outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

Here's a modest proposal. In order to combat against the global injustice of vaccine distribution, countries outside of the Global South can contribute their vaccines to countries in the Global South.

The USA & Canada can contribute all of their remaining doses & all its forthcoming doses to Mexico, Central America, and South America, until those countries are fully vaccinated. Then the USA & Canada may vaccinate its own residents.

The UK will do the same for India, Pakistan & Bangladesh.

France will do the same for Algeria, Tunisia & Morocco.

The rest of the EU will do the same for the rest of Africa.

And so on.

This is a way to live up to one's supposed commitments to global justice in a way that actually has costs.

You can each ask yourselves if you favor the continued injustice in favor of you & your fellow national residents, or if you want to fight against global injustice.

Unfortunately, whether we as individuals favor that injustice or not— I don't think many of us do, in theory— that injustice will continue to go on unabated. We can make our beliefs known, but against the machinations of global capital, extraction economies, colonization, and imperialism, there's not so much that we can do except put individual pressure on governments and pharmaceutical companies. And there, well, good luck.

And tbh, to put the onus on individuals within first world countries is pretty typical blame-shifting. Our governments and their corporate partners have the resources to do the right thing, and we can put pressure on them to do so, but if they don't, that isn't on us as individuals.

I agree with all of that. I didn't mean to put the onus on individuals, but rather on governments & their corporate partners, as you say. As you say, though, we as individuals could organize to push our respective governments to do this. The UN could be empowered as the global administrator of the vaccine, rather than leaving it up to individual governments. Of course there is no reason to be optimistic that this would work, but it's at least an exercise to gauge our individual commitments to global justice. If not now, when?

i like it! :)

I can just imagine the reaction in the UK if the government said it was sending vaccines to India. Oy!

They'd probably bring up Joe Root's failed appeal against Rahane in the cricket the other day.

But also, at some point there needs to be a non-shifting standard for what is "safe."

"The UN could be empowered as the global administrator of the vaccine, rather than leaving it up to individual governments."

Private pharma has been a disaster in terms of developing this vaccine so that we all get it. The profit motive seems to have ensured a scarcity of supply. This problem is not one of administration.

Hopefully we can do better during the climate crisis.

CDC reports nearly 4.5 million doses administered over the last two days. Each day was a single day record on its own.

This is major progress. https://t.co/QIDdUjrw5o

— Tim Fullerton (@TimFullerton) February 14, 2021

of course, but starting to have that conversation before even 10% of the US population is vaccinated feels reckless. Let's talk about it when we tick up to 65-70%? It's not going to require a lot of effort to make the shift.
― That's not really my scene (I'm 41) (forksclovetofu), Sunday, February 14, 2021 11:33 AM (seven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

But why set the bar that high to reopen school? Why not do it, e.g., when most school staff and elderly are vaccinated, which will be much sooner? We might not even be at 65-70% in the fall. I think you're underestimating how significant these spans of time are in, e.g., the life of a 6-year-old, vs your own life.

my partner teaches at a charter school in brooklyn with maybe 60 teachers and staff and only something like five of them have gotten their first shots. the school isn't and can't organize shots so everyone's at the mercy of local dispersal and - as much of the staff lives in places where their local hospitals aren't getting vaccines - most of the teachers are shit out of luck. they've had two covid scares over the two weeks PREPARING to go to hybrid and ended up canceling due to that.

If it's easier for you to see that note as "talk about it when the teaching staff's vaccination rate ticks up to 65-70%"

oof. my thoughts are with your partner and her colleagues, forks.

gotcha. I think that will probably change quickly - H got her appointment canceled the first time around but then got a new one pretty quickly, and that's what I'm hearing from others.

i hope you're right! i'm just saying until that changes in a trackable way, asking why we can't go back to normal just isn't an okay question.

my partner DID get her first shot two weeks ago but she's very much in the minority... and we spent all day today dealing with a concerning allergic reaction that she developed today two weeks afterwards. Just got back from the clinic with some prednisone.

two weeks later? damn

yeah. since we're talking about it - and she doesn't seem to mind me sharing - she had regular soreness on the two days after. A week later she developed some variation of "COVID arm": an itchy rash, a raised lump over the injection area, general discoloration. She saw the doctor about that and they gave her a week's worth of amoxycillin. That stopped on Friday and she's been feeling "off" since Saturday, then woke up with a coating of hives all over her body and her face swollen and ruddy. No impeded breathing or itching or pain but it was still concerning. Doctor gave her cortisone today and told her to stay on benadryl until it passed. She'll try her GP on Wednesday or sooner if it gets worse.

She'll still be getting the second dose but this certainly is giving her pause.

fwiw MA: i'm real sensitive to how much damage this time off is creating for students. my partner is doing a lot of admin work in addition to teaching and a significant portion of her student body is either failing or has just disappeared. It's horrible!

New variant drops:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/15/32-cases-of-latest-covid-variant-of-concern-found-in-uk

would have been nice if the article explained wtf "surge testing" is

4 people in Oregon have tested positive for the coronavirus after receiving both doses of the Covid-19 vaccine, health officials said. https://t.co/bZKxw3POS6

— NBC News (@NBCNews) February 14, 2021

These headlines are so shitty and unhelpful.

for anyone who didn't click through, the second para there is:

There are two cases each in Yamhill and Lane counties, the state's Health Authority said in a series of tweets on Friday. The cases are either mild or asymptomatic.

Yeah, that's why I'm so annoyed by this type of headline. The important part isn't getting shared, just the fear-mongering headline.

Which I suppose I did the same, but in an attempt to call it out.

I'm getting my first vaccination shot on thursday. I don't really understand how - I'm 45, I live in Tottenham, I'm not a key worker and aside from a heart murmur at birth that has never really caused an issue since, I'm relatively healthy. Fully expecting to be told at the vaccination centre that there's been a mistake and I should go home...

The murmur might be it? I had mine last week on the basis that having cancer as a 4yo put me in the clinically vulnerable category. Which seems weird considering my asthmatic pals my age haven’t come up in the queue yet.

i think younger people with underlying conditions are the next group (along with over 65s)

yeah, here's the list (from Wales)

1) People living in a care home for older adults and their staff carers
2) All those 80 years of age and older and frontline health and social care workers
3) All those 75 years of age and over
4) All those 70 years of age and over and people who are extremely clinically vulnerable (shielders)
5) All those 65 years of age and over
6) All individuals aged 16 years to 64 years with underlying health conditions
7) All those 60 years of age and over
8) All those 55 years of age and over
9) All those 50 years of age and over

13m in the queue before me (which doesn't seem to have changed since last week)

(might be 5 and 6 next, might be 6 and 7. and there will be slight regional differences, i guess)

I also have a heart murmur that hasn't affected me, I do still have it though as doctors have commented on it. I don't think that's it.

13m in the queue before me (which doesn't seem to have changed since last week)

― koogs, Tuesday, 16 February 2021 08:49 (twenty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

UK has a couple of weeks of reduced supply due to (iirc) work taking place to increase AZ production. Second dosage window will also begin to slow that queue. Hope you brought a crossword.

or i could've misremembered...

> koogs wrote this on thread outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc) on board I Love Everything on 09-Feb-2021
> 15m people in front of me in the uk queue, but that's down from 17m last week

(it's a range, and i can't remember which end of the range i used)

anyway, 19th april it's quoting, as earliest date

Also your GP could’ve gone through everyone on their books ahead of you, which would explain why some of us who attended GPs to have ours done got in sooner?

I am in Camden and Islington health group, which seems to be pelting through their vaccinations.

I'm getting my first vaccination shot on thursday. I don't really understand how - I'm 45, I live in Tottenham, I'm not a key worker and aside from a heart murmur at birth that has never really caused an issue since, I'm relatively healthy. Fully expecting to be told at the vaccination centre that there's been a mistake and I should go home...

In late 2019 (when the world was still relatively normal) my GPs kept texting me saying "you still haven't booked your flu jab", which puzzled me as I was 46, with no obvious health issues and had never had a flu jab. In the end I booked a slot on a Saturday morning so they would stop hassling me. When I went into the doctor's room he took one look at me and asked why I was having a flu jab. I said I had no idea, but his surgery kept telling me to get one. He looked on the system and it said that I was down as a carer. I told him I wasn't - he gave me the jab and said he'd update the data. If I hadn't done this, presumably I'd have been offered a COVID jab by now as a carer? It's possible some kind of mix up like this has happened for you.

my GP texted me this afternoon asking me if I'm still a carer (they should already know I am not, might as well have asked me if my wife's still dead) - but that was so they could offer me carer counselling services (thanks a bunch for your swift response, it's only been 2 years since I registered) not a covid vaccine.

good piece

https://newrepublic.com/article/161375/west-virginia-covid-vaccine-new-york-california

manhattan federal courthouses otm

https://nypost.com/2021/02/16/manhattan-federal-court-buildings-now-require-two-masks/

(the headline is bad. they require a (K)N95 or two masks. but don't wear two masks. wear a (K)N95.)

Which (K)N95 mask maker do you work for so I can make sure to order the right ones for your kickback, caek?

Nature on the future of life with covid.
https://media.nature.com/lw800/magazine-assets/d41586-021-00396-2/d41586-021-00396-2_18861336.png

you still haven't booked your flu jab", which puzzled me as I was 46, with no obvious health issues and had never had a flu jab.

Hopefully this will be less puzzling to both you and your GP next season!

Human Challenge study has gotten ethics approval:
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/worlds-first-coronavirus-human-challenge-study-receives-ethics-approval-in-the-uk

jesus

Hope the money's good.

Over many decades, human challenge studies have been performed safely...

Which prompts the questions, what percentage of them, and "safely" by what measure?

Good SF-specific read

https://www.sfgate.com/news/editorspicks/article/Bob-Wachter-pandemic-exit-interview-COVID-19-UCSF-15954178.php

That's a good read and I like the idea of the series, but I have to say it feels a little like tempting fate to be so sure we are in the "exit interviews" stage. Undoubtedly it feels like we've entered a new stage, a hopeful one at that, but I guess the last year (and four years, if I'm being honest) has pushed me to be a little more tempered in certainty that anything is truly "over".

Yeah I don't like it either, but that's on the site, not Wachter.

For me the meat of that Wachter interview is toward the end:

I think we'll be at something that resembles normal in the fall. I think we will stay ahead of the variants since the vaccine is moving quickly and having competent leadership at federal level is a big deal.

Everything we needed to happen has happened: There's more vaccine production, we're cutting red tape to get people vaccinated quicker, we're setting up vaccines in poorer communities. Many things are being done now that unfortunately came a year too late, but news about vaccines remains great. It’s a race but I think we’ll mostly win it. The variants may cause a surge in April but I think we'll mostly win.

Something that Wachter has not addressed is that the despite the steep decline in local case rate, the death rate in SF has been surging at/around peak levels. He dances around the issue without being absolutely direct about it in his COVID Chronicle threads which have been coming less and less often.

https://i.imgur.com/VwEHRgq.png

Like does that look like "Brunch time is LIT af, reopen everything!!!" to you? After spending the last 11 months not seeing friends and family and reducing exposure so that people do not die, city leaders think that NOW is the time to start relaxing without risking the consequences?

The variants may cause a surge in April but I think we'll mostly win.

This is what gives me pause, mostly because, as pointed out above, a lot of leaders are already in the, "fuck it, numbers are down, let's brunch it up" mode. I mean, it hasn't even been two weeks since they opened up indoor dining at 25% capacity in Illinois and they already bumped it up to 40% capacity. Drive me absolutely nuts.

5% isn't enough but I'm glad to see some attention by a national leader to the global inequity of the vaccine rollout so far.

Emmanuel Macron urges Europe to send vaccines to Africa now

French President Emmanuel Macron has said Europe and the US should urgently allocate up to 5 per cent of their current vaccine supplies to developing countries where Covid-19 vaccination campaigns have scarcely begun and China and Russia are offering to fill the gap. 

In an exclusive interview with the Financial Times by video link from the Elysée Palace, Macron said African nations were sometimes buying western vaccines such as those made by AstraZeneca at “astronomical prices” — two or three times the price paid by the EU — and being offered Chinese and Russian vaccines of uncertain efficacy against new variants of the virus. 

“We are allowing the idea to take hold that hundreds of millions of vaccines are being given in rich countries and that we are not starting in poor countries,” he said ahead of a G7 meeting by video link on Friday of the leaders of the world’s biggest economies called by UK prime minister Boris Johnson.

“It’s an unprecedented acceleration of global inequality and it’s politically unsustainable too because it’s paving the way for a war of influence over vaccines,” Macron said. “You can see the Chinese strategy, and the Russian strategy too.” 

The French president said it was crucial for pharmaceutical groups making vaccines to transfer technology abroad in order to accelerate global production of vaccines — “we will apply all the pressure we can” — and to be transparent about pricing. 

The concept of intellectual property was essential for innovation, but if vaccine manufacturers were not co-operative “inevitably the political question of intellectual property will arise in all our countries,” he said. “I don’t think it’s the right debate, it’s not helpful, but it will arise — this discussion over excess profits based on scarcity of the vaccine.”

Macron acknowledged that the EU had been slower than the US at ensuring production and supply of vaccines for its own populations and was facing shortages, but said diverting a small share of the doses to Africa from European supply chains would not hinder vaccination campaigns.

“The key is to move quicker,” he said. “We’re not talking about billions of doses immediately, or billions and billions of euros. It’s about much more rapidly allocating 4-5 per cent of the doses we have. 

“It won’t change our vaccination campaigns, but each country should set aside a small number of the doses it has to transfer tens of millions of them, but very fast, so that people on the ground see it happening.”

Macron said he had discussed the idea “a lot” with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. “She supports it and we are in agreement,” he said, calling for a “fully European and co-operative initiative” and adding that he hoped also to convince the US, where vaccine supplies are more plentiful than in the EU.

He said the plan would be a test of the reality of multilateralism. “It’s not about vaccine diplomacy, it’s not a power game — it’s a matter of public health,” Macron said, adding that he welcomed the global provision of Russian and Chinese vaccines provided they were certified by scientists for use against the appropriate variants of the virus.

“It’s unacceptable when a vaccine exists to reduce the chances of a woman or a man according to the place where they happen to live.” 

While implicitly acknowledging that the rollout of vaccines to developing countries was a diplomatic battle that western countries were currently losing, Macron said it was in the interest of all countries that wanted their borders to remain open to extend vaccination programmes beyond their home territory. 

“It’s in the interest of the French and the Europeans. Today I have more than 10m of our fellow citizens who have families on the other side of the Mediterranean,” he said. 

Macron, whose government has been criticised for the slow rollout of vaccinations in France, insisted that transferring “3-5 per cent of the vaccines we have in stock to Africa” would have no impact on the domestic inoculation programme. “It won’t delay it by a single day given the way we use our doses.” France has promised vaccinations to all adults who want them by the end of the summer. 

Without helping their neighbours around the Mediterranean and in the Middle East and the Balkans, European countries would never be able to reopen because they would end up reimporting Covid-19 variants resistant to their vaccines, he said.