million people die of some other cause that is a mere statistic that cannot justify any sacrifice by me at all."

[Nick Danger]

(Passive-Aggressive, Virtue-Signaling, Nonsensical Rant Featuring Attempt To Play Off His Inability To Produce Factual Sources As Being Due To My Inability To Understand Why He Shouldn't Have To)

It's called Natural Selection, Stavros. The people who have died were weak homo sapiens - weak immune systems, weak lungs. Now they're out of the gene pool and mankind is stronger for it. It's been happening for hundreds of thousands of years and it's going to keep happening until we blow ourselves up.

I'm quite aware that behind each of those 800,000 deaths there is a personal story of tragedy. Someone else's personal story of tragedy. Tell me those stories one by one and I'll shed 800,000 tears for you. Give me fair warning though, I'm gonna need to drink a lot of water and stock up on Kleenex.


So whatever happened to the idea that if you don't like certain policies you persuade a majority of voters to agree with you at the next election? Whether you agree with that or whether you are willing to resort to violence or non-democratic manipulation to get your way is the fundamental criterion for whether you are a fascist or not.

It's Covid Fatigue, Flighty. Covid Fatigue and Progressive Fatigue. There's not a drawn-out explanation for why I'm feeling these days like I might actually encounter or initiate violence after more than 30 years since the last time I even considered it. That evil impulse just keeps building and building the longer the liberal media and Big Tech maintain control over my life against my will. I am 100% in favor of Democracy. And I never disputed the election, did I, Flighty. I held out hope that we would get something worthwhile from this administration, especially considering it looks like their 2-year window to do something positive for social change was their last opportunity for a long, long time, almost certainly this decade. I honestly never expected that they would take the low road right out of the gate and make complete fools of themselves.

[broncofan]

There's not a drawn-out explanation for why I'm feeling these days like I might actually encounter or initiate violence after more than 30 years since the last time I even considered it. That evil impulse just keeps building and building the longer the liberal media and Big Tech maintain control over my life against my will.
I haven't shared this but I've worked a lot on myself in the last five years and one thing I've worked on is my emotional reactions to things and trying to be less self-righteous or worked up over things other people say.

Still...can you not say stuff like this? It's not just that I don't think your reasons for being upset are legit, it's that this talk about considering violent acts of terrorism or murder if you could get away with it is unbelievably creepy and as you say evil.

We have too many instances of people working themselves into a violent frenzy and thinking they can justify anything. Get control of yourself.

[Nick Danger]

I haven't shared this but I've worked a lot on myself in the last five years and one thing I've worked on is my emotional reactions to things and trying to be less self-righteous or worked up over things other people say.

Still...can you not say stuff like this? It's not just that I don't think your reasons for being upset are legit, it's that this talk about considering violent acts of terrorism or murder if you could get away with it is unbelievably creepy and as you say evil.

We have too many instances of people working themselves into a violent frenzy and thinking they can justify anything. Get control of yourself.

I'm reminded of the Brad Pitt quote from the movie Fury. "Ideals are peaceful. History is violent."

But I'm not a violent person at all. Even in my younger years when I was full of vim, I would usually be the peacemaker in a situation, certainly not an instigator.

I wouldn't worry about me, Bronco. Worst-case scenario I knock out some mask nazi at the grocery store and do a couple weeks in jail. Though I will say that during the liberal riots, I made a considered decision that if I saw a large group of angry protestors on MY street, I was going to mow them all down from the comfort of my second-story window first and find out what they were doing there later.

I'm not trying to justify myself. I know it would be wrong and churlish to beat some prick wearing a Bernie Sanders shirt and carrying extra masks in his pocket to within an inch of his life, and that's not what's going to happen. But...some days, and some people, really try my patience, which is not infinite.

[filghy2]

It's called Natural Selection, Stavros. The people who have died were weak homo sapiens - weak immune systems, weak lungs. Now they're out of the gene pool and mankind is stronger for it. It's been happening for hundreds of thousands of years and it's going to keep happening until we blow ourselves up.

It's interesting that you take umbrage at any suggestion that your might be a fascist, yet you are happy to echo Nazi theories about eliminating weak and degenerate elements from the population. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_eugenics

[filghy2]

I wouldn't worry about me, Bronco. Worst-case scenario I knock out some mask nazi at the grocery store and do a couple weeks in jail.

Has it occurred to you that the person you are so casually thinking of assaulting would most likely be some lowly employee just doing what they've been told to do because they need the money? You really are a self-centred, amoral scumbag.

Weren't you supposed to be going off for a break? What are you waiting for - a farewell ceremony in your honour? Well, here you are.

https://i.giphy.com/media/lHG3hUhmrvTwI/giphy.webp

[Nick Danger]

Has it occurred to you that the person you are so casually thinking of assaulting would most likely be some lowly employee just doing what they've been told to do because they need the money? You really are a self-centred, amoral scumbag.

Weren't you supposed to be going off for a break? What are you waiting for - a farewell ceremony in your honour? Well, here you are.

https://i.giphy.com/media/lHG3hUhmrvTwI/giphy.webp

Why would I punch a clerk, Flighty, he’s just doing his job. I’m talking about the REAL busybodies. Anyone who can actually look me in the eye and insist I wear a mask deserves whatever he gets, trust me.

And I will take a break, Flighty. As soon as you say “Trump is my daddy.”

[filghy2]

“Trump is my daddy.”

Well that would account for all the similarities in personality traits

[Stavros]

Has it occurred to you that the person you are so casually thinking of assaulting would most likely be some lowly employee just doing what they've been told to do because they need the money? You really are a self-centred, amoral scumbag.


Dare one hope that when he is in Germany and a policeman tells him to wear a mask there is a video of what happens when Nigel accuses him of being a ‘mask Nazi’? A friend of mine was told her cloth mask was unacceptable in the restaurant we we’re going to, but as I had a spare N95 we were allowed in.

Masks are freedom. Wear a mask and you are free to go wherever you want.

[Nick Danger]

Dare one hope that when he is in Germany and a policeman tells him to wear a mask there is a video of what happens when Nigel accuses him of being a ‘mask Nazi’? A friend of mine was told her cloth mask was unacceptable in the restaurant we we’re going to, but as I had a spare N95 we were allowed in.

Masks are freedom. Wear a mask and you are free to go wherever you want.

That’s good advice, Stavros. But no worries, I follow rules because I’m a law-abiding citizen. However, when it’s not a rule, but you want me to wear one anyway because you’re a virtue-signaling sack of dogshit? Prepare for disappointment, humiliation, and nightmares about the flames shooting out of my eyes. At a minimum.

[filghy2]

I think you need to enrol here ASAP
https://anger-management-classes.net/anger-management-utah-st.-george.html

[Nick Danger]

I think you need to enrol here ASAP
https://anger-management-classes.net/anger-management-utah-st.-george.html

Man, you don’t even know, Flighty. My problem is I’m spoiled. I spend almost all my time in St. George or a small town you’ve never heard of just outside of Nashville. Either place, we mock Covid rules.

So when I venture out into Liberal Land it’s always culture shock.

[broncofan]

Honestly it sounds like you want to beat up some hipster who doesn't know how to fight back. It could just be a guy whose wife has cancer or who himself has lupus who wants you to be considerate. Yeah, who needs New York, LA, or San Francisco when you have St. George Utah. What would this country do without that hub of economic activity and culture?

[Nick Danger]

Honestly it sounds like you want to beat up some hipster who doesn't know how to fight back. It could just be a guy whose wife has cancer or who himself has lupus who wants you to be considerate. Yeah, who needs New York, LA, or San Francisco when you have St. George Utah. What would this country do without that hub of economic activity and culture?

The real problem is that people from New York, L.A., and San Francisco won't stop moving to St. George, Bronco. Matter of fact, you'd be amazed who lives there. Several well-known celebrities. A lot of retired pro athletes. Taylor Swift owns a house in St. George; and she's also a member of my gym though I've never seen here there. Wilford Brimley (of "diabeetus" and Quaker Oats fame) lived a few houses down from me until he died a couple years ago. I could drop a few more names.

There's no real reason to ever leave St. George, it's one of the most beautiful places in the world. Unfortunately its population is outgrowing its infrastructure because people won't just stay the fuck away like we want them to. Hell, I could sell my St. George house for 5 times what I paid for it. If I listed it right now I'd have a cash offer by lunchtime, the city is at 99% occupancy.

Beating up a lupus grandmother in a wheelchair IS on my bucket list, Bronco, but I doubt I'd follow through if the opportunity arose. Since you guys are so fascinated with me saying I might clock me a mask nazi, I've given the matter more thought and traced my line of reasoning. There have only been a couple of times people I didn't know have approached me about wearing a mask out of the blue. Both times it was women. I've seen a few times in the news about people losing their shit over mask nazis and issuing a beatdown, and I've thought, "Hmm, good, that needs to happen." Then of course as time has worn on I've become more and more frustrated over the Covid garbage, and then not too long ago I saw a story about some lady who stabbed another lady in the neck over it. Normally my reaction to that would have been negative but this time, I thought, "YES! Fucking perfect! More of this!"

For me it would have to be semi-spontaneous. Like, my thinking now is that this is the sort of thing I'd like to be known as having done, so I want to do it. But also, I'm a full-grown man, and pretty strong. So it'd be no good if it was a female mask nazi obviously, and no good if it was some scrawny punk. What I'm looking for is another full-grown man to do it. So if I'm confronted by a full-grown man insisting I put on a mask in a public place with no mask rule, I'm going to get aggravated, I'm going to have my instinctive reaction to not inflict violence on people, and then I'm going to have to consciously think, "Nope, bad timing for you, welcome to my nightmare, asshole." One shot should do it, it will essentially be a sucker punch. Then I'll stand there and wait for the police.

I mean, I'm not sure how you dipshits expected all this to work out in the end, did you think the politicians and the media were going to just set us free? Covid is their fucking bread and butter now, Bronco, they're never going to stop. But there's a limit to how long free-minded people are going to tolerate this nonsense. Some of us are there, and some of us are just almost there.

It's literally a common cold now, so obviously the best thing to happen would be a restoration of common sense, then we could all get on with our lives. Doesn't seem like that's going to work out, though, does it Bronco. Gonna take a little highly-publicized violence against some of the more egregious covidiots to get the message across, ain't it. Well, I'm willing to do my part if the right guy shows up at the wrong time with the wrong request. Probably happen while I'm in Vegas if it happens.

[filghy2]

Man, you don’t even know, Flighty. My problem is I’m spoiled. I spend almost all my time in St. George or a small town you’ve never heard of just outside of Nashville. Either place, we mock Covid rules.

So when I venture out into Liberal Land it’s always culture shock.

Then you are going to have the same experience in any developed country. I hate to break it to you, but red-state America is the oddity.

[filghy2]

Yeah, who needs New York, LA, or San Francisco when you have St. George Utah. What would this country do without that hub of economic activity and culture?

I'm sure they have both kinds of music there - country and western.

[filghy2]

It's literally a common cold now, so obviously the best thing to happen would be a restoration of common sense, then we could all get on with our lives.

How exactly is your life being impeded, other than by the terribly onerous requirement to wear a mask on occasion?

[filghy2]

PS: Can you also share your source on 1600 American deaths from the common cold each day?

[broncofan]

I'm sure they have both kinds of music there - country and western.
Years ago a friend took me to a "redneck bar" in Northern Florida, which is what even the bar owners called it. Some good looking women there but I was standing by the dance floor and the dj calls out that they are gonna do the "gator dance". Now when I looked it up recently they say it is people crawling like an alligator but honestly it was men dressed like cowboys who got on their bellies and rhythmically humped the floor while the women hooted and hollered at whose humping they liked best. I was a college kid wearing jeans and a tshirt so I wasn't looking to judge what's high culture or low culture but I swear I never felt so bad for humanity.

By the time this is over I'm gonna share as many anecdotes as Nick. Nick, I grew up in a resort town that had golf courses, retirees, and the third homes of celebrities. It didn't make the town any place I wanted to live when I grew up.

I got nothing except to reiterate filghy's points here. Address his questions about the cold, about the burdens of mask wearing....there's something very cold and primitive and cavalier about the Republican approach to aging and disease and vulnerability that DOES look related to fascism.

[Nick Danger]

Years ago a friend took me to a "redneck bar" in Northern Florida, which is what even the bar owners called it. Some good looking women there but I was standing by the dance floor and the dj calls out that they are gonna do the "gator dance". Now when I looked it up recently they say it is people crawling like an alligator but honestly it was men dressed like cowboys who got on their bellies and rhythmically humped the floor while the women hooted and hollered at whose humping they liked best. I was a college kid wearing jeans and a tshirt so I wasn't looking to judge what's high culture or low culture but I swear I never felt so bad for humanity.

By the time this is over I'm gonna share as many anecdotes as Nick. Nick, I grew up in a resort town that had golf courses, retirees, and the third homes of celebrities. It didn't make the town any place I wanted to live when I grew up.

I got nothing except to reiterate filghy's points here. Address his questions about the cold, about the burdens of mask wearing....there's something very cold and primitive and cavalier about the Republican approach to aging and disease and vulnerability that DOES look related to fascism.

Well, Bronco, I grew up all up and down the east coast, big cities, small towns, and all points in between. I lived in 17 different cities in 10 different states before 6th grade, and as an adult I've lived in at least as many, which may go a long way toward explaining why I approach most human relationships as temporary. In the end, I found some peace in St. George. It might surprise you to find out that I don't golf. I mean, I have. And sometimes I will if I am coerced into it. But I find it quite tedious and I'm bad at it and I never cared enough to put the effort in to become competent. I think it was Mark Twain who said "Golf is a good walk spoiled."

Up until about 5 years ago St. George had one bar, and it was called "The One And Only." I think there's a picture of it on the internet...

1360039

Then another bar opened called "About Time." And not longer after that, the St. George City Council went waaaaaaaay out on a limb and issued TWO MORE BAR LICENSES. So now there are four. Two of them feature Country. Two of them feature Western. That's a joke actually, they have jukeboxes and classic rock is the best thing to play if you don't want hard stares from the rest of the clientele. If you're a hot girl you can play whatever the fuck you want.


Then you are going to have the same experience in any developed country. I hate to break it to you, but red-state America is the oddity.

As intelligent as you are, Flighty, you sincerely have no idea what you are witnessing right now, do you. Has it ever occurred to you to wonder why huge corporations support the Democratic Party in general and the progressive agenda in particular? I mean, why the flippity fuck would a guy like Jeff Bezos buy the Washington Post and start lying out his ass to promote some of the most ridiculous politics in history - a means to which the end can only be empowering a political party that wants to tax you more? BARRIER TO ENTRY, Flighty, barrier to fucking entry.

Pretend you're Bezos. You've made it, you're on top of the world, no one can touch you. Except the free market of course. What if some other young hotshot starts up his own operation and does it better? Eh, it could happen. What if a dozen young hotshots pick up that ball and run with it. They all meet with varying levels of success but the big picture is that they are ALL cutting into YOUR market share. Unless, of course, there's a political party in power that specializes in over-regulating the hell out of big business.

The barrier to entry for big business is much, much higher under a Democratic regime than it is under a Republican regime. The pleb play is to support the Republicans - so your taxes will be lower, regulations easier, profits higher. But the kingpin play is to support the hell out of the Democrats. Because as long as the Democrats are in power, there will never be another Amazon. The Democrats will hamstring all your potential competition with environmental regulations, racial quotas, higher taxes, sensitivity training, and so on and on - all the things Democrats do to make business hard. Doesn't affect you, you're already there, you can contend. But Johnny Startup is just...fucked.

That's why big business is on-board with cancel culture. That's why Big Tech censors conservative views. That's why the corporate-owned liberal media is so full of absolute horseshit. They want to make business hard. For everyone else. They've got the money to plow right through those barriers.

All you're witnessing, Flighty, when you see a world in decline, AKA a world full of liberal shitholes, is the end result of corporate greed. They KNOW liberalism is untenable and unsustainable. They don't care. They don't care if you get tossed in a wood-chipper. Or die in the streets. Liberalism is the formula for unchecked corporate evil and monopolistic dominance. IT'S A SCAM. And you fell for it, Flighty.

Don't worry, though. We conservatives will save you.


How exactly is your life being impeded, other than by the terribly onerous requirement to wear a mask on occasion?

Does it matter, Flighty? Because whatever nightmare they're putting us through today, it's going to be different tomorrow. Can you say with any confidence whatsoever that the whole planet won't be locked down a week from now? Nope. So how the fuck are we supposed to get on with our lives while the governments of the world - as usual following the USA's lead - continue to move the goalposts day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month, YEAR-TO-FUCKING-YEAR? They should not have this power. Only absolute NPC's would give it to them. Say hello to a planet full of NPC's.

Don't worry, though. We conservatives will save you.


PS: Can you also share your source on 1600 American deaths from the common cold each day?

Of course I can share the fucking source. You know the rules. So do I. https://www.thisworldthesedays.com/covidorcommoncold1.html

[natina]

Another QAnon anti-vaxxer has died of COVID-19. Even from her hospital bed, she swore it was a hoax

https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2022/1/7/2073342/-Popular-QAnon-promoter-who-said-vaccines-kill-don-t-get-it-just-died-of-COVID-19

www.sorryantivaxxers.com

[filghy2]

As intelligent as you are, Flighty, you sincerely have no idea what you are witnessing right now, do you. Has it ever occurred to you to wonder why huge corporations support the Democratic Party in general and the progressive agenda in particular?

Yet another long-winded answer that completely failed to address the point. You are like a politician, addressing the point you want to make rather than the one that was put to you.

FYI, rich folks are clearly more likely to vote Republican. Voters with incomes over $100,000 went for Trump 54:42 in the last election. You are conveniently forgetting all the filthy rich businessmen who support Trump, eg the Murdochs, the Koch brothers, the Mercers.
https://abcnews.go.com/Elections/exit-polls-2020-us-presidential-election-results-analysis

Here's the point that you obviously have no answer to. If your views are just common sense and it's only rich liberals distorting things, then how come most people in the rest of the world don't agree with you? If the US is the exception then which is more likely - the US is weird or that all those other countries are weird? It can't be a coincidence that only in the US is half the population being fed a steady diet of lies by right-wing media.

You are like a fascinating anthropological study to me because we don't have many lunatics like you in Australia (eg 95% of adults here are vaccinated). Or maybe it's like discovering an alternative universe where everything is the opposite of the normal universe.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nc_f-0DCGI0

[filghy2]

The barrier to entry for big business is much, much higher under a Democratic regime than it is under a Republican regime.

In that case it should be easy for you to show evidence that business formation is much lower under Democrat regimes. Here, I'll even help you out by giving you the data source. https://www.census.gov/econ/bfs/index.html

Your ability to come up with lengthy theories based on absolutely nothing but half-arsed selective reasoning is nothing short of amazing.