outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

I mean, god forbid I should be doom and gloom in the global pandemic thread. But yeah, if you guys think my pessimism is a bit much, you should see how I feel! I’d prefer a dose of optimism, but I’m just not finding any, what with the constant discovery of new variants, more studies on long term ill effects and the woefully inadequate rollout.

please step away from the information that is making you feel bad

I have mixed feelings. I’m much less afraid of the virus itself than I used to be. Maybe because I’ve seen so many people I know have extremely mild cases and the only harsher cases among people I know were early on. Obviously that’s anecdotal, but it includes even people who are higher risk. The case fatality rate for me or my wife (who just got her first vaccine dose) or my kids is incredibly low. Even for my parents it’s nothing close to cancer. I’m also skeptical of there being a high incidence of permanent damage in otherwise healthy people with mild cases but I could be wrong.

At the same time, it spreads so easily and is deadly enough that we can’t just go about our business, and the combination of the new variants and slow vaccine rollout has left me a bit despairing.

Ok

man half the people in this thread are determined to feel like dogshit no matter what’s going on, huh? probably should not be surprised by that, it’s ilx!

where I live a bunch of cars broke down in the snow and one of them was a pharmacy truck with some techs on board and so they got out of and vaccinated all the folks in cars bc the supply was gonna go bad either way. That’s cool! It’s *amazing* we have a vaccine less than a year after this thing hit the USA! It works against the major new variants! wtf is wrong with you people, the news about all this is mostly incredible.

n.b. I almost died out of nowhere of an unrelated grave surprise illness this summer so it’s great to be here, things aren’t going that bad! There was *zero* plan from the federal government to roll out shots before last Wednesday. It’ll be slow but it will happen. Cmon.

once things really start rolling out I think cases will drop very quickly and we may have a day this year with 0 Covid deaths in the United States. that'll be a pretty big celebration, I reckon.

Deaths will fall precipitously sooner than cases hopefully as the most vulnerable 15% or so of the population reaches full protection

it’s perfectly reasonable to be doom and gloom, but your need to reiterate it four times a day is tiresome and unhelpful. we’re living through it too, you don’t have to convince anyone

that said it’s far more welcome than man alive’s insistent ‘no one *i* know has gotten sick, so this is all overblown’ bullshit

Yeah, sorry. That’s absolutely fair. I’m just running on fumes these days and struggling. I’ll try to fuck off for awhile.

don't worry, jon. i'm with you, i'm frustrated. there are few outlets for it right now, to blow off steam. this continuous, goddamn steam

i just registered zachtbd.com so i guess it's official

No such thing as posting wrong*.

*excl. bigotry

zachtbf.com

Johnson and Johnson vaccine's headline effectiveness 66%. Hmmm.

wanted to apologize if I came in a little hot — there’s a reason I don’t post much on these sorts of threads. I’m a childless dude living in the relatively covid-safe PNW who long ago priced in a year and a half of social silence and hundreds and thousands of deaths. It breaks my heart to see online folk I care about from afar despairing anew and I’m sorry the fever hasn’t broken, so to speak. Try to find some hope if you want, it’s out there on the ground and the horizon.

66% after one dose seems pretty good, more effective after a single dose than pfizer or moderna

Key points I get so far about the JNJ vaccine - highly protective against severe disease, hospitalization or death after *one dose*. Study includes S African patients so presumably captures some B.1.135 variant. I view this as a clear win. And two-dose regimen likely even better. https://t.co/MoR4rfkGco

— Ed MD (@notdred) January 29, 2021

Clay, your post was a little ray of sunshine and I am glad you didn't die.

The two posts together.

Will people who have already had a jab of the older vaccines now have to have another dose of these latest ones that are more efficient for the SA variant?

I mean it feels like the vaccine conveyer belt is rapidly picking up speed now, so its' probably an irrelevant question as everyone is going to get the more efficient jabs eventually.

Was posting more on the mostly apolitical thread about my experiences but this month I’ve now received the vaccine — Pfizer, both doses, second one Wednesday night. Yesterday I had about eight hours from mid morning to early evening where the fatigue and aches hit but it pretty rapidly settled after that and I’m about back where I was. It was strangely good to get that feeling because then you know it’s working, but mostly just strange because it was like a flu but without any of the other symptoms. Good to be on the other side of it in any event!

BTW the reason I got it is due to my work at the main city hospital — both there and UCSF have been going gangbusters in getting staff and then long term patients covered.

I've managed to quash my pessimism because, however the Biden White House fails in other areas, it takes the virus seriously. Vaccinations are only going to increase. I think of 1942, months after Pearl Harbor. Nobody much remembers how the United States had no munitions, infrastructure, etc. to speak of. Nothing. By the fall production had accelerated so intensely that it was a matter of time when Germany and Japan would capitulate.

Yeah I remember saying when this all started to happen is that a WWII comparison can work if you allow for time. We are in essence coming up on a Pearl Harbor 1st anniversary — you really have to long haul it.

I was supposed to receive my appointment letter "by the end of the week" - today I discovered from the Health Minister that that includes Sunday, when there's no mail...

Ach well, just another three weeks of wandering around a cancer hospital full of coughing dicknoses.

Ugh, sorry onimo. Hope you get that appointment letter sooner rather than later.

While undoubtedly Biden's team will help things in the near future, I think much of my own pessimism stems from the local follow through. I'm frustrated that very, very few of the eligible folks in my life have been able to set up an appointment, much less get the jab itself. And our state and local politicians are painting a very different, far less rosy picture than the one that is being painted by Biden and the national team. I would expect this to be something really easy for politicians to be optimistic about, without making any specific promises, "things are looking up, things are improving and we think we'll see it rolling out faster and faster in the near future, yada, yada". The fact that they are being openly kinda pessimistic tells me that there is some disconnect between the national and local levels that we haven't fully grokked yet.

How many vaccines are there now? I've lost count, which can only be a good sign. Can't imagine any of them will be made open-source though, so expect price-gouging in poorer areas of the world to continue for years.

A good handful according to this

https://www.raps.org/news-and-articles/news-articles/2020/3/covid-19-vaccine-tracker

that said it’s far more welcome than man alive’s insistent ‘no one *i* know has gotten sick, so this is all overblown’ bullshit

― mookieproof, Friday, January 29, 2021 1:05 AM (nine hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I think there's a position in between "bullshit" and the way some media reports have treated it.

Just for example, there were a bunch of articles going around a few weeks ago based on a doctor's tweet about how "COVID lung is worse than smokers' lung" and supposedly even 70-80% of asymptomatic patients had severe lung damage. Many people I know shared this information unquestioningly, even though it was wholly unscientific and not based on any research or study.

Here, there's at least *some* pushback on that idea, but the lede is still buried.

https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/verify/are-covid-19-lungs-worse-than-smokers-lungs-covid-19-lung-photos/65-13085a3d-6516-42c5-a128-c0f2abc9d5cc

Yes, even mild COVID patients may have bad chest xrays (not as bad as lifelong smokers) -- but the damage isn't permanent.

And to be clear, can COVID cause permanent lung damage? Yes, in patients with severe cases. That's bad. That's scary. I just think that the people I know who are 35 and healthy and think they are going to catch COVID and wind up with collapsed lungs are probably a bit overly worried.

I saw the Coughing Dicknoses open for Firehose at the 9:30 back in '92

wonder if that rumoured lost Peel session will ever surface

lol fuck Macron (2)

Macron on AZ/Oxford: “Today everything suggests that it is almost ineffective for those over 65, and some say over 60.” https://t.co/QsFFLqEcbG via @financialtimes @VJMallet

— Anne-Sylvaine Chassany (@ChassNews) January 29, 2021

And to be clear, can COVID cause permanent lung damage? Yes, in patients with severe cases. That's bad. That's scary. I just think that the people I know who are 35 and healthy and think they are going to catch COVID and wind up with collapsed lungs are probably a bit overly worried.

going to wait for the source hawk to leap on man alive’s “wusa9” link with the same speed they did the Lancet btw

Merkel's taking the same stance, right?

2xp

wonder if that rumoured lost Peel session will ever surface

Thankfully, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) has approved the AZ/Oxford jab for all age groups past 18.

I was going to say, the EMA approved it.

Tbf the Hundred Years' War was never not a misnomer.

I don’t understand the difference between saying it’s all good for a 64 year old and 65 year olds shouldn’t get it at all tbh

I guess they need a cut-off point, which is bound to seem a bit arbitrary.

My sister-in-law is a reporter/occasional anchor on WUSA, cool to see her colleagues’ work get mentioned

My sister’s friend - a healthy woman in her 20s - was hospitalised with covid last year and is now registered disabled & doctors have told her she is likely to be living with the effects for the rest of her life. My sister told me she can’t take a shower without needing to lie down after. She posted on fb from the hospital a few months after being diagnosed, her lungs were operating at half capacity and her O2 dropped about 10% when she walked any distance.

Obviously this is not the norm for a fit and healthy young person - *as every single person you are talking to knows*, majority are mild or asymptomatic - but man alive, claiming that you are just talking about “some media reports” does feel like goalpost shifting when you were directly responding to gyac’s post that simply (correctly) said that lots of ppl will suffer heart & lung damage with a post downplaying that. If all you were arguing against is the notion that mild or asymptomatic cases will result in organ damage, something nobody itt said or thinks, then fine I guess? But that’s not what it looked like esp coming hot on the heels of ridiculous horseshit like “I think we have a milder variant because nobody I know has been hospitalised lately”

“Today everything suggests that it is almost ineffective for those over 65, and some say over 60.”

"Many people say ~insert lie~"

Is a very Trumpian formation

yo Clay just a shoutout to say I'm glad you're here, and thanks for those posts

sorry folks but macron is, well, he's not right, because the trial was so badly run that no one really knows if the AZ vaccine works for 65+, but there is basically no evidence that either way. which is not to say it doesn't. it would be a surprise. but "no evidence either way" is not the stuff agency approvals are made of, and its honestly bordering on reckless (like so many things about the UK respone) to approve it.

the german report on their (non)approval breaks this down. they enrolled too few old people in the trial. they got one case of covid among 300ish 65+ people in both the control arm and the treatment arm. the vaccine is somewhere between -1405% effective and +94%. i.e. they are guessing.

Here it is: the crucial table showing Germany's calculations on the AstraZeneca vaccine's efficacy in over-65s. And good God, look at that confidence interval! For over-65s there was only one infection in the treatment group and one in the placebo group. pic.twitter.com/edUPhaL7sS

— Oliver Moody (@olivernmoody) January 28, 2021

nothing magic happens when you turn 65, and it would be a surprise if it didn't work, but they don't have the right data to say.

in an ideal world you wouldn't give healthy people a vaccination (which is not zero risk) unless you knew for sure that it worked. if we weren't in pandemic this vaccine would not be in use anywhere in the world. even in the "let's just do it an be legends" countries.

but we're in a pandemic so fair enough.

xp appreciate the “can’t guarantee based on lack of data” but think Daniel Howdon is otm both itt

The 8% story about the AZ vaccine was I guess based on this 6.3% number here, the central estimate for an effectiveness calculation based on one event being observed from ~300 in each treatment arm. In a way, less stupid than the previous speculation; in another, much, much more. pic.twitter.com/JgP2TuwYoN

— Daniel Howdon (@danielhowdon) January 28, 2021

jfc this might look less unhinged but it's probably going to cause much, much more harm than Trump's bizarre ramblings about "getting light inside the body"

— Daniel Howdon (@danielhowdon) January 29, 2021