outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

Or do do that it doesn’t really matter

Great, thanks all - I just saw coverage of its effectiveness, and of the logistics in getting a vaccination program working. It makes sense that this would great herd immunity.

*create

There really needs to be a push to educate people about how vaccines work and how everyone who can get it should in order not to fuck over the person with say an allergy that prevents them getting it. Easier said than done esp if you are a government that has spent years undermining the very principles of the common good, public health &c

Sadly a fair chunk of those who do understand absolutely do not give a fuck.

https://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/201021150507-01-anti-vaxxers-today-using-old-arguments-wellness-partner-large-169.jpg

Actual footage of me and user caek pushing eula biss onto ilxors

Fist bump

Today was a very, very odd day

I testified before @senatehomeland

They held a hearing on hydroxychloroquine.

Yup, HCQ

In the middle of the worst surge of pandemic

HCQ

It was clear how our information architecture shapes questions of science and medicine of COVID

A thread

— Ashish K. Jha (@ashishkjha) November 20, 2020

God damn, the despair I felt reading that thread

Plenty of despair to be found today. If the footage from a packed O'Hare this morning is any indication, we are absolutely doomed. Americans are irredeemably, fundamentally selfish to the core and they don't give a fuck how many people die so they can eat turkey around a table.

Actual footage of me and user caek pushing eula biss onto ilxors

― Gab B. Nebsit (wins), Thursday, November 19, 2020 12:52 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

book is really good, everyone should check it out. among its many benefits, it inspired me to read stoker's dracula for the first time.

I've always said we were one or two big events away from eating each other.

Really, it was just one all along.

7-day test positivity for Wyoming is the highest I've seen in any place globally during this pandemic: 81.1%.

Other states doing especially badly: South Dakota 52.5%, Iowa 48.6%, Idaho 40.7%, Kansas 40.6%, Pennsylvania 24.6%, Missouri 23.5%, Montana 23.2%, Alabama 20.3%.

When the pos % is that high it's very hard to tease out how much it's prevalence and how much it's people avoiding testing to avoid isolation/quarantine. I mean even the biggest herd immunity pessimist doesn't think it's realistic for 80% of a large population to be infected at the same time.

Testing availability plays a huge role. Very similar outbreaks in North and South Dakota, but North Dakota is doing 12.2 tests per 1,000 daily for 14.5% positivity, while South Dakota is doing 2.8 tests/1k for its 52.5%. Wyoming dropped to 1.7 tests/1k last week. It's really more of a metric of how well public health is doing on surveilance, and how useful testing is for individual decisions.

Public health messaging from this admin has been dismal. Too many people think the purpose of tests is to initiate quarantine with a positive test, when the message should be everyone should isolate (and be encouraged in this by paid leave/subsidy etc.) upon suspected exposure, with negative tests allowing us to resume more normal lives. NIH should have run informational PSAs daily on Fox, Limbaugh's show etc, all those hard to reach crevasses of willful ignorance.

210 new cases in San Francisco (I think that's a record).

Not sure where you're getting your data but I show the current (previous?) high of 168 new cases on 11/12.

https://data.sfgov.org/stories/s/dak2-gvuj

I use this thing: https://coronavirus.1point3acres.com/en

From their FAQ:

Why your [sic] numbers are frequently thousands of cases higher than the other sources?

Yeah no, I think I am okay with with the sfgov's #s in this instance...

Fucking apparently Ron fucking Johnson is still spending his time in Senate hearings saying COVID wouldn't be killing people if the Big Pharma elites weren't blocking universal hydroxychloroquine dosing so they can keep the sweet COVID $$$$$ flowing into their coffers

Yup! Scroll up for the Ashish Jha twitter thread Josh linked upthread, very depressing read.

We have one of those fucked up nutcases in the Australian parliament, Craig Kelly.

This is the grassroots campaign to unseat him, buy a tote bag:

https://www.wearehughes.org/

TBF, more than one be he’s the hydroxychloroquine truther. (And momenta denier of science in in general)

I misread that as "by" and was like "... fair"

^ In high school Dr. Jha was my doubles partner in tennis. He later dated an ex-girlfriend who had pictures of The Police all over her bedroom.

wait really? (the tennis partner part)

Really! We were...ok.

Anyway about these Police posters.

I should have known I was up against it with all those posters. Let’s just say I was no Captain Tantra at 16.

How about now

When you don’t see me posting for seven hours....

Or do you mean with another person?

I glanced at this column - https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/20/opinion/covid-bubble-thanksgiving-family.html

And I thought it was a smart and accessible way to demonstrate the dangers of being complacent about your bubble, and was useful evidence of why you shouldn’t travel or gather in big groups for thanksgiving. And it wasn’t until I saw people pissed off on Twitter that I realized that I’d missed the twist ending where the author says he’s not actually going to change his big family thanksgiving plans at all!

Thanksgiving is a time for family and sharing.

and sharting

I am an infectious diseases doctor in New York City and have treated hundreds of patients with COVID. I have had innumerable patients die of COVID and had many others in my extended circle die of COVID.

I normally am skeptical of the practice of accusing people one disagrees with of coming to their opinion as the result of privilege. However it has to be said here: this column could only have been written from the perspective of someone with the immense privilege of continuing to draw a salary while self-isolating in a comfortable home. The snarkiness with which he dismisses the warnings from public health authorities is utterly offensive. They are right. He is wrong. No amount of navel-gazing or ambivalence or cute drawings will make it right. This is not a matter of personal choice. It is a matter of life and death.

To my fellow readers: Please follow CDC guidance. Spend Thanksgiving with immediate family only. Period. Things will be a lot better by Thanksgiving 2021.

To the editors: I would urge you to seriously consider retracting this op-ed. Just as the editorial board made the difficult decision to disavow the Tom Cotton op-ed a few months ago over concerns that it might credibly lead to loss of life, this is not a matter of suppressing free speech. Mr. Manjoo is using his platform to advocate a position that could credibly lead to downstream illness and death. It should not have been published.

can someone reconcile these two things for me

this source says that deaths in America are way up this year, like 10-15% more than expected in a "normal" year

https://www.statnews.com/2020/10/20/cdc-data-excess-deaths-covid-19/?fbclid=IwAR0l0JTXfIpIsv99Az55S8YPJLTW6fIsPJCkIk5Bb6GGCsq214kWIkCQh4A

but this one seems to show that the US death rate only went up about 1% this year, which is actually lower than in did 2014-2018

could these two sources both be correct? if we really have 300-400k more deaths than expected why doesn't the overall death rate increase reflect that?

oh oops...this is the 2nd source

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/death-rate

or is this just a projection that doesn't include Covid deaths?

the second source says "NOTE: All 2020 and later data are UN projections and DO NOT include any impacts of the COVID-19 virus."

yeah...I took that to mean it was not using it to project the REST of 2020. I assumed this was updated in real time but I guess it is not. Ignore me, everyone!!!

AstroZeneca vaccine reportedly 70% effective

yeah, and doesn't need low temp storage either.

...and potentially 90% when using a different dosing regimen

plus more transportable as Ste notes

more options always a good thing

The Covid vaccine developed in the UK by Oxford University and AstraZeneca can protect 70.4% of people from becoming ill and – in a surprise result – up to 90% if a lower first dose is used, results from the final trial show.

Reminder to anxious folks not to pay attention to single-day COVID data reports for the next week or so as data collection will be incredibly sporadic over the USA holiday weekend. 7-day (or even 14-day) rolling averages will be smooth out the inconsistencies. There may be some headlines of "RECORD DAY" "NEW HIGH" etc.

The national rolling averages are at or near record highs and sill trending up, so such headlines would not be entirely misleading, even if the raw daily numbers may be erratic.

I guess all I'm trying to tell the anxious people is to wait until 7-10 days after Thanksgiving when the numbers will absolutely be at a record high so don't be spooked for the padded/backlog binning until then.