Mostly Apolitical Thread for Discussing/Venting our Rational/Irrational COVID-19 Fears and Experiences in 2020

Florida's week-long total less than the previous week but only by like 1,000 (10,629 reported for 6/11 - 6/17). about 100 less cases per day or so.

Guess NYT is doing the OWID thing of spreading the FL cases over the week?

Their count has cases dipping below 12,000 a day for the first time. Deaths about to dip below 300/day

Fun fact: in the year between April 12, 2009, and April 10, 2010, the CDC estimates swine flu epidemic caused 12,469 deaths in the U.S. At 300 deaths per day it would take just six weeks to exceed that total. Yet, after 15 months of raging Covid-19, 300/day dead people looks like rainbows and unicorns.

also COVID isn't real and is just the flu

vaccines will kill you and hurt your immune system, and democrats created the virus

I wonder, if they did a poll, what percentage of Americans would happily take a serum that gave them magnetic powers? I bet it'd be something north of 80%. And here we have a vaccine that not only gives you magnetic powers, it stops you from getting covid, too, and all these people are all, no, this is where we draw the line!

And who doesn't want free 5G

Handshakes seem to have come back, quickly, and i dont rly care for it!

handshakes have always sucked

I'm just terrible at them, very limp

hands are gross

Kissing, however

Man, if I generated free data service *and* was magnetic, that would be so cool. I would be like a walking hotspot. I could stick my phone to my arm when I'm running and get great service. Everyone in my house would have sterling phone reception. I would never have trouble finding the car keys. I'd get invited to all the parties. *And* I would not get covid!

I don't know if I'd be allowed to fly, though. But still: no covid, that's something!

NEW: Covid could potentially change the physical structure of the brain.

A new study found shrinkage in several brain areas like the limbic cortex, hippocampus & temporal lobe. These regions are mainly responsible for smell/taste, memory & emotion. https://t.co/UXUKL6UTnI

— Dr. Aditi Nerurkar, MD MPH (@draditinerurkar) June 19, 2021

meanwhile turns out Australia might have had the entire population vaccinated by now, instead of 4%, but last July the government held a meeting with Pfizer:

Three sources told Swan that the Federal Government sent an inexperienced procurement officer to the meeting who “started nickel and diming on the costs”.

Pfizer had allegedly wanted to make an example out of Australia about how to properly conduct a vaccine rollout, similarly to how Israeli handled theirs. Instead, the Federal Government came back in November 2020 and ordered only 10 million doses of Pfizer.

Within the subsequent rollout,

"When you talk to people on the inside they say it’s worse than you imagine it from the outside," Doctor Swan said.

4%, most of the other numbers say around 2.5%, but who the hell knows it’s an absolute shambles.

I’m now one of the 2.5%, but I had to navigate through a bunch of crap to get there.

My mom's been vaccinated for a while, but when she told me last night that she's going on a Viking River Cruise in October (she bought the tickets in late 2019) I immediately thought that I hope she's got her papers in order. (AFAIK I won't have to be her executor when she does go; one of her sisters has that job.)

Yeah, my mom is heading to a couple of countries in Africa for a few weeks, with multiple flights, regular required covid tests, etc. I was a bit nervous for her, but she's vaxxed, of course, and where she's heading is rated by the CDC travel map at level 1 or 2, which is lower than the US and the UK (where she is traveling later this summer).

BTW, you want new era, even the Red Cross (through whom I went to donate blood this morning) no longer requires masks for vaccinated staff or donors.

My reading is that 4% have one shot, 2-3% are fully vaxxed*, but the data are such a mess that I went with the most generous framing.

*as much as variants allow

My understanding is that fully vaxxed is fully vaxxed and none of the current variants warrant an asterisk?

🐦[NEW: Covid could potentially change the physical structure of the brain.

A new study found shrinkage in several brain areas like the limbic cortex, hippocampus & temporal lobe. These regions are mainly responsible for smell/taste, memory & emotion. https://t.co/UXUKL6UTnI🕸
— Dr. Aditi Nerurkar, MD MPH (@draditinerurkar) June 19, 2021🕸]🐦

It’s a weird headspace here esp for those of us that are double jabbed, we are demob happy cause basically everything’s open (which coincided with a big improvement in the weather) but the whole 6 weeks since opening everything there has been this constant doomsaying of delta delta delta be careful (but there will be no reversal of policy obv)

I personally didn’t feel like the football was being snatched away when they postponed declaring the pandemic over with half the population vaccinated - because that was always fucking mental - but I’m feeling the dissonance as much as anyone. Also the weather turned shite again

none of the current variants warrant an asterisk?

as you say, delta delta delta, and it seems wildly optimistic to suppose that there won't be even stronger variants by 2022

That’s not really how it works, man.

sic burn

I mean I hasten to add I’m literally not an expert but a virus doesn’t have infinite degrees of freedom to evolve in response to evolutionary pressure, there’s no MegaPolio or HIV-1-Max

88% effectiveness (i.e., reducing your risk by 88% versus 93% against Alpha) hardly warrants an asterisk. the asterisk that could be attached based on what we know 'now' is that the temporary protection you get after one shot is significantly lower , which means you can't bank on the "oh well, I'm 80% protected" if exposed before your second shot. that's a non-negligible dip, and basically means you're at risk for 5-6 weeks after your shot.

as far as variants getting stronger, maybe, variants can also get weaker (though we haven't been lucky enough to have that happen yet). it's not the same thing as antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

in terms of viral evolution, killing the host is actually bad for the virus's survival, because it decreases the ability to spread.

I didn't say infinite! but it seems probable that at least Brazil, a concentrated population with a massive outbreak and little mitigation against spread, will evolve a newbie

and basically means you're at risk for 5-6 weeks after your shot.

when do you anticipate ppl in Australia are getting their second shot tho

as far as variants getting stronger, maybe, variants can also get weaker (though we haven't been lucky enough to have that happen yet). it's not the same thing as antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

curious about this - I've assumed that weaker variants just aren't getting noticed or researched in detail because they're less concerning (and they don't replicate themselves as well, so peter out before study can be done), but are they just not happening?

a newbie

(although aiui the Gamma variant was previously being considered as two strains before being downgraded to one, so maybe they're at capacity)

killing the host is actually bad for the virus's survival

covid isn't nearly fatal enough for this dynamic to affect its transmission.

variants can also get weaker (though we haven't been lucky enough to have that happen yet)

Oh I'm sure it's happened. But we won't see it because they'd be outcompeted by stronger variants and wouldn't persist in the population.

Yeah I also don’t know what I’m talking about but I really think the only thing is to just get everyone vaccinated and remove the “novel” aspect of the virus and then hopefully it’s one of those that’s just around during the winter months with minimal damage

Obv the situation in aus is dire (& more so in India, Brazil &c)… we are so far from the end of this but I can’t be worrying about deadly super strains just yet - I worried about vaccine escape at one point but the technology has been shown to work and then some, we just need world govts to do the necessary (& like obv I don’t feel great about this as a dry run for climate disaster but let’s see)

xps I keep hearing the conventional wisdom that a virus becoming endemic/more transmissible corresponds with it becoming less severe but idk

Back to Australia for a bit. Imagine for a moment, that Donald Trump really was a billionaire many times over and, having paid for anti vax adverts that got banned ( too slowly) from the radio, was using some of his fortune to mail out anti vaccine bullshit to people in low income, often immigrant communities in Melbourne. People who were particularly hard hit by the second wave last year.

This evil clown is Clive Palmer, and sad to say that you’re more likely to see one of his yellow misinfo sheets than any kind of public information campaign from the government (or anyone else).

The rollout is a shambles and slowing down not speeding up.

than any kind of public information campaign from the government

oh come now

Brief to the highest paid comms dept in Aus during a global health emergency: Write an expensive letter minus ANY urgent calls to action + give a redundant phone number | be as non-committal as possible + allude to a certificate that doesn't exist. #COVID19Aus @ScottMorrisonMP https://t.co/cSrxD5MGVV

— Louisa Deasey (@louisadeasey) June 20, 2021

I got my breakfast out this morning and, for my sins, read the herald sun. You wouldn't know there was a vaccine rollout going on until you go to the opinion pages. To be fair there was a piece by a melbourne Uni public health academic explaining the risks of Astra and the cartoon was mildly lampooning ScoMo and vaccines. There was barely any coverage of the Sydney outbreak. The lack of urgency anywhere is galling.

The @CDCgov must be the core of the nation's public health infrastructure, but in COVID19, its failings have been notable and literally disastrous. @JInterlandi's diagnosis of CDC's decay should launch a national conversation on how to rebuild it.https://t.co/23rkv8C11I

— David Michaels (@drdavidmichaels) June 20, 2021

Not a Covid fan but this is class https://t.co/VI5D04x87i

— Bob (@Robbie_OR) June 21, 2021

a ray of hope in these dark times

Australian PM couldn't even get a date with Biden at the G7, and secretly organised a side trip to Cornwall to look at the gravestones of his ancestors. But he couldn't find it, so put the flowers on another grave and went to the pub.

Now he's home and not doing the mandatory armed-guard quarantine at his own expense that every other Australian who can afford to return home* has to do. But he called in to commercial radio to say that he can't promise non-government Australians will be able to travel or see family by Christmas 2022, because he saw data about how the virus is dangerous while he was travelling overseas, so is just going to see what happens to the UK and not draw up any other plan.

(*He took 40 or more staff on the trip - ten have also been permitted to skip quarantine, while 30 are being paid $200 a day compo to quarantine. Except they get to do so in student accomodation, because nearly every case of covid in Australia in the last year has happened due to the paid hotel quarantine being unsafely run.)

Hey, so my second appointment for my moderna shot is like way after the recommended interval - 28 to 40 days, as far as I could tell from reputable sources. This seems not unusual, here in the UK at least. Should I be worried?

No.

My second shot was two and half months after the first shot.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-it-safe-to-delay-a-second-covid-vaccine-dose/

I think three months is not uncommon in the UK?

It was 12 weeks, now it's 8 iiuc.

Daniel_Rf you will have equal if not better protection two weeks after your second dose as someone who got their second dose on the "recommended schedule". So no need to worry in the long run. But you should assume you have very little or no immunity until that second dose.

just realizing the US REALLY hasn't used J&J much - 97% of the administered shots were mRNA (Moderna/Pfizer). It's not known yet how J&J does against Delta, but they're guessing it might be closer to how AstraZeneca is doing.

I have to wonder if the greater use of mRNA vaccines may help blunt the forthcoming localized surges in part of the country, at least when we cross 50% fully vaccinated threshold. it's not going to be enough to stop it outright, but I can't find data on how many of each type of shot was given in the UK to compare (I don't think they publish it, per OurWorldinData).

I wonder if the low use rates on J&J can be used as a proxy for how well or poorly the vaccine effort has reached into the homeless, migrant and indigent communities, where a single dose vaccine is going to be the most obvious choice because of the difficulty of scheduling a followup dose. I know it can't be a perfect proxy, because one of my sisters, who as a condo-owner in Seattle would have been a perfectly good candidate for an mRNA vaccine but she received J&J instead. Not sure why.

I can't find data on how many of each type of shot was given in the UK to compare

UK is mostly AstraZeneca - the standing joke is we're getting the cheap, rubbishy British vaccine - I hardly know anyone who's had Moderna.

i believe the az/mRNA breakdown in the UK is in the ballpark of 70/30 (almost no mRNA early on to older people, but almost all mRNA now that the focus is on younger people, who are told not to get AZ).

there are reasons to think the US will do (is doing?) "better" with delta than the UK: UK has slightly more people vaccinated, but more people still waiting for second dose and far fewer people with double mRNA protection.

basically US situation looks at a very high level more like israel, i.e. just over half the population full vaccinated with mRNA. cases fell much faster in israel because the rollout was faster and smoother and coincided with stricter lockdown measures, but the end states will hopefully be somewhat similar.

the challenge in the US is it's a big country with huge georgraphic and social/economic disparities so there's going to be large pockets (regions/states) where delta rages, which might make getting to ~= israel levels nationally tricky.