outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

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.

Alternately, we could recommend people acquire towels upon which the words DON'T PANIC appear in friendly lettering. /joek

We're well into a steady two month trend at this point, so... yeah. It's as bad as it looks.
But yes - Broccoli is right. Shit will probably hit the fan 7-10 days after Thanksgiving and likely stay pronounced into January.

Really odd phrasing on BBC news "this Oxford vaccine is up to 70% effective or more than 90% effective if you adjust the dosage."

Well um maybe we could you know... adjust the fucking dosage?!

I'm not sure how the BBC should report it, but it's not that simple. It's a strange result and I'm not surprised their stock is down on the news.

I'm not looking forward to the part where we have to read and listen to people screaming about "oppression" when their workplaces/schools/whatever won't let them come back without a vaccination.

Obv not an expert but I don't see how the AZ dosing thing is all that fishy?

It is the job of an immune system to react to a pathogen, and begin to develop antibodies. It gets better at it with subsequent exposure.

The strength of said antibody-production response varies over time. Hence "booster" shots that are distinct from an initial dose.

I don't see why a particular vaccine might not work like this:

1. (gets initial dose of vaccine)
2. OH SHIT A LITTLE BIT OF VIRUS / BETTER DEVISE A DEFENSE
3. (devises defense, begins producing antibodies)
4. HERE ARE SOME ANTIBODIES M.F.ER!
5. (gets subsequent dose of vaccine)
6. FUCK! BETTER STEP UP PRODUCTION AND MAKE MORE!
7. (immunity increases)

As opposed to the one-dose model that ends at step 4.

Am I missing something? The initial half-dose primes the immune system to get the factory going. The second dose causes the factory to increase production in response to greater need.

xp

this is a valid concern, but otoh I worry that businesses will use lack of access to vaccines as an excuse to thin their workforces

there wasn't a one dose trial. see https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/11/astrazenecas-covid-19-vaccine-shows-success-heres-how-it-stacks-up-to-others/.

it was:

- full dose, full dose (62% effective in a sample of ~2k people)
- half dose, full dose (90% effective in a sample of ~8k people)

sure, you can come up with plausible sounding (to non-experts like us) explanations why someone who receives a 1.5 doses should do better than someone who receives 2 doses. but it's weird. and those sample sizes are pretty small.

sorry, those numbers are backwards. it was

- full dose, full dose (62% effective in a sample of ~8k people)
- half dose, full dose (90% effective in a sample of ~2k people)

2k is really very small to claim anything (especially without detailed results. this is just a press release.)

this is a valid concern, but otoh I worry that businesses will use lack of access to vaccines as an excuse to thin their workforces

Very, very good point as well.

Pharma companies are notorious for overselling the effectiveness of their products.

I would guess that that difference in effects between those two trial arms cannot actually be convincingly asserted based on the study design and the multiway comparison with placebo, but yeah it doesn't stop it from appearing in the press release

Not an expert at reading clinical trial results btw but the basis on which these comparisons are to be made is never just number > other number

yup.

"overall efficiency is likely about 70% but we don't know what the dose should be"

sure, you can come up with plausible sounding (to non-experts like us) explanations why someone who receives a 1.5 doses should do better than someone who receives 2 doses. but it's weird.

On what basis, as an admitted non-expert, do you make this claim of weirdness?

the weirdness is that, absent the statistical details, one shouldn't conclude that there's a true difference in effects between the two dosing arms.

All of the 2741 in the half/full dose regimen were from the UK trial, whereas the 8895 in the full/full dose regimen aggregated participants from the Brazilian and UK trials. So perhaps there were some cultural, climatic or viral strain contributions to the differing results.

that would be my guess, I think the samples are big enough where a giant swing like that has to be significant in some way

It basically seems like they didn’t run the trial very well

The half-dose thing was a serendipitous mistake

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/nov/23/oxford-covid-vaccine-hit-90-success-rate-thanks-to-dosing-error

that is not giving me huge confidence in the testing process

lmao

not like this is important of anything

ffs what else did they fuck up

we were having a pint and a chaser and Hughie discovered a chaser and a pint got you pissed faster

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