Coronavirus Megathread 5: We Need a Little Pfizer, Right This Very Minute!

You missed an opportunity with Christmas with the COVIDiots, but otherwise, I approve.

There were simply TOO many good titles!

I am scared of both Covid and side effects of the vaccine.

I'm still waiting for my assigned time, but every one of my coworkers who have gotten it have been fine.

No one has grown an extra head. Although I did secretly want it to turn a twinky nurse into a buffed-up Spider-Man type.

I think we’ve established that was vasovagal syncope and that nurse faints every time she gets any type of shot R3.

Wtf about that Disney family from the previous thread? I mean I love Disney and I’d been planning to have my upcoming birthday there for about a decade, but I’ve pushed my reservation back until after I think my wife and I are likely to be vaccinated and I am ready to push it back again, because death/homicide is not a birthday present. And it certainly isn’t a Christmas present.

Also from the previous thread and related to vaccination side effects; how funny is it that allergic reactions are treated with, in addition to epinephrine, Pepcid and Benadryl? It brings me back to thread one.

I mean, anaphylaxis is a mass release of histamine. Not sure I see why it's funny.

If I were still alive, I would have kicked the coronavirus in the cunt.

Maybe ironic is a better word R6/VOTN. In thread one there was a discussion of stocking up on an -itidine and Benadryl (and the other class of heart burn meds) as a do it yourself treatment for cytokine storm in the event hospitals care became unavailable.

I remember. I did too, actually, but I was more into the idea of aspirin for the antiplatelet effect.

I'd put good money on the guy on the United flight being hypercoagulable from COVID, getting a DVT from the flight to Orlando, and then having an embolus on the way back.

Britain’s longest-suffering COVID-19 patient gets a holiday miracle

Britain’s longest-suffering coronavirus patient — hospitalized for 222 days, or nearly eight months — is a father of five whose family more than once refused to let him be taken off life support, according to the Mirror.

Now their faith in dad Ali Sakallioglu, 57, has been rewarded.

“I was given zero chance of survival, so it feels like a miracle to be able to celebrate Christmas,” he said.

“On three different occasions they phoned my daughter and told her to get everyone down because I wasn’t going to make it,” he recalled.

Now, he said, “I can’t wait for Christmas – I have to be careful as I want to be here next Christmas.”

The cabbie will be sitting down to dinner on the holiday with his girlfriend, one of his sons and the son’s girlfriend at the family’s home in South London.

He’s also eager to be vaccinated against COVID-19 so he can go back to work.

“I’d encourage everyone to get it,” Sakallioglu said of the vaccine.

What virus? Over 1 million travelers screened by TSA Friday

So much for staying home!

More than a million people were screened by the U.S. Transportation Security Administration on Friday as the holiday travel season kicked off in earnest — despite urgent warnings from public health officials.

“Gatherings with family and friends who do not live with you can increase the chances of getting or spreading COVID-19 or the flu,” the CDC has warned.

Travel in American airports has plummeted 59 percent as compared to a year ago.

Still, the 1,066,747 who were screened by TSA on Friday marked the sixth time passenger counts were above the one million mark since the pandemic began in March, according to USA Today.

CDC issues new recommendations on getting Covid-19 vaccine for people with allergies

From CNN’s Nadia Kounang

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued new recommendations on getting a Covid-19 vaccine for those with a history of allergies.

The recommendations, published on the CDC’s site on Saturday, suggest that people who have ever had a severe allergic reaction, also known as anaphylaxis, to any ingredient in a Covid-19 vaccine should not get that vaccine.

The CDC considers a reaction severe if it requires the person to be treated with epinephrine or they need to be hospitalized. Symptoms of anaphylaxis can include shortness of breath, a closing of the throat, nausea, and dizziness.

The agency added that people with a history of anaphylaxis to other vaccines or injectable medications should consult their doctor on getting the Covid-19 vaccine.

In corresponding guidance issued to vaccine providers, the agency said the “CDC considers a history of severe allergic reaction such as anaphylaxis to any vaccine or to any injectable therapy (e.g., intramuscular, intravenous, or subcutaneous) as a precaution, but not contraindication, to vaccination.”

For people with a personal or family history of severe reactions unrelated to vaccines or injectable medicines, the CDC says, they may still get the Covid-19 vaccine. The agency added that individuals who have a history of allergies to any oral medications or people with milder reactions to vaccines may also still get vaccinated.

If an individual does experience anaphylaxis after their initial covid-19 shot, the CDC says they should not get the second shot.

More details: The agency recommends that vaccine providers monitor all people for 15 minutes after getting the vaccine; those with a history of severe allergic reactions should be monitored for 30 minutes. In the event that a reaction does occur, the CDC says all vaccine providers should have epinephrine, antihistamines, stethoscopes, blood pressure cuffs, and timing devices on hand to treat and monitor reactions.

They also note that reports of severe reactions need to be sent to the national Vaccine Adverse Reporting System.

WHO: England’s new Covid-19 variant picked up in Denmark, the Netherlands, Australia

From CNN’s Arnaud Siad in London

The new Covid-19 variant, originating from south-east England, has been identified in Denmark, the Netherlands and as far as Australia, World Health Organization (WHO) Covid-19 technical lead Maria Van Kerkhove said on Sunday.

"We understand that this variant has been identified also in Denmark, in the Netherlands and there was one case in Australia and it didn’t spread further there,” she told the BBC in a pre-recorded interview.

Asked whether it was her understanding that the new variant originated or evolved from southeastern England, she said: “It is, yes. From the information that [the UK] shared with us in either south-east England or in London, yes.”

She added that “the UK had picked [the existence of the new variant] up in September and seen that this had been circulating in south-east England since September.”

“It is of concern that the virus is spreading and that it has so many mutations,” she said.

She also added: “We understand that the virus does not cause more severe disease from the preliminary information that [the UK] shared with us, although again those studies are underway to look at hospitalized patients with this variant.”

Van Kerkhove said that doing more sequencing will be helpful in determining whether this variant is circulating elsewhere.

“The longer this virus spreads, the more opportunities it has to change. So we really need to do everything we can right now to prevent spread,” she added.

Eurostar will be cancelling all trains to and from the UK starting tomorrow.

Italy, The Netherlands, Belgium and Austria ban ALL flights from Britain while Germany also considers restrictions after discovery of the mutant 'Super-Covid' strain that is 70% more infectious

Everything's better with a gif, OP...

Tell it Muriel, R16.

Reason for the season r16.

You know that new strain from the UK is gonna come to the USA...maybe it's already here!

Of course it is, R19.

This article has a but of detail on the nature of the mutations.

Sylvia, I'm honored by your choice of my thread title suggestion. I feel like just like Suzette Charles after she snatched the crown off Vanessa Williams' head. Mwah!

You still weren't first choice, Suzette.

People are probably worrying about the wrong thing when it comes to this mutation. Viruses mutate, it's what they do, but we still manage to find vaccines. The Pfizer vaccine, for one, was shown to work in the lab against 17 variants, so I won't lose a lot of sleep about this one.

What bothers me more is that, the more easily a virus spreads, the more people need to be vaccinated for herd immunity to take effect. The reason measles didn't burn itself out in the olden days before vaccines was that it was so contagious that even a small number of non-immune people was enough to keep the virus going.

Next phase of vaccinations, per CDC panel recommendations:

-75+

-firefighters, police

-teachers, day care staff

-corrections officers

-postal workers

-public transit workers

-farmers, grocery store employees

The day after Thanksgiving, Dr. Deborah Birx traveled to one of her vacation properties in Delaware.

She was accompanied by three generations of her family from two households.

Birx, her husband, a daughter, son-in-law & two grandchildren were present.

This, just days after Birx warned Americans to “be vigilant” and limit celebrations to “your immediate household.”

Now how do you think the wife's feeling now that her husband has died mid flight and EMT's, for starters, probably contracted the virus from him? The selfishness and entitlement of some people are beyond words

yep. that UK strain is probably here in NYC already...there are 6 flights from UK to JFK every day!

A friend of mine who lives in NYC just said to me-

[quote] What’s weird is friends who are claiming to be super vigilant are testing positive. They don’t get terribly ill but they’re flummoxed how they’re contracting it.

She hadn't heard about the new strain in the UK.

I have friends who claim to be super vigilant but have gone to weddings and funerals and church services and small family gatherings, etc.

R29 Super vigilant like DL icon Debbie Birx!

An estimated 85 million Americans will travel (including flying) to reunite with family this Christmas! This is despite health care professionals dire warnings against it and say this will cause a super-spreader event.

It's just fucking unbelievable that most Americans are so selfish. It's not just the travelers but the people they are going to visit. Add those entire numbers up.

Thanksgiving and now this. That's why health care professionals are saying 600K dead by the end of February. The only upside is that Dump will be gone and hopefully Biden will halt the politicization of the virus but there's a lot of damage to be undone - almost insurmountable actually.

[quote]Thanksgiving and now this.

Yep: The number of coronavirus cases in New York City sharply escalated after Thanksgiving — with more people diagnosed with the virus on Dec. 1 than any other day since mid-April, data compiled by Mayor de Blasio’s office shows.

The shocking increase could be a somber predictor of what to expect after Christmas if people again flout anti-virus safety measures, the data suggests.

85 million is hard to believe. How can Christmas reunions be that important during this crisis? Just a few months to go and vaccines will be available. Why chance it? I’m thunderstruck by this irresponsible behavior.

[quote]I’m thunderstruck by this irresponsible behavior.

I wish I still had the capacity to be shocked by this stupidity. But my Facebook feed has been filled with people railing against the "COVID hoax" since March, and they've only become more strident with time. Even some of my liberal friends, though they talk the talk, have embraced mask-wearing but seem to have totally given up on the social distancing part of the equation.

My affinity for "social distancing" used to be called "anti-social".

Deplorables aren't known for their logic.

Despite Brazil having Bolsanaro as wannabe despot, it's no longer a global hotspot because its congress passed a national mask mandate in the fall (overriding B's veto) and now certain states, such as Rio are requiring vaccinations

Tennessee Department of Health officials announced Sunday that the state could “break” its hospital system if a Christmas surge of COVID-19 cases matches that of Thanksgiving.

Commissioner Lisa Piercey said there have been multiple household gatherings where people have been affected statewide, as Thanksgiving surges proved.

Despite Piercey’s warning, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R) refused to order a statewide mask mandate in a video address hours later. Instead, he announced a new executive order to limit indoor gatherings to 10 people and implored people to keep holiday gatherings to just those in their household.

This is a restaurant that still has indoor seating near Chicago. Nobody is closing it down and I don’t know why. There are Trump flags on pickup trucks near the entrance.

I saw a Brit tweet this out:

"My parent’s generation faced the Blitz, the V1, V2, rationing and separation from each other for 6 years. Can this generation stiffen their lips a little please ?"

The thing is, lots of the people who are insisting that they have the right to not wear masks, not socially distance, and have huge gatherings indoors are pretty old. It's not just young people pulling this crap. My aunt, aged 78, tried to have her usual huge Thanksgiving this year with not just extended family but lots of church friends. Nobody would go, and she acted baffled about it. She insists "life must go on" and "if I get it, I get it." Doesn't seem to give a shit that she might cause one of her elderly friend to get it and die.

"Life must go on. If I get it, I get it."

The cognition deficits are troubling. I'm not just referring to your 78 year old aunt. So many think this way, including my brothers.

Americans are a very religious people so they're experts at lying to themselves and others.

Oy vey, Laurie Garrett tweeted that there are cases where previously infected Covid patients are getting reinfected with the mutant strain. This is potentially really bad news. There really hadn’t been a large number of reinfections reported before now.

Someone hit me up on Scruff whose screen name said Vacc'ed- Visiting LA and PS. And I thought- no you aren't! Sure, you could have gotten the first shot, but you sure haven't gotten the second one. And he's a nurse, so he should know how this works.

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

Laurie Garrett told Chris Hayes tonight that the new COVID variant fueling a resurgence of the disease in South Africa may be hitting younger people much harder than the original strains.

Regarding current tests in US to detect this variant: PCR test should still test positive for this mutated version of the coronavirus, but . . . current PCR detects 3 spike proteins on US virus but will only test positive for 2 of new variant's proteins. Since it's early, researchers wouldn't know right know PCR is missing any people infected with this mutation

Italy becomes 5th country to spot the mutated vivid virus.

12/22/2020

Still hate the tiresome pearl clutching death mongers of Data Lounge.

Mutual r50.

R47 Hold me David. I'm scared.

CNBC: World Health Organization officials said the coronavirus is mutating “at a much slower rate” than seasonal influenza, even as officials in the U.K. announced this weekend that a new mutation of the virus is allowing it to spread more easily.

“And so far, even though we’ve seen a number of changes and a number of mutations, none has made a significant impact on either the susceptibility of the virus to any of the currently used therapeutics, drugs, or the vaccines under development, and one hopes that that will continue to be the case," WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan said at a press briefing Monday.

To allay some DLers' concern, BioNTech (Pfizer's EU partner) said it could produce a new vaccine against the coronavirus variant in six weeks. Link is behind paywalled FTimes

R54, now they are saying the original vaccine also prevents the new variant

Boris The Butthead.

Here's what we know — and don't know — about the UK coronavirus variant

From CNN's Zamira Rahim

The United Kingdom has identified a new, potentially more contagious coronavirus variant linked to a recent surge in cases in England.

The new mutation is being called VUI-202012/01 – the first "Variant Under Investigation" in the UK in December 2020. While scientists hunt for more information about the variant, its impact is already being felt, with dozens of countries imposing restrictions on travelers from the UK.

Here's what you need to know:

What is a variant and why are officials concerned about this one? A variant occurs when the genetic structure of a virus changes. All viruses mutate over time and new variants are common, including for the novel coronavirus.

Like other variants, this one carries a genetic fingerprint that makes it easy to track, and it happens to be one that is now widespread in southeast England. That alone does not necessarily mean a variant is more contagious or dangerous.

But scientists advising the UK government have estimated that this variant could be up to 70% more effective at spreading than others. Peter Horby, chair of the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (NERVTAG), said Monday that experts "now have high confidence that this variant does have a transmission advantage" over other variants.

The World Health Organization said Tuesday that the changes to the variant include 14 key mutations, and that some of them "may influence the transmissibility of the virus in humans," though it added that further laboratory investigations were needed.

Where did the variant originate and how has it taken hold? The new variant is believed to have originated in southeast England, according to the WHO. Public Health England (PHE) says backwards tracing, using genetic evidence, suggests the variant first emerged in England in September. It then circulated in very low levels until mid-November.

Chris Whitty, England's chief medical officer, said Saturday the variant was responsible for 60% of new infections in London, which have nearly doubled in the last week alone.

Multiple experts have also suggested that this new variant could have been amplified because of a superspreader event, meaning the current spike in cases could also have been caused by human behavior.

Which countries are affected? The variant has already spread globally. As well as the UK, the variant has also been detected in Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands and Australia, according to the WHO.

Australia has identified two cases of the variant in a quarantined area in Sydney and Italy has also identified one patient infected with the variant.

A similar but separate variant has also been identified in South Africa, where scientists say it is spreading quickly along coastal areas of the country.

Meanwhile, in Pacifica, the mask-free yoga train rolls on without consequence...

A few days following the county closure of indoor fitness centers, Antoon posted this message on Facebook: "We just keep bringing the heat, no fear mongers here."

The I-Team saw at least 14 people not wearing masks enter the business for two classes Thursday night.

[ABC7 reporter] Sierra: "I'm trying to understand why you're still hosting indoor classes right now? Can you explain that?"

Antoon:"It's my right."

Sierra: "It's currently a violation of the health advisory."

Antoon: "Go away, b****."

Heather Forshey leads San Mateo County's COVID Compliance Unit that launched in mid-October to help ensure businesses comply with the state's guidelines.

Forshey confirmed 723 complaints have been filed to the unit so far that have prompted 80 written warnings.

"The vast majority of businesses just want to do the right thing," says Forshey.

If bars can be sued for drunk driving accidents after patrons leave, businesses that violate health ordinances should be able to sued for infections that likely occurred on premises.

Overuse of antibiotics for COVID-19 to blame in ‘super gonorrhea’ spike

Azithromycin, a common antibiotic used to treat chest and sinus infections, has been used during the pandemic to prevent co-infection of hospitalized coronavirus patients and to treat inflammatory symptoms of severe infections.

But the widespread doling out of the drug — which has since been found to have no clinical benefit for COVID-19 patients — has caused a buildup of resistance to the bacteria that causes gonorrhea, the World Health Organization (WHO) told the Sun.

“Overuse of antibiotics in the community can fuel the emergence of antimicrobial resistance in gonorrhea,” a WHO spokesman told the outlet, noting that azithromycin was used for COVID-19 treatment earlier in the pandemic.

Making matters worse, the contagion has also “disrupted” usual STI services by overburdening medical centers and making people scared to go to them, the spokesman said.

“This means more STI cases are not diagnosed properly with more people self-medicating as a result,” the WHO rep told the UK paper.

“Such a situation can fuel the emergence of resistance in gonorrhea including gonorrhea superbug (super gonorrhea) or gonorrhea with high-level resistance to current antibiotics recommended to treat it.”

The Sun cited a US study that showed 71 percent of COVID patients were given antibiotics — while at most 4 percent had reason to need them.

“The use of antibiotics will not treat [COVID-19] but it will create resistance among bacteria that already exists in our bodies,” the WHO’s assistant director-general for its antimicrobial resistance division, Dr. Hanan Balkhy, told the UK paper.

“The bottom line is, antibiotics should not be prescribed unless there’s a clear medical indication for them,” she said.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) last week said gonorrhea cases have increased 63 percent since 2014 — warning that it “can facilitate transmission” of HIV.

Infections can also lead to infertility in both men and women, as well as cause blindness in babies of infected mothers.

Kevin Cox, executive chairman of UK startup Biotaspheric Limited, told the Sun that the medical world “urgently [needs] new treatments.”

“People infected with super gonorrhea will infect others and accelerate antimicrobial resistance,” he said.

South Carolina governor tests positive for Covid-19

From CNN’s Devon M. Sayers

South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster tested positive for Covid-19 Monday evening, his office said.

McMaster is “experiencing mild symptoms with a cough and slight fatigue,” his office said.

The governor has been in quarantine since his wife, Peggy, tested positive for Covid-19 on Friday. The governor's wife remains asymptomatic, McMaster's office said.

“Peggy and I urge everyone to be extra careful during the Christmas holiday season,” McMaster said in the release. “This virus spreads very easily.”

That's what happens when you put Ayn Rand in charge of public health, R59.

[quote]I may have a different view of the power and authority I have, as a function of my position, than some of my colleagues.

[quote]Just because one has the legal authority to do something, doesn’t mean one has to use it, or that using it is the best course of action.

[quote]What I believed back in May, and what I believe now, is the power and authority to control this pandemic lies primarily in your hands, not mine.

[quote]I’m not sure we know what we’re doing.

[quote]without any hint of enforcement, and I simply don’t believe it will do much good.

...says the person who does nothing about a business with 80 written violations.

Trump Appointees Edited A Dozen COVID Reports To Mislead The Public About Pandemic

The governor was at that white maskless of the red death last week.

R63 Nothing that obscene creature and his partners in crime have done surprises me one bit anymore.

Can someone link the very first Corona freakout? I want to take a walk down memory lane.

That first Corona thread really is worth reading again.

No one's laughing now.

The virus actually is doing what is normal, it's learning to spread itself more easily. It wouldn't surprise me that soon we will learn that is it actually weakening somewhat. That's what they think HIV has done. A virus that mutates to be MORE virulent tends to kill off its hosts so it runs the risk of killing itself off which is counterproductive, think survival of the fittest. I just bet they will find soon that it's a little less robust.

Now about the yoga classes, as long as there is no punitive action they will keep on, eighty warnings mean nothing, they just throw them away.

Did you see the size of that fat pig running the yoga studio? He clearly knows as much about fitness as he does about COVID.

What could possibly go wrong?

[quote]Did you see the size of that fat pig running the yoga studio? He clearly knows as much about fitness as he does about COVID.

I never want to be exposed to his Extended Puppy.

That new stimulus package is a fucking joke. Gender studies in Pakistan?

UK reports two cases of a second Covid-19 variant from South Africa, health secretary says

From CNN's Vasco Cotovio

British Health authorities have detected two cases of yet another new variant of Covid-19, originally identified in South Africa, British Health Secretary Matt Hancock said on Wednesday.

“This new variant is highly concerning because it is yet more transmissible and it appears to have mutated further than the new variant that has been discovered in the UK,” Hancock said. “Both are contacts of cases who have traveled from South Africa over the past few weeks."

The Health Secretary announced new restrictions for travelers arriving in the UK from South Africa and also told those who have been in contact with people arriving from South Africa, in the past 15 days, to go into quarantine immediately.

“These measures are temporary while we investigate further this new strain which is shortly to be analyzed at Porton Down,” he said.

New York City reports first serious allergic reaction to Covid-19 vaccine

From CNN's Sheena Jones

The New York City Health Department is reporting the first serious adverse allergic reaction to the Covid-19 vaccine, according to a statement.

“We have received a single report of a serious adverse event in a health care worker. The health care worker, who had a significant allergic reaction, has been treated and is in stable condition,” according to the press release.

At this time it is unclear if this adverse reaction is a result of the Pfizer vaccine, but the health department says reactions like this are rare, but note they have been reported with the Pfizer vaccine.

Nearly 30,000 vaccinations have been administered in the city, according to the release and the city along with CDC will continue tracking more severe side effects.

“We will continue to move forward with the coronavirus vaccine distribution to ensure that health care workers and nursing home staff and residents are protected against COVID-19,” according to the release.

Another COVID milestone will be passed at some point today – the virus will have killed 1 out of every 1,000 Americans.

My Jay-done has a peanut allergy. I'm not vaccinating him.

Just give him a Nutter Butter r79.

Huh R76, there’s a technical distinction between a variant and a strain and at work today they stressed that the UK virus was just a variant and not a different strain. So it is a little disturbing to hear the UK health minister describe the South Africa virus as a strain. Hopefully he was just speaking non-technically.

Do I just put the thread one URL in the website link field for R66? (I know, I am being a lazy cow for asking.)

Yup. But you are neither lazy nor a cow ElderLez.

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

Thanks R82

Here you go R66

Interesting how easily Holocaust denial techniques can be retrofitted for Covid denial, but then these people have had a lot of practice using them.

R83 sounds like an article written in April. The air in COVID ICU suites is full of COVID, you say? Quelle surprise!

this will never end. there is a new strain from S. Africa that is MORE contagious than the UK strain and it's in the UK.

It's still very unclear to me what they're basing their "more contagious" pronouncements upon.

A second more contagious new strain of COVID-19 has been detected in the U.K. from South Africa

Another, even more contagious strain of coronavirus has been detected in two cases in the U.K, the British health secretary said in a news briefing on Wednesday.

This is the second mutant version of coronavirus announced by the British government in a week, following Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s announcement on Saturday that a new, 70% more contagious variant was behind a recent spike in COVID-19 cases.

The two cases involving the second new variant are both contacts of people who have travelled from South Africa. Health experts said that the South African strain is “very different” to the U.K. variant detected last week, and that both appear to be more contagious than the typical strain of coronavirus.

“This new variant is highly concerning because it is yet more transmissible and it appears to have mutated further than the new variant discovered in the U.K.,” the country’s health secretary Matt Hancock said.

All travellers from South Africa in the past two weeks, and their close contacts, have been ordered to self-isolate immediately.

“We have more evidence on the transmission for the U.K. variant because we’ve been studying that with great detail with academic partners. We’re still learning about the South African variant,” said Dr. Susan Hopkins of Public Health England. “Both of them look like they’re more transmissible.”

The U.K.’s deputy chief medical officer, Dr. Jenny Harries, said that “we expect viruses to mutate so I think this should not come as a surprise. What is obviously very clear is that the U.K. has a huge capacity to look at these different variants … in early-stage so that’s very positive.”

Hancock revealed the presence of the South African strain in a news briefing where he announced that millions more people in the east and southeast of England will move into the toughest tier of restrictions starting Dec. 26.

The U.K. reported a record 39,237 new COVID-19 cases on Wednesday.

One of the news broadcasters mentioned prisoners on death row are to receive the vaccine before you or I.

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

🎉 [italic] Welcome 2021, with it's brand spankin' new set of nightmares.

Maybe it's time to board the Ark !

[quote]Maybe it's time to board the Ark !

Sorry humanity, that ship has sailed.

It took more than nine months for California to record 1 million confirmed cases of COVID-19. It has taken less than six weeks to see 1 million more.

Once regarded as a model for stopping the spread of COVID-19, California on Wednesday passed 2 million recorded cases of the deadly illness, reaching the milestone as Christmas approaches in the midst of the darkest and most dangerous days of the pandemic.

Hundreds of people are dying from the virus in California each day. A crush of new patients is threatening to overwhelm hospitals.

CNN: An Oregon resident knowingly went to work while sick and then tested positive for the virus.

Two separate Covid-19 outbreaks have now been traced back to that person, officials said. Seven people died as a result of the first outbreak, and hundreds of people were forced to self-isolate over the second one.

County officials referred to the incident as a "superspreader action," calling it "one of the most concerning issues we are facing right now."

TSA says almost 1.2 million people flew on Wednesday, a new pandemic record

From CNN’s Pete Muntean

The TSA says it screened nearly 1.2 million people at airports on Wednesday, a new air travel record of the pandemic.

At least 1,191,123 people passed through security checkpoints, more than the previous pandemic record set the Sunday after Thanksgiving.

This marks the sixth straight day of air travel numbers near or greater than one million people, stoking new fears from health the experts that there will be another spike in coronavirus infections like after Thanksgiving.

Scientist who discovered Ebola in the 1970s warns of future pandemics

Professor Jean-Jacques Muyembe-Tamfum has warned that pandemics caused by diseases passing from animals to humans could become more common and more lethal. As a young researcher in the 1970s Professor Myembe took blood samples from people in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) being affected by a deadly disease. It killed 90% of patients and was later identified and given the name Ebola – after a river in the Congo. It’s believed that Ebola, like the coronavirus, was initially spread to humans from an animal – possibly a fruit bat.

Prof Muyembe now runs the Institut National de Recherche Biomédicale (INRB) in Kinshasa, the capital of the DRC. He has issued a warning that more zoonotic illnesses – where pathogens jump between animals and humans – are on the horizon.

‘We are now in a world where new pathogens will come out,’ he told CNN. ‘And that’s what constitutes a threat for humanity.’ It’s believed that, in the case of Covid-19, the virus made the jump to humans from animals in a wet market in Wuhan last year. When asked if future zoonotic pandemics could be more devastating, he said: ‘yes, yes I think so.’ Professor Muyembe explained that as humans interfere with more and more of the natural environment, we will be exposed to animals carrying diseases. Often these creatures, like bats and rats, survive and adapt to live alongside humans and eventually pass viruses on to us. ‘If you go in the forest… you will change the ecology, and insects and rats will leave this place and come to the villages… so this is the transmission of the virus, of the new pathogens,’ he said.

[bold]COVID-19: Not That Bad, Yet Terrible[bold]

Send this short, easy-to-understand video to all your dumbass relatives and acquaintances who STILL don't get what all the pandemic fuss is about.

We rented a 3 bedroom condo in Palm Springs from Jan 15th - April 30th. We rented it last year when we were there and plan to drive down from Portland. It's a shit ton of money to walk away from.

Definitely worth death r99.

For you AND selected loved ones.

I have a friend who just left Palm Springs to move back East. She said because so many homes were unoccupied it had become a magnet for thieves looking to break and enter. She was scared her house would accidentally get hit. But I guess the weather will be better than Portland.

Actually, crime wise I think Palm Springs will feel safer than Portland. Portland feels lawless and crime is increasing.

My grandmother in Europe caught the ‘rona and was hardly sick, and recovered. She’s 96 and lives in a nursing home. Meanwhile, there are 30-year old athletic healthy people who die from it. What the fuck is this thing?

Study: 9 infections in 3 families due to vertically shared toilet drainage pipes + aerosols from pipes in high-rise apartment building.

R104, that is just terrible. I guess you should cover the lid and then flush.

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

R99 - You will be fine. Palm Springs has been a refuge this year through multiple phases of the pandemic. You are better off there than in Portland. You can live outside and enjoy the weather. Hopefully after the potential Xmas/NYE travel surge in tandem with vaccinations, the virus will start to burn out in late Jan/Feb. Hopefully things will be open sooner than later. PS has done a really good job of outdoor dining. Even dive bars like Tool Shed have a great outdoor space that is very socially distanced.

Ok, that drain thing thoroughly freaked me out. I have two drains in my apartment that are rarely-never used.

Indeed. I would make a point of pouring a small bucket of water down those drains every few days to keep the u-trap filled.

I just ordered two drain covers for the ones I don't use.

A friend just gave me a great temporary tip. Fill ziploc bags halfway with water and place them over the drains. That will keep them blocked. At least until the covers come.

R106, I find that entertaining, and I am not sure why? Perhaps it is this bitter Christmas Day.

Thank you r107. We were thinking we would have curbside delivery of our groceries and spend time riding bikes, playing tennis and walking. All should be safe activities. In Portland we will only be able to go for walks in the cold rain.

Another 'The Covid Sky is Falling' thread...

R114 = Gov. Ron DeSantis spokesman Fred Piccolo:

R114 Another tragically stupid cunt to block.

I feel like the Modern/fillers reaction deserves it's own thread. The DM comments are really fun and I going through the list with a friend of who could get it and we are coming up short. I want to proudly pose with a bottle of Moderna.

How many doses of the vaccine have already been administered in your state?

Johns Hopkins is publishing that up-to-date info on its website. Just click on the pic of your state to see the info. (Apparently more states will be included later on as data becomes available.)

Individual state websites may have even more detailed info on vaccinations.

For example, every day Ohio is publishing the number of vaccinations in each county and by age group.

This info is going to be as important as the daily death numbers. Some states are targeting in the second vaccination group people over the age of 65, which have accounted for 80% to 87% of all deaths since the start of the pandemic.

☃️ The only thing that I've observed falling from the sky is approximately 24 inches of snow, with the promise of more to come throughout the weekend.

Who cares what happens to people with fillers unless it's for reconstruction. Anyone who injects a permanent or temporary foreign substance into their body for vanity reasons is stupid.

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

LA probing for link between COVID surge, highly contagious UK strain

A brief overview of the UK variation.

The same death mongering Marys post again and again on these threads. (Looking at you R116)

Sadly Covid is the only thing that has ever made them feel alive.

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

😴 😴 😴 [bold] #SnoozeFest

Argentina to start roll-out of Russian-produced Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine Tuesday

From CNN's Marlon Sorto and Sharif Paget in Atlanta

Argentina will start inoculating its citizens against Covid-19 on Tuesday using the Russian-produced vaccine Sputnik V, the country's President Alberto Fernández said Saturday.

The country received a shipment of 300,000 doses of Sputnik V on December 24, and will become the fourth nation in Latin America -- behind Mexico, Chile and Costa Rica -- to begin vaccinating citizens against the virus.

Argentina's Minister of Health, Gines González García, said on Twitter that the vaccination campaign will be carried out in an "equitable manner throughout the country."

According to the government's vaccine plan, health care workers and teachers will be among the first people to be inoculated, along with individuals at risk of developing a serious illness, such as people over the age 70. Elderly residents in long-term nursing homes are also to be prioritized under Argentina's first phase of vaccinations.

Argentine authorities announced on Wednesday new requirements for entry into the country for nationals, residents and foreigners who have authorization to enter the country.

Passengers are required to present a negative PCR test result at the Ezeiza or San Fernando airports, which will be the only air terminals through which travelers can enter the nation, as well as a seven-day quarantine.

The restrictions will be in effect until January 8, according to the Interior Ministry.

To date, Argentina has reported a total of 1,578,267 cases of Covid-19 and 42,501 deaths since the start of the pandemic, according to the country's ministry of health.

AstraZeneca CEO claims that new data based on a new formulation of its vaccine will show that it is as effective as the Pfizer and Moderna vaccine.

[quote] AstraZeneca vaccine gives '100% protection' against [severe] Covid-19, says CEO

[quote] The vaccine, which is currently being evaluated by Britain's independent medicines regulator, provides "100% protection" against severe Covid disease requiring hospitalisation, Pascal Soriot said in an interview.

[quote] He added he believes trials will show his firm has achieved a vaccine efficacy equal to Pfizer-BioNTech at 95% and Moderna at 94.5%.

It's nice that it potentially is very effective because it is a big part of the vaccination programs in the US and around the world. The US has secured up to 300 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine.

Fortune Magazine wrote: "U.S. plan to vaccinate most Americans by summer depends on AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines."

Covid-19 variant detected in Norway

From CNN’s Arnaud Siad in London

The new Covid-19 variant — first identified in England — has been detected in two people in Norway, according to the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (NIPH) on Sunday.

In a press release, the Institute said the variant had been detected in two people who had traveled from the United Kingdom in December.

NIPH Department Director Line Vold said additional testing and closer follow-up of close contacts would be carried out to reduce the risk of possible further spread. She also said that while there is “reason to be cautious, it is still uncertain how important a role the variant plays in spreading the virus.”

Usual measures to fight the pandemic, such as staying home if sick, testing, social distancing, quarantine measures and limited gatherings, are important to control this variant as well, she added.

On Saturday, the Public Health Agency of neighboring Sweden announced the variant had been diagnosed in the region of Sörmland, on the outskirts of Stockholm.

CNN)Japan will ban foreign nationals from entering the country from Monday through the end of January after several cases of the new Covid-19 variant were recorded in the country, the Japanese foreign ministry said in a statement on Saturday. Japanese citizens and foreign residents can still enter, but they're required to self-quarantine for 14 days, according to Japan's public broadcaster, NHK. The move came after the Tokyo metropolitan government on Saturday confirmed two new cases of Covid-19 variant involving people who recently returned from the UK. The two new cases were the first to be discovered outside of airport quarantine in the country

I can’t find the article now, but a doctor with shellfish allergy had a strong allergic reaction to the Moderna vaccine

New guidance from the CDC:

People with HIV and those with weakened immune systems due to other illnesses or medication might be at increased risk for severe COVID-19. They may receive a COVID-19 vaccine. However, they should be aware of the limited safety data:

Information about the safety of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines for people who have weakened immune systems in this group is not yet available.

People living with HIV were included in clinical trials, though safety data specific to this group are not yet available at this time.

People with weakened immune systems should also be aware of the potential for reduced immune responses to the vaccine, as well as the need to continue following all current guidance to protect themselves against COVID-19.

how do we go about getting the vaccine if we have a fucked up immune system? No one seems to have the answer to this.

What Major Medical Organizations Are Saying About Getting an mRNA COVID-19 Vaccine If You’re Immunocompromised

US air travel on Sunday was the highest of the pandemic

From CNN's Pete Muntean

The Transportation Security Administration said it screened a record number of people at US airports nationwide on Sunday, breaking a pandemic air travel record set only last Wednesday.

At least 1,284,599 people passed through security checkpoints Sunday, the TSA said. That is the highest level air travel has reached since March 15th.

The new figure is about one half of the number of fliers from the same day a year ago.

That is a sign that some people are staying home, but not as many as health experts and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would like. Earlier this month, the CDC urged Americans to stay home to avoid spreading coronavirus.

Air travel has spiked, according to the TSA, with US air travel numbers hitting more than a million passengers for six of the past ten days.

Beijing cancels New Year's Eve festivities amid Covid-19 cases

From CNN's Beijing bureau

Beijing is cutting down its New Year's Eve events after the city reported local coronavirus infections over the weekend.

The Chinese capital's Happy Valley amusement park announced it will close at 5:30 pm beginning Monday and cancel its planned New Year's Eve concert and celebrations, an announcement from the amusement park read.

Another major New Year's event from Beijing's China Central Television Tower is also canceled, according to a CCTV Light Show announcement on its official WeChat account.

The tower's light show usually runs from December 31 to January 3 but all four days will be canceled this year out of precaution due to the Covid-19 pandemic, CCTV said.

The cancellations come after two locally transmitted Covid-19 cases were reported in Beijing's Shunyi district Friday. The city has collected 838,270 samples as of Sunday afternoon in its latest round of mass testing, Beijing's Center for Disease Control and Prevention said. Of the samples collected, close to 390,000 testing results have returned, and five people who are identified as close contacts of the initial two cases have returned positive results for the virus.

On Sunday, Beijing officials discouraged people from attending temple fairs and gatherings for the New Year and Spring Festival holidays, adding that holding major events will need to go through a strict application and review process.

Officials also discouraged travel agencies and online travel companies from organizing group tours to Beijing during the holiday season.

Parks and tourist attractions are required to operate at 75% capacity during the two holidays.

They were actually planning festivities during a pandemic?

Interesting. This is the 2nd year that the Chinese New Year celebrations have been muted or cancelled. Can you believe it will be a year we're into this?

Why yes, r139...

CNN: US officials promised 20 million vaccinated against coronavirus by the end of the year. We're at just 2 million with three days to go.

New restrictions to combat a spike in infections in South Africa include a complete ban of alcohol sales in retail outlets and restaurants.

According to an AP report, South Africa saw a drop of as much as 60 percent in trauma cases at hospitals after a prior ban on liquor sales in April and May, a number that began to rise when the ban was lifted.

They're running out of ICU beds, so the alcohol has to go!

Ana Navarro blasts Rubio over tweet about Dr. Fauci

Russia admitted today that its coronavirus death toll is more than three times higher than it had previously reported, making i the country with the third highest number of fatalities.

The country reported its coronavirus death toll at more than 186,000 Russians, behind just the U.S. and Brazil.

And that's still probably a lie.

I just finished rereading the first Coronavirus Freakout thread.

What a difference a year makes ...........

What should we get the 'rona for its birthday?

I've read the first freakout thread in live time, but I saw the thread posted and decided to look at the beginning now after a year. In thread one, everyone blamed the Asians and most of you were convinced that "3/4 of all the deaths are Asian men" and that it only effects Asians. I read a little of thread 2. That's when everything starts happening. The internet companies started doing WFH, the first cruise ship breakout, getting Americans out of Wuhan, 72 hour quarantines. A lot started happening around the 1/30/20 mark,

[quote]Overuse of antibiotics for COVID-19 to blame in ‘super gonorrhea’ spike

Why can't people just stop traveling and stop fucking for six fucking months? I hate people. Fucking assholes. Wish Covid made dicks fall off within one day of infection. That would be the only thing that might change these fucking assholes.

Years ago I was talking to my cousin’s wife who worked for an insurance company. She was telling me about people who would put in a claim for eg, a back injury. The FIRST thing her company did was look up the claimants on social media. She said, there were always photos the idiots posted of them water skiing or painting the house or something that disproved their claim.

Seems like the vaccine providers need to look up everyone who requests an appointment. Family reunions on holidays? Indoor weddings? Anti-mask protests? Tweets with the word “hoax”? Avatars with flags and right wing symbols? SEND THEM TO THE BACK OF THE LINE.

[quote] A lot started happening around the 1/30/20 mark,

Except in Washington where it was all a hoax and would go away.

I have an email from a childhood neighbor who was going to visit us in Palm Springs, she was in the area for the big tennis tournament. She thought it was just the flu and was nothing to worry about. I knew then she was a trump supporter. I had to tell her we weren't allowing visitors. This was probably early March. The sad thing is she is probably still in denial.

Massachusetts GOP Jewish Committee leader Tom Mountain "naysayed" masks -- until he was rushed to the hospital with COVID-19 complications following a White House Hannukah party.

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

Preliminary tests show new UK Covid-19 strand detected in Pakistan

From CNN's Sugam Pokharel

Pakistan says it might have detected three cases of the new UK Covid-19 strand, according to Pakistan's Sindh province health department.

"Samples of 3 UK returnees show a 95% match to the new Corona Virus variant from UK in the first phase of Genotyping," Sindh Health Department said in a tweet Tuesday.

The health department tested 12 UK returnees for genotyping. Of the 12 people, six tested positive for Covid-19 and three cases showed the new UK variant.

The three cases will undergo another phase of genotyping, the health department added.

If confirmed, these will be the first detected cases of the new Covid-19 variant in Pakistan.

Premier League records 18 new positive cases after the latest round of virus testing

From CNN’s Aleks Klosok

The English Premier League has announced 18 new positive Covid-19 tests among its soccer players and club staff in its latest round of testing -- the highest amount of positive tests this season.

The news comes a day after Manchester City's Premier League fixture at Everton was postponed following multiple positive coronavirus test results within the City squad.

It was the second English Premier League game this season to be called off due to a virus outbreak, after Aston Villa vs. Newcastle United earlier this month.

In a statement on Tuesday the League said that between 21 December and 27 December, 1,479 players and club staff were tested for Covid-19 of which 18 were new positive tests.

As per League protocol, specific details of individuals affected were not disclosed, but players or staff that did test positive must now self-isolate for 10 days.

The previous highest total of positive Covid-19 tests was recorded last month, when 16 individuals returned positive tests between 9 November and 15 November.

R143, that Rubio tweet is utterly disgusting

Insane New Mexican megachurch holds huge unmasked Christmas Eve service, then tries to scrub the evidence from social media.

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

Is there an article out there that explains exactly how these new variants are more infectious? What mechanism is making it more infectious? Is it just irresponsible assholes who don't social distance or wear their masks properly that are getting infected more now or has it become so infectious that just getting a couple virus in your eye now gives you a full-blown case of Covid instead of needing to get, say, a hundred in your eye previously?

I'd also like to see all that explained, R158. I don't even understand how you'd determine that this variant is 70% (or 20% or 50%) than the original. Apparently it's conjecture at this point:

That estimate comes in part from the fact that the virus had replaced other, long-circulating variants to become dominant, according to the NY Times.

The variant was first detected in the U.K. in September, according to the BBC. By November, it was responsible for about one-quarter of new COVID-19 cases in London, and by mid-December, it was responsible for nearly two-thirds of cases, according to the BBC. A similar variant was found in South Africa, and now accounts for 80% to 90% of new cases in the region, The Times reported.

Still, it's possible that this variant became more common simply by chance, rather than due to some inherent advantage of the virus, the BBC reported. Laboratory experiments will be needed to confirm whether it is indeed more transmissible.

R158. I'd been wondering the same thing, and clear information is scarce. Check out R124. It appears that computers models show that an alteration in one of the spike proteins (or maybe a section of spike protein) make it easier for the virus to bind w/ACE receptors.

The evidence for the variants being more transmissible is epidemiological (the statistical study of epidemics). The new variant is becoming the dominant one wherever it appears (outcompeting other versions) but, more importantly, infection rates are increasing in those same areas at the same time. This last part is what has people worried that it is more infectious, not simply more common.

People who are pedantic about needing more evidence are wanting to see laboratory studies that prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt. Those experiments take a long time to conduct and write up into a paper.

To sum up, these new variants quack like a duck, walk like a duck but some people want DNA evidence to prove that they are in fact ducks. That evidence will come but, in a fluid situation like this, governments need to make public health decisions based on the best evidence available right now, not wait three months.

While vaccines sit in U.S. warehouses, Israel is making substantial progress in quickly vaccinating its high-risk populations.

~500,000 vaccinated (>5% of pop)

~25% of all 60+ years old vaccinated

Israel expects that in a week they will see a lower percent of 60+ years old out among the critically ill, going from ~70% now to ~20% by mid-January

Source: Weizmann Institute

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

Vaccine lines in Florida and Texas

[quote] The Department of Health in Lee County, which includes Fort Myers, started vaccinating people ages 65 and older on Monday. County staff members reported that they expected to have 300 doses available at one site on Monday, three sites on Tuesday, and three sites on Wednesday.

[quote] Photos from the local outlet The News-Press showed Fort Myers residents lined up at the Estero Park and Recreation Center on Sunday evening, 19 hours before the clinic site was set to open.

By the next morning, the line stretched around the building. The clinic ran out of doses by noon.

[quote] Similarly, the Wise Health System in Decatur, Texas, began giving shots to residents in the 65-plus age group on a first-come, first-served basis on Wednesday. People lined up more than two hours before the clinic opened, and doses ran out by 8:30 a.m.

R164, what a mess! Whose idea was it to give them out first-come first-served?

R161, thanks for being such a pedantic asshole yourself, so much so that your entire post just oozes with pedantic assholery. That's a real accomplishment, especially since you failed to even answer the questions anyone asked.

No one was asking for concrete proof before they believe it. We want to understand what mechanism of transmission they think is causing the higher rate of communicability and the repercussions of that concerning how we continue to protect ourselves. Someone who was actually helpful and not a fucking asshole like you said it was due to a higher binding ability to the ACE receptors. That would probably lead to smaller doses of virus more easily causing disease because they are "stickier" once they get inside, not so much that they are now more infectious through eye tissue or that they are more virulent in and of themselves. So, it probably is the people who aren't social distancing and wearing their masks properly that are getting infected more and if you keep protecting yourself, and maybe staying even further away from people, we should be okay even with the newer strain.

I'm not an expert, but I read that the spike proteins on the surface of the virus are what the vaccine-induced antibodies target, and some of the "mutated" strains have more of these spike proteins so the vaccine may even be *more* effective on them.

[quote]the repercussions of that concerning how we continue to protect ourselves.

Hey, Einstein, keep washing your hands, social distancing and wearing a face mask. Is that what you wanted to hear? No, you actually asked about "proof" as to whether/how these variants might be more infectious. My post explained that but I'll dumb it down for you: there is no proof (they haven't had time to do the tests) but there is compelling statistical evidence to suggest that they are.

Assholery, thy name is R166.

R165 Boy, you have that right—first come, first served making the frail elderly wait for hours in a line outside in the winter for a vaccine shot? There is just no sense to this.

My stupid gay downstairs neighbors practice what I call "Queerantine".

What is Queerantine? Well, you wear a fashion forward mask in public (most of the time), and you have a 'bubble' of 20 other gay guys come over (and a few fag hags) every single fucking weekend, to party with no masks on.

This couple gave us a break for two weeks, and went back to Indiana for Christmas. Now they're back, and leaving the house regularly, not following CA guidelines by just staying home and getting tested.

They're in a different damn reality altogether.

I'm over it with these bitches.

[bold]Chopin Versus the Coronavirus: Classical Music Is Helping Houston Patients Heal[/bold]

[quote]Before performing their first virtual recital for an ICU patient, Houston Symphony musicians receive a four-page document providing detailed guidance on repertoire selection. Prohibitions abound: no pieces with “tumultuous climaxes” or “abundant staccatos”; no “heavy accentuation” or “extreme dynamic range”; no “overly contrapuntal complex/dense texture.” Vocal music is discouraged (“too activating/stimulating”), as are dance-inspired works like a polonaise or a rondo—unless the patient specifically asks for something lively. Best are pieces with tempos between sixty to ninety beats per minute, the range of the resting human heart. Suggested composers include Bach, Chopin, Massenet, and Mozart. Off-limits: tumultuous Bartók, stimulating Janáček, and the altogether too extreme Elliott Carter.

The guidelines were written by Dr. Mei Rui, an assistant professor of music-in-medicine at Houston Methodist hospital’s Center for Performing Arts Medicine. Born in China, Rui began piano lessons at the age of three, was accepted into the Shanghai Conservatory of Music at six, and gave her first solo recital—at Vienna’s Hofburg imperial palace, to an audience that included the Austrian president—at ten. In 2001 she turned down a full scholarship to Juilliard to attend Yale, where she continued her music studies while majoring in molecular biochemistry and biophysics. Ever since, she’s maintained a dual career as both concert pianist and research scientist, focusing on the health benefits of classical music.

more at link

No, R168, you're still the pedantic asshole. No one asked for proof. People asked if anyone knew the mechanism making it more infectious. And, we can tell you're not an expert since you've failed to say even one thing that would even hint at such a thing. Everything you have said is meaningless. Therefore, you are not only pedantic, but irrelevant.

[quote] One of the news broadcasters mentioned prisoners on death row are to receive the vaccine before you or I.

Was that Sean Hannity or Alex Jones?

Another record death count today: 3,708 American lives lost, per CNN.

As bad as we've been hit in Illinois (mostly because of the stupid fuckers in the hillbilly section of the state and the fucking hillbilly states that surround us), I'm so grateful for Pritzker as our governor. We're getting a handle on our second wave now while a lot of the rest of the country, including the states around us, are still on fire. I can't even imagine what would be happening right now if Rauner were still the governor. We'd all be dead.

R171 This rocks!!

I agree, R176.

That same magazine had another story that gave an insight into COVID-19 denialism and the way people refuse to wear masks in small town Texas, something that is all too common throughout the Western world.

Information about the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine from the UK.

R.I.P. Congressman-Never-to-Be Letlaw. You were laid low by a hoax that shouldn't have killed a straight, white, Christian family man.

R179, yes, Dee Dee Deplorable, it’s hard to understand how someone died of nothing. Since Covid doesn’t exist and all the people who say they had it are lying.

Why AstraZeneca vaccine might not be approved in the US any time soon: There is no trial data yet from the US studies, and the current available UK trial data is not clear on efficacy, especially in older populations.

[quote] Can Astra use these data [from UK] to file for US emergency use authorisation?

[quote] Almost certainly not. Astra’s base case assumption, according to its chief executive, Pascal Soriot, is that the US FDA will require US data, “but of course it’s for them to decide”.

[quote] Moreover, aside from the FDA’s unwillingness to approve products with no US patient data, the standard dose regimen is not good enough. In the UK trial the efficacy figure in those receiving two standard doses was 60.3%, but the lower bound of the confidence interval was 28%, falling beneath the FDA’s criterion of 30%.

[quote] The Brazilian data just about meet this threshold, with efficacy of 64.2% and a lower CI bound of 30.7%. US approval would therefore hinge on the FDA deciding that this, along with the better efficacy figures for the low-dose/standard-dose regimen in the UK trial, is good enough, but the chances of that seem slim.

[quote] How did Astra perform in older patients?

[quote] This is still a mystery. The low-dose/standard-dose regimen was not given to any patients aged over 55, and of those participants given two standard doses the proportion aged over 55 was just 21% in the UK trial and 11% in Brazil. In all, only five cases of Covid-19 included in the primary analysis occurred in subjects older than 55 years of age – too few to calculate efficacy in this population.

[quote] This answer might come after more cases have accrued; if not, it will once more be a case of waiting for the US data. More than 20% of the 40,000-odd enrollees in the US study are aged over 60, Mr Pangalos said, a much larger older population than in the UK and Brazil trials, which enrolled just 1,006 and 412 over-55s respectively.

Astra will be releasing more data from its trials next week, so we'll see if any of the above analysis changes.

On the local L.A. news: with the rate that the vaccines are being rolled out, it will take 10 years to get herd immunity if they want to inoculate 80% of the population.

Bloomberg is keeping track of vaccines "allocated" to each state in the US versus vaccines administered.

Almost 20 million doses have been "allocated," with 2.3 million doses actually administered at the end of December.

West Virginia is doing best with 1.9% of its population vaccinated. California has .76% of its population vaccinated so far. Kansas brings up the rear with .1% vaccinated.

Naturally, the vaccination process is a disaster in Florida:

Dutasteride (Avodart), the DHT inhibitor, reduces viral shedding, inflammatory response, and recovery time in men with mild-to-moderate COVID

New Covid-19 variant identified in Southern California, governor says

From CNN's Lauren Mascarenhas

The new Covid-19 variant, first identified in the United Kingdom, has now been found in Southern California, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Wednesday during an interview with Dr. Anthony Fauci on Facebook.

“Just an hour or so ago, we were informed that this new variant, this new strain that we've identified obviously from the United Kingdom, from other parts of the globe, identified in Colorado yesterday, has been identified here in the state of California, in Southern California,” Newsom said.

“I don't think that Californians should feel that this is something odd,” Fauci said. “This is something that's expected.”

One person dies from coronavirus in Los Angeles County every 10 minutes

From CNN's Sarah Moon and Cheri Mossburg

The number of Covid-19 deaths reached a new high in California on Wednesday.

California recorded 432 new fatalities, the highest reported in a single day so far. In Southern California, Los Angeles County officials described the grim situation there in a tweet Wednesday, and said one person dies from Covid-19 every 10 minutes.

Dawn Wells, who played Mary Ann on "Gilligan's Island," dies of Covid-19 complications

From CNN’s Lisa France

Dawn Wells, who played the lovable castaway Mary Ann Summers on "Gilligan's Island," died in Los Angeles Wednesday from Covid-19 complications, her publicist Harlan Boll confirmed to CNN.

She was 82.

This story is developing.

I wonder if the death of MaryAnn from Gilligan's Island will be the thing to get throug to the deplorables. She always seemed like a nice lady.

[quote]I wonder if the death of MaryAnn from Gilligan's Island will be the thing to get throug to the deplorables. She always seemed like a nice lady.

Sadly, no. I'm seeing people posting that every death is being attributed to Covid to scare the public. We're doomed.

Maybe if it were one of the Howells, because they were rich, or Ginger.

Everyone from the cast has passed on, except Tina Louise

Reading the small town Texas Wal Mart story was horrifying. What the F is wrong with people? Here in Riverside County in California (Coachella Palm Springs Indio Indian Wells) they are dying like flies.

Most likely due to the combo of large Mexican families living together and all the old retirees here in the desert. Get the damn vaccine distributed already.

Honestly, I think the vaccine distribution would be better if they just walked down the street from house to house and started vaccinating everyone. Trying to get some of these states to figure out complicated logistics is a joke.

[quote] This story is developing.

What the hell is there to develop? She was 82. She died of Covid. Like Robinson Carusoe, the story's primitive as can be.

USA Yesterday:

New Cases +234,550 and New Deaths +3,880

How effective will the vaccine be if there are variant strains?

So i just did a quick calculation from the statistics above and got 5% of all CA population have been infected, 1 out of every 20 people. And say, Tennessee, 8%!

I think it's great that DL is also prividing daily stats on vaccine rates. It's encouraging to see progress on getting beyond this.

R197, the expert opinion is that the vaccines will handle these variants, and it makes sense -- vaccines don't just target one spot of the virus. It can recognize many different spots. So if one spot is no longer recognizable, there's still all the others. Now, eventually, it's conceivable that the virus *might* mutate to a point where the body doesn't recognize it at all, but that's probably a long way off and we can react in kind by altering our vaccines.

Thanks R199!

Some disgruntled employee purposefully left 500 doses of the vaccine out of the refrigerator and spoiled them all. He's been fired. He should be purposefully infected with as much virus as we can shove into his fucking lungs and put in an isolated room while we watch him die. If he gets a light case, then we fucking let the families of people who died of Covid do whatever they want to him. I'm done with selfish people. Fucking done.

I didn't know this: Casinos located on tribal lands are not obligated to follow state or county COVID rules. As such, Gov. Gavin Newsom's orders banning indoor entertainment doesn't apply to the state's dozens of tribal casinos. Most shut down during the early months of the pandemic before reopening at reduced capacity with temperature checks, clear barriers between guests and mask mandates . . . although drinking, eating and smoking are all allowed indoors 🤦‍♂️

Texas Monthy's Christopher Hooks:

Just talked to a pharmacist in the panhandle who’s currently watching 30 doses of the vaccine go bad because they can’t find enough “eligible” recipients. We had a year to figure this out.

That’s embarrassing and upsetting r203. What a shit show. My own experiences with Texas vacs:

My elderly grandparents called around and found a place that had some in stock, so they got their first shots yesterday.

My mother, a teacher terrified of going back to school in January, called around to four pharmacies this week and was unable to find anyone who had any vaccine in stock.

My sister and brother-in-law who are healthcare workers were able to get the vaccine, no problem. My brother-in-law got his through his school. My sister went to a pharmacy and got hers there. Interestingly, they didn’t ask her for any form of ID to verify she was a healthcare worker. I guess the fact that she was wearing scrubs was enough.

No one has had an side effects so far. They took the moderna vaccine.

That is criminal r203. Deeply disturbing.

Infuriating. But I'm somewhat heartened that Juliette Kayyem told Don Lemon yesterday that all vaccine rollouts are a mess, yet she's confident the country will get a handle on it.

So they're predicting about 1 million vaccinations per week. Is that expected to increase over time or will just approximately 50 million people be vaccinated by this time next year?

20-year-old male tests negative so decides it's safe to see family. A cautionary tale:

Twitter only gave the EST a 1?

And I thought that Costco was one of the safer chain stores...

(And of course despite this, the store in question is allowed to stay open. )

I love Costco BUT I went once in July and freaked out at the long checkout lines and how crowded the store was. Out I went, never to return until this virus is under control. I don’t need a rotisserie chicken that bad.

Please. We all know you were there for Ding Dongs and Doritos.

So how are vaccinations of Group 1-A going in Ohio?

From BusinessInsider.com:

[quote] 60% of nursing home staff in Ohio are refusing to get vaccinated, according to the state governor

[quote] Peter van Runkle, executive director at the Ohio Health Care Association, told Business Insider that social media misinformation was among the factors leading to care home staff avoiding the vaccine.

[quote] He said people feared the vaccine was "too new and was rushed through the process. The government is trying to do something to me – implant a microchip or do something else harmful. It will sterilize me. It will give me COVID-19. All manner of things from social media.

[quote] According to the Covid Tracking Project, 38% of all COVID-19 deaths in the US have been nursing home residents.

There's a really easy solution to that: make vaccination a condition of employment. If a drug test can be required by your employer, so can this.

Maybe the West Virginia vaccines-administered numbers aren't so great after all:

From WaPo

[quote] West Virginia clinic gave 42 people an antibody treatment instead of the coronavirus vaccine

[quote] Forty-two people in West Virginia received an antibody treatment rather than Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine in an error Wednesday at a vaccination clinic hosted by a county health department.

[quote] The West Virginia National Guard, which announced the error Thursday, said medical experts advising the state’s covid-19 response “do not believe there is any risk of harm to these 42 individuals.” The people who were affected, at a clinic in Boone County in the southwestern part of the state, “will be offered the vaccine as soon as possible with a priority status,” the Guard vowed in a statement.

[Note: Don't tell the nursing home employees in Ohio about this.]

Antigen testing far less accurate than PCR testing, CDC study finds

From CNN’s Virginia Langmaid

Rapid antigen tests for Covid-19 are less accurate than RT-PCR tests for Covid-19, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday – often even less accurate than advertised.

The fast tests may be missing many cases of infection, the CDC-led team said. And they are also often telling people they are infected when, in fact, they are not.

Antigen tests are generally cheaper than polymerase chain reaction or PCR tests, and can return results in as little as 15 minutes. Multiple tests in both categories have gotten Emergency Use Authorization from the Food and Drug Administration, but a study published in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report found that antigen tests were not only less accurate than PCR tests, but less accurate than what was reported when the FDA gave emergency authorization.

“Among people reporting COVID-19 symptoms at the time the samples were collected, the Sofia antigen test was less accurate than reported in the FDA Emergency Use Authorization,” the CDC-led team wrote. Antigen testing in this study had a sensitivity rate of 80%, compared to a previously reported 97%.

“For people who were asymptomatic at the time samples were collected, the accuracy was significantly lower – only 41% of RT-PCR-positive samples were also positive by antigen test and, in this population, the majority of positive antigen tests were ‘false positives,’ which is when someone tests positive but does not have the virus.”

The researchers investigated the tests at two Wisconsin universities by administering Quidel’s Sofia antigen test and a PCR test to both symptomatic and asymptomatic participants. Antigen tests quickly seek out evidence of the virus, which PCR tests take longer but work by amplifying genetic material from the virus.

“The Sofia rapid antigen test was less accurate than RT-PCR for detecting SARS-CoV-2 infections in students and faculty tested at two universities in Wisconsin,” the researchers wrote. “The antigen test accuracy was lowest among study participants not showing symptoms (asymptomatic),” they added.

Investigators said that antigen tests may still be valuable in tracking infection because they are cheaper and quicker, and may be more accessible than PCR tests. But results from antigen tests should be paired with more accurate testing.

“To account for reduced test accuracy of antigen tests, CDC recommends considering confirmatory testing with an FDA-authorized molecular test, such as RT-PCR, following negative antigen test results in people who have COVID-19 symptoms, and following positive antigen test results in asymptomatic people,” said researchers.

San Francisco extends stay-at-home order and mandatory travel quarantine amid Covid-19 surge

From CNN's Sarah Moon

The city and county of San Francisco will be extending its stay-at-home order and mandatory 10-day quarantine requirement amid the ongoing coronavirus surge, officials announced in a news release on Thursday.

While the state’s regional stay-at-home order for the Bay Area is set to expire on Jan. 8, San Francisco announced that it does not expect the region to meet the state’s threshold of an intensive care unit bed capacity above 15%.

The current intensive care unit bed capacity for the Bay Area is 7.5%, according to data from the California Department of Public Health.

“The extension to the travel quarantine order responds to the significant prevalence of the coronavirus throughout the state and country as well as the need to reduce the exposure and isolate people who may be contagious in order to protect our region’s ability to provide intensive care for critically ill patients,” the news release stated. “The order also protects against the spread of a new variant of the virus detected recently in the United Kingdom, Colorado, and California.”

Anyone visiting, moving to, or returning to San Francisco from anywhere outside the Bay Area is required to quarantine for 10 days. The health order also strongly discourages any non-essential travel within the 10-county Bay Area region.

According to the release, the health orders appear to have slowed the infections and more than 400 deaths may have been prevented.

More details: The extension of both health orders will continue until the Bay Area Region is no longer subject to the state’s regional stay at home order. Both health orders, implemented on Dec. 17, were set to expire on Jan. 4.

San Francisco is one of the most densely populated counties in the nation.

France confirms first case of new coronavirus variant identified in South Africa

From Benjamin Berteau in Paris

A case of the new coronavirus variant first detected in South Africa in mid-December has been identified in France, the French health ministry confirmed Thursday.

According to a statement, a man living in the area of Haut-Rhin, near the border with Switzerland, tested positive for the new variant of coronavirus “after a stay in South Africa, and following symptoms suggestive of Covid-19 that appeared a few days after his return.”

The health ministry has confirmed that the patient “immediately isolated himself at home” after experiencing symptoms and “has now recovered and is in good health.”

French health authorities proceeded to search for people who may have come into prolonged contact with the patient, but later confirmed that “none were identified,” the health ministry added.

Following the identification of a new variant of coronavirus in South Africa, the French government announced that laboratories would be required to send all positive coronavirus test results from residents who have recently returned from South Africa to the French National Research Center.

“A system for the detection and surveillance of possible cases of infection or carrier of the variant has been set up,” the French health ministry added.

This health agency is tweeting every 10 minutes to mark each Covid-19 death in L.A.

From CNN's Cheri Mossburg

Since midnight, the Los Angeles Department of Public Health has been tweeting at regular intervals to drive home the message that someone dies of Covid-19 every 10 minutes in the county.

So far, the health department has sent 53 tweets, with a brief description of a life lost, followed by a plea to stay home tonight, wear a face covering outside, and slow the spread.

“A mother.”

“A grandpa who marinated the Carne Asada with a Corona.”

“The friend who always fixed your resume.”

“The barber who got the lines right.”

These were some of the descriptions that health officials tweeted to drive the message home, as L.A. County finds itself the worldwide epicenter of concentrated Covid-19 cases.

TSA continues to screen more than 1 million travelers daily in US airports

From CNN's Greg Wallace

New numbers suggest Americans continue to travel for the holidays, despite public health warnings to stay home.

The Transportation Security Administration reported its fourth-busiest day of the pandemic on Wednesday, screening more than 1 million people for the fifth straight day. Nine days out of the past two weeks have seen more than 1 million people each.

The 1,163,696 people screened on Wednesday are just over half of the 2.1 million passengers the agency screened on the same day in 2019. Four days in the holiday travel period have reached more than 50% of the 2019 levels.

That spike is notable — since September, TSA has averaged between 30% and 40% of last year’s levels.

Data suggests most of the people traveling are leisure, rather than business, travelers. The air carrier industry group Airlines for America reports corporate bookings are down approximately 78%. Its data also show a notable upward trend in passengers since mid-December.

Correction: An earlier version of this story included the wrong figure regarding the Transportation Security Administration's busiest days of the pandemic. Wednesday was the TSA's fourth-busiest day of the pandemic.

[quote]“A grandpa who marinated the Carne Asada with a Corona.”

Seems a bit too on point.

😷[italic] Nobody Knows Nothin 'Bout The NuCorona

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

Once the London strain hits you, you're toast. In the UK we had 50k cases and 964 deaths in a country a fifth of the size of yours today. Sadly business travellers are still doing their thing and blithely passing on the virus. God forbid that Boris should shut down the airports. Hundreds of flights leaving London every day for the US.

yes, I'm scared! I wear 2 masks when out and sunglasses. I am going to start wearing shields.

That's what we do, r225. We've been wear 2 masks since the beginning, we both wear glasses and we just added the face shield.

I've tried wearing two masks- a 2 or 3 layer cloth mask with a KN-95 on top and I cannot keep both around my ears. One always falls off.

r227 Use the masks with straps that go around your whole head, you can get a duck-bill looking KN-95 with 2 straps around your head and it forms a better seal than the ones that go around your ears. I got mine from Accumed.

Thanks!

An elderly friend in TN, who work as a home aide, just had shot 1 of the Moderna vaccine. He said that he's had no side effects.

I have 2 family members who have had the first shot of the Pfizer vaccine. No issues.

R227 Masks would pop off of my ears. The key is to use 2 hair barrettes per ear. One securing the elastic over the ear and one barrette securing the elastic under the ear. Bobby pins might work.

Interesting, R232. I bought those string clip things, but they don't really help. I could try bobby pins. My hair is like caveman wild and long, so there's plenty to stick it to.

I'm also having a hell of a time finding a decent hair band to keep my hair out of my eyes. I've been using a metal hair band, but it's starting to not work because my hair has gotten so long and thick.

R233 I'm telling you that barrettes are the key. Get them at your local drug store. I don't why my ears just won't keep the mask elastic snug on my ears. I just know that that the 2 barrettes per ear solved the problem.

R233 There are stretchy headbands at your local drug store. Don't go metal. If the fabric ones are too tight, then stretch them out by pulling them out w/ your hands..

R233 The ones I bought are cheap from my local drugstore --- colors are aqua, pink, black, silver . They look like these Sassoon barrettes below. Maybe shorter.

Several people here need better ears.

I've got generous, sticky-out earlobes and a slightly turned up nose. First time in my life those characteristics have come in handy.

Try these, r233!

Real men use duct tape!

GOP's Kristi Noem called out by federal judge for having 'done little' to stop COVID-19 spread: report

[quote] [R233] There are stretchy headbands at your local drug store. Don't go metal. If the fabric ones are too tight, then stretch them out by pulling them out w/ your hands..

I bought a four pack of stretchy headbands on Amazon and put one on last night to wear while on the treadmill. After a few minutes, I had to take it off because it was giving me a headache. A few friends have suggested buying regular bandanas and tying them. I have a large head. It's not, say, Perez Hilton sized (thank god), maybe a shade under Ron Howard (but I still have all my hair).

I have a pointy head with a flat occipital bone and tiny ears- this is the only thing that keeps my masks snug and not falling off. I also wear hats to cover the giant thing. I tried the smaller version, but it just slides down my head, to the base of my neck, or pulls the mask at a weird angle.

That is fascinating, R243. And it stays on your head with no issue? You don't need to bobby pin it in?

I can relate, r243...

r244, nope. No bobby pins, no barrettes. And r245, that's how I describe myself-tiny little pinhead. People won't get the Zippy reference though. Much like Bob from the Church of the Sub-Genius.

Praise Bob!

So will Biden shove the whole of the US into lockdown or will you hoes move towards 5k deaths a day and still be business as usual?

Just bought these mask bracket inserts that are supposed to help you breathe. My asthmatic sister raves about them.

How do you attach those without either ruining the mask with tape or sticking them to your face, R249? They look like they'd be nice for my cloth masks but I wonder if they'd just stay in there if held by the cloth alone.

R250: My sister puts it on her face under her mask - no tape or anything. The silicon/rubber material and mask keeps it in place. She hates the mask flat on her face esp. now that it is Winter with runny nose etc. I will receive them on Monday and report back.

🤓 Those silicone rubber nose clips work for me. I found them on eBay a month, and have been wearing them daily. No more foggy lenses.

An excellent overview of things to come

Depressing article. Realistic but unsettling.

r252, like swimming nose clips?

More than 1,000 fines issued as illegal rave party ends in French countryside

From CNN's Pierre Buet in Paris

Five people have been arrested and more than 1,000 fines have been issued after an illegal New Year's rave in the French countryside ended on Saturday, local authorities said.

More than 2,500 partygoers attended the illegal party in the region of Brittany in France, despite the government's strict coronavirus restrictions and a national night-time curfew.

About 1,600 fines were issued as of Saturday following the rave, which started on Thursday, French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said via his official Twitter profile.

Trucks, sound systems and generators have been seized and Gendarmes officers "are continuing their investigation and checks so that this illegal event is harshly sanctioned," Darmanin added.

Of the 1,200 fines, 800 are related to coronavirus restrictions, Emmanuel Berthier, prefect of Ille-et-Vilaine, said.

Up to 20 vehicles including trucks which may be carrying sound equipment managed to escape the police block, Sauvegrain added.

"There is a judicial investigation which will allow us to identify the main perpetrators and to arrest them," Sauvegrain added.

Local police said they had tried to shut down the rave, but "faced violent hostility," with a police vehicle set on fire, other vehicles damaged, and soldiers sprayed with bottles and stones, causing minor injuries.

"No new violence" occurred since Thursday, a Gendarmerie Nationale spokesperson told CNN on Saturday, adding that partygoers were "leaving the premises voluntarily."

Local authorities said the number of partygoers was "estimated at 2,500, coming from different French departments and from abroad."

A national curfew from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. has been in place since December

In the Good News Bad News Files...

The coronavirus variant circulating in South Africa could be resistant to the vaccine, a leading expert has suggested but stressed that it could take just six weeks to develop a new jab if one was needed.

Sir John Bell, regius professor of Medicine at the University of Oxford, said his "gut feeling" was that the vaccines already on stream would be effective against the new UK strain, which was first identified in Kent.

But he added: "I don't know about the South African strain – I think that's a big question mark."

South Africa was put into lockdown last week after President Cyril Ramaphosa said the new variant, 501.V2, appeared to be "more contagious" than the virus that circulated in the first wave.

1/2/21: Israel leads the world in percent of population that has been vaccinated with 12.59%. Israel has about 9 million people.

The US is at 1.28%. The US has about 330 million people.

The state of Virginia is close to Israel in size, with about 9 million people. It's vaccination rate for the population is about 1%.

Canada is about .3%

Israel is a very tiny country with a national healthcare system.

Israel has not administered the vaccine to Palestinians.

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

R261, I wouldn't trust anything out of anyone in this administration at this point but I was wondering about the dosage, too. If there's 50-60% protection after one dose or with two half doses, that might be enough for younger people and double the amount of doses right off the bat. Of course, I'd want about 20 different panels of medical professionals not associated with either the pharmaceutical industry or the Trump administration to analyze it first.

Despite both being mRNA vaccines, i'm still opting for Pfizer, given their apolitical involvement w/45. Thankfully Cedars in LA is administering this one, though it won't be until this spring at earliest, per my PCP

A bit of frustration and a rant, but they can’t even get the doses they have into arms. How will cutting the vax doses in half, help the situation? Like a newscaster said, this is no longer Operation Warp Speed.... its Operation Flat Tire.

I’m old and patient & fully support first responders, convalescent homes, front line workers to be at the head of the line. But come April, I’m going to be very selfish and push ahead of the line if our state continues to dilly dally.

UK Ramps UP Oxford-AstraZeneca vax.

Opinion piece was published in the WaPo suggesting that given the scale of the pandemic and the supply and distribution issues that have arisen, it might be a better idea to just give the first dose to as many people as possible right now, instead of only applying half of the available inventory and saving the other half for the second dose. People would then get their second dose 3 or so months later, but this would help bring down the number of cases sooner. Full article at link.

UK's vaccine strategy: Delay second shot for up to 12 weeks instead of 3 weeks.

[quote] Health experts have conditionally backed the U.K.’s decision to delay administering a second dose of the coronavirus vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, warning that the need to suppress the new coronavirus strain “cannot be overstated.”

[quote] It comes shortly after the U.K. said second doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech jab, in addition to the newly-approved Covid-19 vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford, would now be given up to 12 weeks after the first dose.

UK goes even further:

[quote] Britain Opens Door to Mix-and-Match Vaccinations, Worrying Experts

[quote] If a second dose of one vaccine isn’t available, another may be substituted, according to the guidelines.

[quote] Some scientists say Britain is gambling with its new guidance. “There are no data on this idea whatsoever,” said John Moore, a vaccine expert at Cornell University. Officials in Britain “seem to have abandoned science completely now and are just trying to guess their way out of a mess.”

That is fucking scary at r268.

What about this nightmare is not scary r269?

New UK variant detected in at least 37 countries

From CNN's Elizabeth Cohen

A new variant of coronavirus first discovered in the UK, also known as B.1.1.7, is present in at least 37 countries as well as Hong Kong and Taiwan, according to CNN's count.

Experts say that while the variant appears to be more transmissible than other Covid-19 strains, there is no evidence it is deadlier or causes more severe disease.

Test results are expected this week from labs that are studying whether the variant might pose a challenge to coronavirus vaccines, according to a World Health Organization official.

The UK variant is separate from another one first identified in South Africa.

The 37 countries are: United Kingdom, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Lebanon, Malta, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Portugal, United Arab Emirates, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, United States (including cases in Florida, California and Colorado) and Vietnam.

South African coronavirus variant "more of a problem" than UK strain, health secretary says

From CNN's Schams Elwazer

British Health Secretary Matt Hancock said Monday that he is “incredibly worried about the South African variant” of the novel coronavirus and described it as “even more of a problem” than the new UK strain.

“This is a very, very significant problem,” Hancock told BBC radio.

The UK has already restricted flights from South Africa and mandated anyone traveling from there to quarantine on arrival.

Vaccine questions: Meanwhile, a leading Oxford scientist has said there was a “big question mark” around the effectiveness of current vaccines on the South African variant.

“My gut feeling is the vaccine will be still effective against the Kent strain,” Sir John Bell told Times Radio, adding “I don’t know about the South African strain, there’s a big question mark about that.”

The UK variant is believed to have originated in southeast England. British scientists say the pattern of mutations makes it more easily transmitted, although it does not appear to cause more severe disease.

"The mutations associated with the South African form are really pretty substantial changes in the structure of the protein," Bell added.

The year 2021 will bring new and creative methods of

💉#VaccineCorruption

South Korea reports another day with over 1,000 Covid-19 cases

From CNN's Jake Kwon in Seoul

South Korea reported 1,020 Covid-19 cases on Sunday, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) said Monday.

Of those, 985 were local cases and 35 imported.

The majority of new cases -- 685 -- were found in the Seoul metropolitan area, according to KDCA.

South Korea's total number of cases now stands at 64,264. There were also 19 deaths reported on Sunday, bringing the total number of fatalities to 981.

Okay, so did they not tell us we HAD to get the 2nd dose within 21-28 days or else the first dose would be useless? Now they're saying wait three months?

Why even bother at this point?

They are gambling on 50% being effective enough to slow the spread in the face of a sluggish vaccination roll-out with new infections significantly outpacing vaccinations for an extended period. The danger is selection pressure with all these 50%ers walking around during uncontrolled spread. I don’t know what the right answer is, but personally I want my shots on the tested schedule.

Northwell’s in danger. Cuomo will cut a hospital.

I agree, Elder Lez. If I'm getting the first one, I want the 2nd one in the proper timing. What a crock of fucking shit.

A virus so powerful it's bringing all the world's health systems, economies and governments gradually to their knees searching for ways to survive. Including those humans who will be dead tomorrow.

All these new dosing schemes are a gamble, and "mix and match" deserves no less than a WTF? How about we actually enforce mask wearing and break up super-spreader events, meanwhile greatly accelerating production and distribution of the vaccines?

Oh no .. Now, scientists are concerned that current vaccines may not work on the South African variant.

I got the Pfizer vaccine just before Christmas and have been smelling cigarette smoke when there’s nobody around smoking. Maybe I got the virus or maybe I should just wash my hair.

I got my first shot of the Moderna vaccine today - not feeling much of anything four hours later. I am stunned at the number of my colleagues who are refusing the vaccine, in spite of working in high exposure risk environments. All of the talk about possibly delaying second shots for those of us who have taken the first is making me sick. I think there are going to be a huge number of deniers right now and would hate to wait for those people to make up their mind if they are going to vaccinate or not. I want my second shot on time.

R281, not worried. The vaccines have up to 95% effectiveness. I really doubt that a few mutations will make that drop all the way to zero, or anything close.

Are you sleep smoking, r282?

Regarding r260,

[quote]The Palestinians run a semiautonomous region in the West Bank and the terrorist group Hamas has run the Gaza Strip since 2006. 139 countries recognize Palestine as a country. It is a member of some UN organizations. [bold]The fact that the Palestinian Authority would wait to vaccinate was known in mid-December because The Washington Post had reported that while Israel was rolling out a vaccination drive, the Palestinians were waiting[/bold].

[quote]The facts of what was happening was clear. Palestinians in the West Bank are not citizens of Israel or members of Israel’s health care system, which consists of several large state-mandated semi-private health providers. Israel's health authorities have done an exemplary job of vaccinating everyone they can, Jews and Arabs, without any discrimination. They have even vaccinated non-citizens who live in Israel and Jerusalem. I've spoken to some of those people in the last few days.

[quote]Yet, most Palestinians live under the rule of the Palestinian Authority.

[quote]Israel has not been responsible for health care of Palestinians in Gaza or the West Bank for decades. Israel left the Gaza Strip in 2005. However, the voices demanding Israel run a vaccination program in Gaza have come forward, claiming the Gaza Strip is “occupied” by Israel. This use of the term is deceptive, trying to force Israel to run the health care of a region run by an armed terrorist group, which the commentators know very well is not controlled by Israel.

more at link

Upstate New York man has tested positive for the UK strain of Covid-19, governor says

From CNN's Sonia Moghe and Laura Dolan

New York Gov. Cuomo announced Monday that a person has tested positive for the UK strain of Covid-19, confirmed by the state’s Department of Health laboratory in Wadsworth.

The case is tied to a jewelry store in Saratoga Springs, and the man who tested positive did not travel recently. Cuomo said that since the man did not travel, it suggests the strain is in the community.

The man is in his 60’s and was symptomatic. Cuomo said the man is now on the mend.

Cuomo called on anyone who visited the store, called N. Fox Jewelers, between Dec. 18 to Dec. 24 to get tested.

Three other people associated with the store have also tested positive. The lab in Wadsworth is testing those now to see if what strain of Covid-19 those three have.

The store was closed from Dec. 24 through today.

Yes r252, what nose clips are you talking about?

One in five people in Los Angeles test positive for Covid.

I want Trump held responsible for this and I want to file a class action suit against this piece of shit because all of this is his fault.

Oh dear

All hell is about to break loose with the newest wave of Covid outbreaks. Between the vaccine distribution falling on its face, and businesses reopening today.... bars, restaurants with indoor dining, gyms, just to name a few..... and a president who doesn't really give a damn about this country, we are going to be screwed all over again.

And what in the hell is this business giving only a half dosage of vaccine to squeeze out extra doses? Are you freaking kidding me? Why not just hand out loaded weapons?

[quote][R281], not worried. The vaccines have up to 95% effectiveness. I really doubt that a few mutations will make that drop all the way to zero, or anything close.

That's not how effectiveness works. It's not like if the virus mutates 10% the vaccine gets 10% less effective. It could be that the virus mutates 1% and the vaccine becomes 100% completely useless if that mutation takes place in an area that makes it so the vaccine no longer leads the production of proteins that closely enough resemble the proteins on the outer coating of the virus for your body to recognize it.

If the variation in South Africa has a significant enough mutation to the protein spike and becomes predominant enough, you can have tons of the current vaccine pumped into you but it won't matter because the T cells won't be looking for the right protein and you'll have the wrong antibodies.

New stats reveal the businesses hardest hit by COVID in LA County: 402 FedEx workers, 253 Costco staff and 210 Amazon employees have tested positive in the district where a new case is recorded every SIX SECONDS

The dashboard records non-residential settings including workplaces, food and retail stores where there has been three or more lab-confirmed cases.

It shows that, a total of 511 businesses have recorded outbreaks across LA County and 9,306 have been infected. Of these, 9,304 are staff working at the businesses.

This comes as hospitals in the county are buckling under the weight of the pandemic and ICUs are bursting at the seams.

Deaths have surged by 700 percent since the beginning of November and one resident is now dying every 10 minutes.

Officials fear the worst is yet to come, warning that if the county continues on its current trajectory deaths could soon top 1,000 each week.

Public health figures show that seven Costco warehouses have been hit by outbreaks of coronavirus, with the site at Culver City recording 71 cases among its workforce.

The Van Nuys facility has recorded 50 infections and 42 at the Woodland Hills site.

Of the 402 FedEx workers infected with the virus across eight company sites in the county, 128 are workers at the Pacoima facility.

Other sites ravaged by outbreaks include FedEx Ground Arcadia with 82 cases, FedEx Ground City of Industry with 69 and FedEx Ground Sun Valley with 35 cases.

Amazon has also been hard-hit with six facilities including one Amazon bookstore accounting for 210 infections among staff members.

A total of 66 workers from the site at Temple City Blvd have been infected and 512 at Rayo Avenue site.

There have also been infections at five Chick-Fil-A fast food joints at Azusa, Devonshire & Reseda, Downey, Santa Clarita and Victory & Fallbrook.

R292, the vaccine isn't targeting one spot, though. Multiple antibodies are targeting multiple sites.

But, as a percentage, are those numbers R293 unexpected? If a three person store has one person get it, that's 33% but only one case. Those employers are huge. I wonder what the percentages are.

R294, not right now it isn't. All the current vaccines are for the spike protein.

R295, yeah but multiple sites of the spike protein are being targeted.

WaPo 1/4/21

[quote] U.S. health officials say they plan to stick with two-dose coronavirus regimen

[quote] Critics argue that deferring a second dose could protect more people as the pandemic surges, but officials say they will follow the science.

[quote] The Food and Drug Administration on Monday evening said it would be “premature” and “not rooted solidly in the available evidence” to change the way the two authorized vaccines are administered.

[quote] The statement, by FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn and Peter Marks, director of the agency’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said the available data “continue to support the use of two specified doses of each authorized vaccine at specified intervals.

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

Saw in cnn that LA EMS workers are being told not to transport those with little chance of survival to hospitals.

Per the FDA: Glad they have made this statement.

“ We have been following the discussions and news reports about reducing the number of doses, extending the length of time between doses, changing the dose (half-dose), or mixing and matching vaccines in order to immunize more people against COVID-19.

These are all reasonable questions to consider and evaluate in clinical trials. However, at this time, suggesting changes to the FDA-authorized dosing or schedules of these vaccines is premature and not rooted solidly in the available evidence.

Without appropriate data supporting such changes in vaccine administration, we run a significant risk of placing public health at risk, undermining the historic vaccination efforts to protect the population from COVID-19.

The available data continue to support the use of two specified doses of each authorized vaccine at specified intervals.

For the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, the interval is 21 days between the first and second dose. And for the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine, the interval is 28 days between the first and second dose.

R260 Why should the Israelis administer the vaccine to the Palestinians and not put their own citizens first, just like every other country in the world? Why should they vaccinate people who hate them? Why are the Israelis supposed to be less selfish than others, especially as they are surrounded by a billion Arabs who want to see them all pushed into the sea? Fair play to the Israelis for being on the ball about vaccinating their citizens.

WaPo: There is compelling evidence that covid-19 will have long-term effects on the brains and nervous systems of survivors as they age, and researchers on Tuesday announced a large international study to investigate the correlation between the coronavirus and cognitive decline, Alzheimer’s disease and other dementia in later life

Switzerland reports 28 cases of UK Covid-19 variant

From CNN's Niamh Kennedy

Swiss health authorities reported 28 cases of the new variant of Covid-19 that has been spreading across the UK.

Most of these infections were discovered either in people who had traveled from the UK recently or that had been in contact with those that had, the Head of Infectious Diseases Control at the country’s Federal Office of Public Health, Virginie Masserey, said at a press conference on Tuesday. However, she said the variant had also been found in people who “didn't have this epidemiological link.”

“This virus is in Switzerland and propagating,” Masserey explained, adding that while the spread at the moment remains "very low,” the new variant provides a “further reason to continue the efforts to lessen absolutely the number of cases in Switzerland.”

“If we start to see a significant spread of the variant starting from a rather high level this could overburden the health system and increase the number of deaths” she added.

Switzerland’s Federal Office of Public Health reported 4,020 cases in the past 24 hours, 208 new hospitalizations and 98 deaths.

Los Angeles hospital official says some patients are waiting for hours in ambulances across city

From CNN's Adrienne Vogt

Dr. Jeffrey Smith, chief operating officer of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, said hospitals and staff are doing their best to keep up as coronavirus infections soar.

Ambulance crews in Los Angeles County were given guidance not to transport patients with little chance of survival. The order is “very specific to patients who suffered from a cardiac arrest and are unable to be revived in the field,” Smith explained. “Those patients have a very low rate of survival even if they are transported to the hospital, so at this time, it is deemed to likely be futile.”

He said emergency medical services are working to divert ambulances to hospitals with capacity to receive patients. The length of time that patients are waiting in ambulances varies from “day-to-day and hour-to-hour,” Smith said.

“Things change very quickly. There are parts of our city where ambulances are waiting for hours in order to off-board patients. In those places, the county is working with those hospitals to actually set up tents to receive those patients and get them off the ambulances so the ambulances can be returned to service,” he said.

Smith said that the medical center has converted recovery rooms into ICU beds to double their capacity, brought in additional staff from around the country and increased health care workers’ shifts to try to keep up with demand.

I know I’ve become obsessed with this but the vaccinations are here to deliver. This is criminal. We could see all numbers crashing downward by March if they just get the damn vax in arms. Blame blame blame.

Hard-hit California has vaccinated just 1 percent of its 40 million residents while hundreds of seniors in Florida camped up in their cars overnight in order to get shots as the 'train wreck' vaccination rollout continues and the Surgeon General warned the US 'needs to do a better job'.

Just 4.66 million COVID-19 vaccines have been administered across the US in the last three weeks despite federal officials having distributed 15.4 million doses to the states.

It means more than two-thirds of the vaccines shipped within the US have gone unused and just 1.4 percent of the population has been vaccinated as cases, deaths and hospitalizations continue to surge across the US.

One in 930 Americans have now died from COVID-19 with the death toll surging past 353,000 and the seven-day rolling average for fatalities at just over 2,600 per day.

There were 180,477 new infections across the country on Monday and a record 128,210 patients currently being treated for coronavirus in hospitals.

Surgeon General Jerome Adams on Tuesday admitted that the largest vaccination campaign in US history, which has been in the works for months amid the pandemic, has been a 'little bit messy'.

He blamed, in part, the states for the slower than expected rollout despite federal officials earlier vowing to have 20 million vaccinated by the end of 2020.

Based on guidelines issued by the federal government, most states are currently prioritizing frontline healthworkers and nursing home residents in the first phase, before moving on to the elderly and other essential workers.

You need to make an appointment. I saw on the news that they turn you away if you don't have an appointment (in ny)

I'm now happy to wait for a vaccination until they get their shit together and decide they're going to definitely administer it properly. I don't want to get the first dose and then find out three weeks later they won't give me the second because they're rationing.

Absolutely r307. Gives me pause as well.

I'm starting get that same terrible feeling I got when reading about this nearly a year ago.

Nearly 128,000 children diagnosed with Covid-19 between Christmas and New Year's Eve, pediatricians say

From CNN's Jen Christensen

Nearly 128,000 children were diagnosed with coronavirus infections from Dec. 24 to Dec. 31, the American Academy of Pediatrics said Tuesday.

The professional association, made up of pediatricians, noted that over a two-week period — from Dec. 17 to 31 — there was a 17% increase in Covid-19 cases in children.

These newly reported cases bring the cumulative total to more than 2.13 million cases since the start of the pandemic. Children account for a little more than 12% of all Covid-19 cases in the states that report cases by age.

Some more context: Severe illness due to Covid-19 is still relatively rare among children. In each state between 0.2% and 3.4% of all children with Covid-19 were hospitalized, and children accounted for at most 0.19% of all Covid-19 deaths. Thirteen states reported no child deaths in this time period.

The AAP says there still is an urgent need to collect more data on the long-term impacts of the pandemic on children, including how Covid-19 affects them physically and mentally.

The count of cases is also not complete, because not all states report data in the same way. These numbers come from 49 states, New York City, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and Guam.

‘Around 30%’ of eligible NY medical workers refusing COVID-19 vaccine: official

Nearly a third of New York health care workers so far eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine are taking a wait-and-see approach, eschewing the shots at least for the time being, city and state officials said Tuesday.

Frontline medical workers make up the majority of the group electing to go unvaccinated, with the jabs not yet available to the general public.

“Around 30 percent is accurate,” said Mitchell Katz, head of the city-run Health and Hospitals system, of the current refusal rate.

“I think you have to, as the mayor has explained, have empathy, and really think about what the experience has been of a Health and Hospital nurse over the last 10 months,” added Katz, speaking during a press briefing with Mayor Bill de Blasio.

“Not everybody has to live the life of the nurse who’s told today this is what works, and then tomorrow, ‘Oh no, we’ve learned something more.'”

Speaking during his own briefing later in the day, Gov. Andrew Cuomo reported a similar refusal rate.

“We expect about a 70 percent acceptance rate of the vaccine,” he said, leaving a roughly 30 percent refusal rate.

“Federal officials will say 70 to 90. I don’t think you ever get near 90. I think if I was offering to give away cash to New Yorkers, I don’t think you’d have a 90-percent acceptance rate,” he added with a laugh.

“A 30 percent refusal [or] 25 percent refusal is what we expect to see from the health care community.”

Cuomo did not completely rule out the possibility of trying to compel health care workers to take the vaccine due to the nature of their jobs, but said that such a tack would almost certainly provoke a legal battle — and that it may not even be necessary.

“There is a complicated legal question as to whether or not you can mandate a person take a vaccine,” he said. “But besides the legal question, we haven’t gotten there yet because I don’t know that it is going to be an issue.”

De Blasio said that he expects to see at least some of the holdouts come around once they see that the vaccine is safe and effective

“So many people have gotten the vaccine now who had a very good experience with it,” he said. “The more people see that, the more they feel it, I think you’ll see that hesitancy reduce. But in the meantime, we’re going to keep educating people, keep giving those positive examples, keep answering questions.”

A pair of nurses at city-run Coney Island Hospital explained to The Post on Tuesday their reasons for declining the vaccine when it was offered to them.

“I’ve held off so far, the main reason being I already had COVID,” said one nurse, who declined to give her name.

“I think that’s true of a lot of the staff here, because we tend to work with lower-income members of the population who were most susceptible to having COVID. There are some staff who are just unwilling to take the vaccine because they don’t trust it, but I don’t know if that’s true in this hospital more than any other hospital.”

Another nurse, who also asked that her name be withheld, said that she was open to getting the vaccine after seeing the early results.

“I’m holding off on getting the vaccine because I want to see how this plays out first,” she said. “I don’t entirely trust the science behind it, and that’s my right.

“I also don’t have as much one-on-one contact with patients as some of the other nurses here,” she noted. “I work mainly at a desk, so for me it’s not as critical as it is for some. If I [were] working in the ER for example, I would likely bite the bullet and get the vaccine.”

A survey conducted in October — prior to the vaccines’ approval — found that about half of New Yorkers were wary about the jabs.

But a nationwide survey released last month found that 71 percent of Americans would “definitely or probably” get the vaccine once available to them.

Hollywood torn over production shutdown amid rising COVID-19 cases

Hollywood’s biggest film and TV studios are temporarily halting production as the coronavirus pandemic continues to mushroom in Los Angeles county, leading to rising anxieties over the future of Tinseltown.

On Monday, Netflix joined a growing number of studios, including CBS TV Studios, Warner Bros. TV and Universal TV, to dim the lights until mid-January.

Some Hollywood insiders are lamenting that the shutdown could prove untenable if it extends beyond two weeks. Others, however, are worried for their safety even as productions have put in place COVID regulations.

“Southern California hospitals are facing a crisis the likes of which we have never seen before,” said Gabrielle Carteris, president of SAG-AFTRA, the union representing actors.

“Patients are dying in ambulances waiting for treatment because hospital emergency rooms are overwhelmed,” Carteris said, cautioning Tinseltown from resuming work. “This is not a safe environment for in-person production right now.”

But one TV producer, who asked to remain anonymous, told Variety that the situation is more complicated.

“The cupboards are bare and there is too much money at stake,” the producer said, referring to the dearth of new TV and movies.

Weighing the consequences, the producer added: “We’ve somehow convinced ourselves that we can do this safely. Are we doing it safely? We are being incentivized to believe that we are. So I think everyone is going to continue to take calculated risks.”

Even with 1 in 5 Los Angeles residents testing positive for the coronavirus, amounting to around 10,000 new cases daily in the county plagued by more than 800,000 cases, sources said there’s more concern over the day-to-day situation than a total shutdown similar to that of the spring of 2020.

That shutdown crushed film and TV industry in LA during the second quarter of 2020 with productions plummeting 98 percent versus the year-ago period, to just 194 shoot days, marking the “lowest filming levels on record,” a FilmLA study said.

In order to get back to work, studios put in place stringent safety measures on set last summer. They included routine cast and crew testing, COVID compliance officers, mandatory mask-wearing on set and assigned zones to regulate contact.

But even with such measures, production staffs have still contracted the virus. For example NBC’s “Mr. Mayor,” Warner Bros.’ “Lucifer,” and both “Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet” and “Young Sheldon,” which are produced at the CBS lot, logged positive COVID cases into the double digits.

Hollywood agents, who rely on getting their clients work to keep money flowing, brushed off the current state of the business, calling the halt in production more of a “blip” than a prelude to a larger shutdown.

Agents told Variety that studios are trying to “ease public concerns” with the pause, and that a temporary production hiatus won’t materially affect workflow on shows.

However, if things continue to deteriorate, various guild unions around town could intervene in a significant way by calling for a complete shutdown of physical production.

SAG-AFTRA national executive director David White said that while the on-set COVID measures are largely working, his union is “very concerned” about the situation and is “constantly monitoring” it.

“We want the industry to thrive,” said White. “We want members to be able to put food on the table for their families.”

This matters because Texas has a Republican governor and indicted attorney general who interfere with any independent local effort to control the outbreak.

[bold]Houston-area officially crosses hospitalization threshold that triggers reopening rollbacks[/bold]

HOUSTON – The Houston area officially crossed Tuesday the hospitalization threshold that triggers a rollback in reopenings for the area.

Data from the Texas Department of State Health Services shows that coronavirus-related hospitalizations in Trauma Service Area Q, which includes Harris, Fort Bend and Montgomery counties, have been above 15% for seven consecutive days. That triggers a provision of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s reopening order that requires, among other things, bars to close and restaurants to reduce capacity to 50%.

more at link

Bloomberg: Coronavirus cases in the South are rising quickly and account for a larger portion of the U.S. total than anywhere else.

The region saw 82,074 new cases on average this week, about 20,000 more than the Midwest’s peak in November. In Alabama, more than 45% of tests over the past two weeks came back positive.

Trump has never been interested in controlling and defeating Corona. The only thing about Corona that interests him is how much money he can line his pockets with from his corrupt backroom dealings.

R250: The face brackets are great! A lot easier to breathe! I wish I used them sooner. I bought these:

Over a hundred virus cases detected in China's Hebei province

From CNN's Beijing Bureau

A cluster of virus cases in China's Hebei province has continued to grow, with over 39 confirmed cases and 78 asymptomatic cases reported on Tuesday, according to an official statement Wednesday.

China's Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has claimed that the cluster is linked to imported cases.

CDC deputy director-general Feng Zijian said on a CCTV state news program on January 5 that “the virus [in Hebei] is different from those that have been spreading in other parts of China. It is imported from overseas, possibly from Europe.” Feng added that the cases spreading in Shijiazhuang and Xingtai are “highly related to the same source.”

The majority of cases are linked to the Gaocheng district of Shijiazhuang, the capital city of Hebei province, with another city, Xingtai, 100km away from the capital, reporting two cases.

The first case was reported on January 2, when a Gaocheng district resident tested positive for the virus a few days after going to a wedding. A few other attendees tested positive later.

Gaocheng has been designated as a "high-risk area," starting Wednesday.

People who wish to travel from Shijiazhuang airport and train station need to present a negative PCR test result from within the last 72 hours.

The city will start testing all residents from January 6, according to a spokesperson from the Shijiazhuang Municipal People’s Government, who spoke at a press conference on Tuesday.

I long for the day when 100 cases in America is considered news.

Thanks for the tip R316. I have been having so much trouble wearing a mask I started using face shields instead. Face shields alone probably don't give me enough protection but I have COPD and can barely wear a mask.

CDC found over 50 cases of the UK variant in the US

From CNN's Michael Nedelman

At least 52 cases of a coronavirus variant first identified in the United Kingdom have been identified in the United States, according to the CDC on Wednesday.

This includes 26 cases in California, 22 cases in Florida, two cases in Colorado, and one case in Georgia and New York.

CDC says this does not represent the total number of cases circulating in the US, but rather those that have been found by analyzing positive samples. The agency cautions that its numbers, which are expected to update on Tuesdays and Thursdays, may not immediately match those of state and local health departments.

While the variant appears to spread more easily than Covid-19, there's no evidence that it's more deadly or causes more severe disease, according to CDC.

Experts suspect there could be many more cases in the US and have criticized the country for not doing more genetic sequencing of virus samples to surveil for mutations. On Sunday, a CDC official told CNN the agency plans to more than double the number of samples it sequences over the following two weeks -- with a target of 6,500 per week.

The earliest known US sample that carried the current version of the variant was taken on December 19 in Florida, according to the genomic database GISAID. However, collection dates are not available for all samples.

Woldometer indicates US hit 4,068 deaths today. A new high.

Yikes! That's fucking scary!

Plus the Christmas-New Year's surge in one to two weeks?

[quote]CDC found over 50 cases of the UK variant in the US

[quote]While the variant appears to spread more easily than Covid-19, there's no evidence that it's more deadly or causes more severe disease, according to CDC.

They won't know that until it's the dominant strain.

Yes R323 it is going to get far worse in the middle of Jan. Far too many fucking dumbass idiots who thought it was fine to travel to visit family because otherwise they would be sad at Christmas. Fuck you dumbasses. Because of you, lots of people will be sad next Christmas because family members are DEAD because of your rampant stupidity.

8 pm curfew in Montreal

Patients in intensive care in the UK to receive arthritis drugs as trial shows reduction in mortality

From CNN’s Lauren Kent and Sarah Dean in London

Patients in intensive care units in the United Kingdom could soon receive drugs typically used to treat rheumatoid arthritis after clinical trials found they can help save lives and reduce time in hospital by 10 days, the Department of Health said Thursday.

Results from the government-funded clinical trial — published online on Thursday, but not yet peer-reviewed — showed the drugs, Tocilizumab and Sarilumab, reduced the relative risk of death by 24%, when either were administered to patients within 24 hours of entering intensive care, the Department of Health said in a press release. They also reduced time in hospital by an average of seven to 10 days.

"This is a significant step forward for increasing survival of patients in intensive care with Covid-19. The data shows that tocilizumab, and likely sarilumab, speed up and improve the odds of recovery in intensive care, which is crucial for helping to relieve pressure on intensive care and hospitals and saving lives,” England’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer Jonathan Van-Tam said.

The government will update its guidance on Friday to encourage the use of these drugs for Covid-19 patients in intensive care. The drugs are typically available in UK hospitals.

During the trial, the drugs were administered in addition to a corticosteroid, such as dexamethasone, which is already provided in the standard of care, the press release said.

Patients receiving the current standard of care alone experienced a mortality rate of 35.8%. This was reduced to 27.3% using tocilizumab or sarilumab, a 24% relative reduction in risk of mortality.

China bans 11 million people from leaving city in Hebei province as health officials try to contain virus outbreak

China has banned 11 million people from leaving the city of Shijiazhuang, the capital of Hebei province in the country's north. The ban came into effect Thursday.

Over 100 new cases were reported Wednesday in the province, which neighbors China's capital Beijing.

​At a press conference Thursday, Meng Xianghong, deputy mayor of Shijiazhuang, announced a ban on outbound travel for all people and vehicles in the city, except for emergencies.

Gaocheng district in Shijiazhuang had been declared a high-risk area on Wednesday.

As of noon on Thursday, samples had been collected from a total of 6,109,685 people for mass testing in the city.

Shijiazhuang reported 50 confirmed cases and 67 asymptomatic cases on Wednesday, according to a Thursday update.

Fauci calls China out for lack of transparency

From CNN's Naomi Thomas

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the US' National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said that China's delayed reporting on person-to-person and asymptomatic transmission of Covid-19 hindered the world's early response to the virus.

In an interview with Axios published on Thursday, Fauci said that many people outside China also “got fooled” because they didn’t know the virus acted differently from SARS-CoV, the virus that can cause SARS, which is transmitted when people are symptomatic.

“Back then, the lack of full appreciation of the seriousness of what we were dealing in, was [due to] a number of reasons,” Fauci said.

"Some things were absolutely not known by anybody. And, some things were known by the Chinese and they weren’t very transparent about it.”

An earlier revelation of asymptomatic spread from China would have “changed everything,” when it came to guidance around masks, social distancing and contact tracing, Fauci told Axios.

He added the refusal to allow foreign scientists to investigate the virus in China for “a considerable period” limited the ability for the world to see how the virus was transmitting and to trace the origin.

The World Health Organization said Wednesday that China had blocked the arrival of a team investigating the origins of the pandemic.

In a press briefing Wednesday, spokesperson for China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Hua Chunying, said China had "always held an open, transparent and responsible attitude" on tracing the origin of the virus.

Hua said that China had previously welcomed WHO experts into the country and said that the UN investigation team and Chinese experts have "maintained frequent interactions" including four video meetings between October and December.

"In order to ensure that the international expert group that comes to China can work smoothly, it is needed to fulfill the necessary procedures and make relevant specific arrangements. The two sides are still negotiating about this," Hua said.

Just wait until those MAGATs that were in Washington get back on their planes and go home and infect people across the country. You won’t be able to walk out the front door for months.

Things aren’t going to be rosy on Capitol Hill, either:

[quote]@NYCTechie: The face brackets are great! A lot easier to breathe! I wish I used them sooner.

Do they create any additional gaping around the edges of the mask, or otherwise interfere with fit, seal or ability to stay put? Also, what type of mask did you try it with, pleated surgical type or fabric, etc.? Thanks for your input.

AP: New research suggests that Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine can protect against a mutation found in two highly contagious variants of the coronavirus that erupted in Britain and South Africa.

Pfizer and the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston used blood samples from 20 people who received the vaccine during a large study of the shots. Antibodies from those vaccine recipients successfully fended off the virus in lab dishes.

The study is preliminary and has not yet been reviewed by experts, a key step for medical research.

But “it was a very reassuring finding that at least this mutation, which was one of the ones people are most concerned about, does not seem to be a problem” for the vaccine, said Pfizer chief scientific officer Dr. Philip Dormitzer.

Thanks R333.

WaPo 1/7/21

[quote] Post-infection coronavirus immunity usually robust after 8 months, study shows

[quote] The human body typically retains a robust immune response to the coronavirus for at least eight months after an infection, and potentially much longer, researchers said in a study published in the journal Science. About 90 percent of the patients studied showed lingering, stable immunity, the study found.

R332: Do they create any additional gaping around the edges of the mask, or otherwise interfere with fit, seal or ability to stay put? Nope, actually the seal is better (no foggy glasses) and it stays put.

Also, what type of mask did you try it with, pleated surgical type or fabric, etc.? Fabric with paper mask underneath.

More than half of Covid-19 cases might have been transmitted by people not showing symptoms, according to a new study from researchers at the CDC.

It’s a model, not a real-life study, but based on data from eight studies done in China, about 59% of all transmission came from people without symptoms.

About 35% of transmissions are driven by those who have not developed symptoms yet -- are presymptomatic -- and 24% from people who never develop symptoms..

Registered and on the vaccine list!

___________

You’re on the list! Appointments to schedule your vaccine visit are not yet available, but we have successfully received your registration.

COVID-19 vaccinations will be made available in phases to ensure those most at risk are prioritized. We will send you an email when it is time for you to schedule an appointment.

While we work to distribute vaccines quickly and safely, please remember to wear a mask, wash your hands regularly, and practice social distancing. For more on preventing the spread of COVID-19, visit covid19.nj.gov

R338 Registration? A list? My goodness, how organized.

-- S.F., coming to you live from the PA wilderness

I saw some trials for a CV vaccine by Novavax. I'll wait for the Moderna/Pfizer one though:

My sister and her husband just got the Moderna vaccine. So far, so good...

An anniversary of an important announcement.

FDA warns new coronavirus mutations can cause false negative Covid-19 test results in some cases

From CNN's Jacqueline Howard

The US Food and Drug Administration has alerted health care providers and labs that genetic variants of the novel coronavirus — including an emerging variant first detected in the United Kingdom called B.1.1.7 — could lead to false negative Covid-19 test results.

The FDA noted in a news release on Friday afternoon that false negative results can occur with any molecular test for the detection of the virus if a mutation has occurred in the part of the virus's genome that the test examines. According to the FDA, the risk that these mutations will impact overall testing accuracy is low. If Covid-19 is suspected after a negative test, the agency recommends repeat testing with a different test.

The agency notes three Covid-19 tests authorized in the United States may be impacted by genetic variants — MesaBiotech Accula, TaqPath Covid-19 Combo Kit and Linea Covid-19 Assay Kit — "but the impact does not appear to be significant.”

Since the TaqPath and Linea Covid-19 tests detect multiple genetic targets, the overall test sensitivity should not be impacted, the FDA noted. However, if certain patterns emerge in individual results from those tests, labs might consider further genetic sequencing of specimens. That “may help with early identification of new variants in patients to reduce further spread of infection,” the FDA said in its letter to labs and health care providers, noting that the B.1.1.7 variant has been associated with an increased risk of transmission

"The FDA will continue to monitor SARS-CoV-2 genetic viral variants to ensure authorized tests continue to provide accurate results for patients," FDA Commissioner Dr. Stephen Hahn said in the release. SARS-CoV-2 is the name of the novel coronavirus that causes Covid-19.

"While these efforts continue, we are working with authorized test developers and reviewing incoming data to ensure that health care providers and clinical staff can quickly and accurately diagnose patients infected with SARS-CoV-2, including those with emerging genetic variants," Hahn said.

"At this time, we believe the data suggests that the currently authorized COVID-19 vaccines may still be effective against this strain. The FDA will continue to keep health care providers and the public informed of any new information as it becomes available."

White House task force says there could be a fast-spreading "USA variant" of coronavirus

From CNN's Betsy Klein

The US may have its own version of a more transmissible coronavirus that might be helping fuel the already aggressive spread of the virus, the White House coronavirus task force said in its latest report to states this week.

Reports sent by the task force to states dated Jan. 3 warned of the possibility of a “USA variant” of Covid-19.

“This fall/winter surge has been at nearly twice the rate of rise of cases as the spring and summer surges. This acceleration suggests there may be a USA variant that has evolved here, in addition to the UK variant that is already spreading in our communities and may be 50% more transmissible,” reports obtained by CNN said.

The task force called for “aggressive mitigation… to match a much more aggressive virus.”

That mitigation should include the use of face masks, the task force said, and immediate vaccination of as many people as possible.

“Without uniform implementation of effective face masking (two or three ply and well-fitting) and strict social distancing, epidemics could quickly worsen as these variants spread and become predominant.”

The US has been tracking cases of a variant first identified in the UK that appears to be more easily transmitted.

The pandemic continues to rage as the nation has turned its attention to the insurrection at the US Capitol and the certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s victory, and the task force continued to warn states of “aggressive community spread” after the holiday season.

“The United States remains at a high plateau of 140-150,000 confirmed and suspected COVID admissions per week and 120-125,000 total inpatients. Significant continued deterioration, from California across the Sunbelt and up into the Southeast, Mid-Atlantic, and Northeast, despite low testing rates during the holidays, suggests aggressive community spread,” the task force reports said.

The task force reports also called for the establishment of outpatient monoclonal antibody treatment infusion sites “immediately available to save lives.”

And as the nation struggles to rapidly immunize Americans, the reports said that vaccines must “be put in arms now.”

“Do not delay the rapid immunization of those over 65 and vulnerable to severe disease; recommend creation of high throughput vaccination sites with use of EMT personnel to monitor for potential anaphylaxis and fully utilize nursing students. No vaccines should be in freezers but should instead be put in arms now; active and aggressive immunization in the face of this surge would save lives,” the reports said.

This week, California is the state with the most new cases per 100,000 population, followed by Arizona, Kansas, Tennessee, Rhode Island, Utah, Arkansas, West Virginia, Georgia, and Massachusetts in the top 10.

Test positivity, an indication of rising cases to come, is highest in Oklahoma, followed by Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Idaho, Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, South Carolina, and Alabama.

Arkansas has the most hospital admissions per 100 inpatient beds, followed by Arizona, Maryland, Oklahoma, Georgia, Kentucky, California, District of Columbia, South Carolina, and New Mexico.

And Kansas has the most new deaths per 100,000 population, followed by Wyoming, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Arkansas, Indiana, Mississippi, Arizona, Tennessee, and Rhode Island.

The USA variant will be 50% stupider than the other variants, but also 75% more aggressive.

R337 - wait, so 40% of transmissions are by people who clearly have symptoms? I would think that, outside of a hospital setting, 95% of all transmissions would be from asymptomatic or presymptomatic people.

You'd like to believe that people who feel unwell in the midst of pandemic would stay home to protect their fellow citizens, wouldn't you, R346? Unfortunately, there's a whole lot of people who don't -- and a whole lot of employers who won't offer employees sick pay if they do.

Keeping distance within a household unit is almost impossible, though.

LA climbs even higher

This is terrible. Is it really the time to be squabbling over political points?

I had to fight for three weeks to get vaccinated. They were trying to make anyone who had it recently wait, so I ended up getting it a week after most of my coworkers. Plus, they gave me Moderna when I wanted Pfizer.

This, despite the fact that they'd barely given out any of our supply.

Meanwhile, one of our Spanish interpreters, a woman I adore, came back from quarantine on New Years Eve and they offered it to her the same day I got it.

I am so sorry to hear that VOTN. I know I had brought that up as a possibility here, but my employer upon implementation made it clear they wanted everyone vaccinated ASAP regardless of past infection. I assumed all the New York area medical institutions were taking the same tack.

I wonder how naked beneath my clothes is doing in Florida. Has anyone heard from him?

Here at my university, the medical students (who are on the floor seeing patients every day) are raising a fuss because the hospital system is prioritizing vaccinating staff over them.

The distribution plan is:

1. Hospital system doctors, nurses, front line workers ( but NO med students)

2. Hospital system staff, including cube frauen who have no interaction with patients

3. Med students

I get the impression that the University and the hospital system each expect the other to be responsible for the med students.

Dr. Scott Gottlieb predicted Friday on CNBC that by the end of the month nearly one-third of the almost 331 million people in the U.S. could have gotten the coronavirus since the beginning of the pandemic.

“By the end of this month, we’ll have infected probably about 30% of the American public and maybe vaccinated another 10%, notwithstanding the very difficult rollout of the vaccine. You’re starting to get to levels of prior exposure in the population where the virus isn’t going to spread as readily.”

R353/Sylvia are any of your med students remote? I am pretty sure our first years are attending remotely. (Maybe second also?)

All of the New York State institutions were constrained by detailed New York State directives. Within the confines of those directives my employer has tried to make no distinction between faculty/staff/students/volunteers- just based on where you physically do your work, and in the case of researchers, if you work with live virus.

First few weeks were inpatient areas and hospital based urgent care only.

As of last Monday all outpatient facing persons and external providers.

As of this Monday it is anyone who is required to be on campus.

So not up to me yet! But at over 3 thousand vaccinations a day and steadily increasing I think I should get my first shot by February.

In LA, they are trying to give electronics to firefighters and other front line workers to get vaccinated as an incentive. At this point, I think we should just use up all the doses on anyone who wants it. I would still wait, but it would bring the infection down drastically. Maybe start with the poor zip codes. We are the most infected and least vaccinated. It will never end here unless we get the essential workers living in high density households taken care of.

R355 It was the later year students who shadow doctors around and see patients who were upset, rightfully. I think the university is now going to take the responsibility for getting them vaccinated.

I have yet to see anything resembling a detailed plan or directives from the state of PA. Today they put out a list of "phases," but no guidance on how for example, people in the food service industry are supposed to know when it's their turn, or how/where to go for a vaccine. Unlike NJ we don't have online registration, and I don't know if one is forthcoming.

Yeah, I say fuck the front line workers if they refuse it. They 100% should have it first, but if they refuse it, move on and start getting people who actually want to take it. Letting it sit in the deep freeze isn't doing anyone any good.

Sorry, VotN, but if you just had it you shouldn't have been in the front of the line. You are already protected. Why would you push to get the shot ahead of other people who are not protected? I think you were wrong about this.

I don't know why you say that, VOTN. I'd rather have the Moderna vaccine than the Pfizer.

I think they might have just seen evidence that Pfizer protects against the UK variant and SA strain, I would probably want Pfizer now, when before I wanted Moderna. The advantage of being at the end of the line is that a lot of discoveries will me made between now and the summer/fall.

[quote]Sorry, VotN, but if you just had it you shouldn't have been in the front of the line. You are already protected. Why would you push to get the shot ahead of other people who are not protected? I think you were wrong about this.

I'm immune suppressed. I get a flu shot every year, and still get the flu, one year twice.

I don't trust my immune response, especially when I had such a mild case. Additionally, there are a metric crapton of people who were refusing to take it (the day I got the shot, they'd officially given out less than a third of our doses), and I had friends at other hospitals who had also been diagnosed recently who got it, and they don't even do direct patient care.

[quote]I don't know why you say that, VOTN. I'd rather have the Moderna vaccine than the Pfizer.

Moderna seems to have had more side effects, and it's 28 days between shots, not 21. Also, the evidence seemed stronger on the Pfizer.

The news media needs to hire more scientifically literate people. They've been reporting that Biden's "risky plan" (their words) for getting more vaccines out is like what the UK is doing. Fucking idiots.

The actual plan is to get the doses out of the storage at the manufacturing facilities and into the hands of the health care institutions and local governments administering it. Everything I've seen so far, at least here in Illinois, is that the places getting the vaccine for distribution are already holding back half the supply for second shots. That's how it should be because then they know exactly what they have on hand. So, basically, the amount of vaccine getting into arms right now is actually only a quarter of the available supply. That is not enough.

The UK's plans to mix and match vaccines and wait 12 weeks are not safe. Distributing the already manufactured supply to be distributed is the right thing to do. We have to trust that the institutions implementing the end distribution will act responsibly knowing that second doses are needed at specific times (this is how vaccines often work, so they are used to those protocols) and that manufacturing won't completely break down in the next three months. Biden using the emergency manufacturing powers he'll have should ensure the second part. For the first part, where the distribution has to be handled responsibly at the local level, I'll just say this...bye Florida.

Ughh my SIL (of the brother out West who had the scare earlier) just tested positive and Is sick.

I don’t think NY institutions are holding back doses, but I trust Biden to intervene in a positive way on speeding up manufacturing.

[quote]I don’t think NY institutions are holding back doses, but I trust Biden to intervene in a positive way on speeding up manufacturing.

Didn't Cuomo take back New Rochelle and then fine them for that?

I'm also sorry, ElderLez. I'm sending good thoughts.

Sorry about your SIL, ElderLez. Are your other family members who've had it doing ok?

New Rochelle was in trouble for vaccinating people not in group one. Cuomo will come after you for not vaccinating fast enough and he’ll come after you for vaccinating people he didn’t say you could vaccinate.

Thank you VOTN. and Sylvia.The brother in Queens has managed to not get re-hospitalized. He’s a vegetarian who doesn’t like vegetables so I don’t think he’s overly bothered that his sense of smell and taste are still not completely back. So things are OK with him. The sister is struggling more. She’s still getting debilitating headaches. The loss of smell and taste is a major loss for her. And she’s worried about infecting her grand baby; although I’ve assured that she’s not infectious anymore.

[quote]He’s a vegetarian who doesn’t like vegetables

Not understanding just how this works ElderLez.

All the best to him, but what DOES he eat?

He has a limited and carb heavy diet; things like lo mein noodles minus this and that vegetable.

R370 - I've known vegetarians like this. It's insane. They eat a lot of processed foods - microwaved 'veggie' meals that are just carbs with a few vegetables added.

Like veggie burgers and veggie 'chips. Veggie chicken nuggets.

Kids food really.

Had no idea such people existed.

Thanks for the info ElderLez and r371.

Some Vegetarians will subsist on a lot of rice, pasta and potatoes too.

Ha! I have a vegetarian friend who is the same way!

This is a little troubling?

R374 Troubling in the stupidity/vapidity of the doctor for continuing to see patients and the patient who decided that lip fillers are an essential service during a pandemic, but not otherwise troubling.

Cough droplets contain magnitudes more virus particles than what is emitted by regular breathing, plus at close range, I'm not surprised that a mask may not have filtered them all. Or it could have gone into his eyes, we don't know. This is why we need ALL the elements of masks + distance + sick people stay the FUCK at home.

Politico's Carla Marinucci:

California Gov. Gavin Newsom says two gorillas at the San Diego Zoo have tested positive for Covid-19.

Our state is moving slower than molasses vaccinating people. They are just starting 75+ today after weeks of medical people. Meanwhile, I know four people that have gotten very very sick from it, I didn’t know anyone that had more than a mild case before. This may be the new strain?

R376 I AM DONE WITH HUMANITY.

It's funny because it's true:

Better link (I think) for R379.

I'm late to the game - why did so many Republicans and conservatives lose followers? Was it because of an account purge or were people fed up with these assholes?

R381, they are apparently shutting down accounts of QAnon loonies.

I think some of the techies at Twitter have started an early spring cleaning.

I dimly remember...way back in Feb or maybe March...a Korean epidemiologist laid out three possible courses for the pandemic. This was one of them. He predicted a lot of other things very accurately as well.

John Hopkins: US Covid-19 death toll hits new daily record of nearly 4,500.

So how are appointments for vaccines working out in Florida in the various counties? (NYT 1/10/21)

[quote]People camped out overnight in the Florida winter chill in Fort Myers and Daytona Beach for vaccines administered on a first-come-first-served basis, a spectacle that made national headlines. Health department offices in Sarasota and several other counties, unequipped to schedule vaccine appointments on their own websites, resorted to using Eventbrite, a service usually associated with invitations to dinner parties and art exhibitions.

[quote] Palm Beach County was accepting vaccine requests only by email, said the county’s health administrator, Dr. Alina Alonso, after the county’s phone system “absolutely died.” People in the queue were warned that they might have to wait months for an appointment. In the meantime, some wealthy people with connections to health care facilities have been able to get the vaccine more easily.

[quote] Phyllis Humphreys, 76, waited with her husband last week in a line of cars in Clermont, west of Orlando, that spilled onto Highway 27. They had scrambled into their car and driven 22 miles after receiving an automated text message saying vaccine doses were available. But by 9:43 a.m., the site had reached capacity and the Humphreys went home with no shots.

[quote] “We’re talking about vaccinations,” said Ms. Humphreys, a retired critical care nurse. “We are not talking about putting people in Desert Storm.”

Meanwhile, there's still a pandemic going on. (Had to really dig to find this thread)

Ontario is issuing a State of Emergency stay-at-home order, effective tomorrow.

Researchers in Ohio said Wednesday that they’ve discovered two new variants of the coronavirus that likely originated in the U.S. — one of which quickly became the dominant strain in Columbus, Ohio, over a three-week period in late December and early January.

Like the strain first detected in the U.K., the U.S. mutations appear to make Covid-19 more contagious but do not seem like they will diminish the effectiveness of the vaccines.

NYC Councilmember Mark D. Levine:

Urgent story being lost in the headlines today: The UK variant is confirmed in NYC.

Covid is spreading here at an alarming rate.

- 6k cases/day

- 3.3k in hospital

- Deaths rising steadily

The variant now increases the peril. We have to double down on precautions to slow this.

ABC News' Josh Margolin:

New: WH #coronavirus task force reports "Nearly all metro areas over 500,000 persons are in full resurgence”; "this fall/winter surge has been at nearly twice the rate of rise of cases as the spring and summer surges."

Early stage trials of Johnson & Johnson’s experimental coronavirus vaccine show it generated an immune response in nearly all volunteers, with minimal side-effects, after a single dose.

Vaccination elicited neutralizing antibodies — expected to stop the virus from infecting cells — in 90% of all participants by the 29th day after the first dose of vaccine and in all of them by two months after the first dose. The levels of these antibodies stayed stable for at least 71 days, they reported.

Stat News' Helen Branswell:

More than 40,000 people have died from #Covid19 in the United States in the first 14 days of 2021. 40,000 in 14 days.

That's more than double Canada's death toll for the entire pandemic to date.

1 in 3 people in Los Angeles have or have had COVID.

I feel like I'm barricaded in my apartment, but the zombies are slowly but surely closing in. This is no way to live.

That's insane r393 but is on par w/7-day avg positivity rate of 21%. Most everyone I know in LA metro have yet to contract it and test regularly. But we do have "privilege" of working from home since early '20

More and more people are getting it in Baltimore DC area too. The deaths aren’t very high, but people are getting really sick. I wish we could get vaccinated.

HHS Secretary Alex Azar announced this week that the federal govt would begin releasing coronavirus vaccine doses reserved for second shots.

The problem? No such reserve existed.

A new coronavirus variant identified in Brazil has exacerbated concern among public health experts, and led to warnings that additional new strains were likely to develop.

Viruses naturally mutate and there is no evidence that the newly-discovered strains have more severe disease outcomes.

However, the Covid variants are thought to be more transmissible than the original one that started the pandemic, and this could lead to higher numbers of serious infections and additional deaths.

R396 Everyone in this administration deserves the full Mussolini treatment. Every last one.

COVID-19 has reduced U.S. life expectancy by 1.13 years to 77.48 years -- the largest single-year decline in life expectancy in at least 40 years.

Researchers project that Whites are losing .68 years of life, but Blacks are having their lives shortened by 2.10 years to 72.78 years. For Latinos, it's a decline of 3.05 years to 78.77 years.

r398 - And a note to the ladies, Sylvia. Wear slacks.

Dr. Scott Gottlieb warns that emerging new coronavirus variants could transform what could have been a relatively quiet spring and summer, into “a summer where we have more infection because these variants are now circulating and they spread more easily, even in the warm months, when we really shouldn’t have had a lot of coronavirus spreading.”

We shouldn't have had a lot of Coronavirus spreading over the past 10 months, Scott, but that ship sailed. Got any helpful advice for us?

WSJ (paywalled(: Study from Israel finds rapid vax effect: After 14d from first shot, infection rates fell 33% among 200K 60+ year-olds vaccinated vs 200K not.

Of 1.7M vaccinated, just 1,127, or 0.06%, reported side effects, such as weakness, headaches, dizziness, fever, or site pain/swelling.

I got COVID for the second time a month ago. I previously had it in early February. It hasn't been real bad either time, but it does make me exhausted and wheezy and messes with my sense of smell and taste.

My state is so far behind with vaccinations. Rural counties are getting a fraction of the vaccine doses they were promised. We only began vaccinating group 1b last week, and vaccination centers say they're out of appointments for the next 3 weeks.

Our state released a list of vaccine providers online and indicated that you MUST get a reservation on any one of the providers' websites, no walk-ins allowed. But most of the providers have not yet released a reservation sign up system online, even though the 1b group starts getting vaccinations on next Tuesday. Even some local county health departments have no signup system yet.

Here' Meryl's response, representing the attitude of everyone waiting for a vaccine:

OMG. Did anyone else just see David Kessler on the Maddow show? He's on Biden's COVID advisor board and is the new head of Operation WarpSpeed, (which will, thankfully, be renamed.) Rachel mentioned his heroic role during the HIV epidemic, when he was head of the FDA, in cutting through red tape to get the newly developed protease inhibitors approved and into treatment settings. That, as Rachel said, was the game changer in that epidemic.

Listening to Kessler talk about the steps his team plans to turn around the disastrous US COVID respond had me literally tearing up. Fauci knew what needed to happen but lacked the power. Kessler is a consummate professional with the knowledge, skill and compassion to put an emergency treatment and vaccination plan in motion. AND, as he said, to prepare us well in advance for the inevitable next epidemic. What a fucking relief after this year's nightmare.

^^ response, not respond. I make typos when I'm emotional

R405, it's probably because the states were told this week that HHS was releasing the vaccine reserves, so they expanded their eligibility pool and began preparing to take appointments. Then today, Alex Azar (Secretary of HHS) said SURPRISE! There are no vaccine reserves. And then he tendered his resignation.

State Health Depts are left spinning in the wind. Governors and state Health Commissioners are livid, but powerless.

Biden COVID plan speech.

'What the hell's the matter with them?': Biden scorches GOP lawmakers who didn't wear masks in secure areas during Capitol riots, saying they need 'to grow up'

35 Places You're Most Likely to Catch COVID

[quote]I did a dive today into why West Virginia is so rapidly outpacing other states in their vaccine distribution and it turns out one reason is they did not sign the agreement with @ cvspharmacy and @ Walgreens that 49 other states did - Alex Leo

Tweet contains link to NPR article on W. Virginia's program

My aunt and uncle got the Moderna vaccine in Florida this week. My nextdoor neighbors have COVID—the entire family.

I felt optimistic things would start feeling normal by Easter 2021. Now I am not so sure

Here's the link to the NPR article about West Virginia that R412 referenced.

[quote]35 Places You're Most Likely to Catch COVID

That's a really dumb list.

I'm already scheduled for my second shot. Jealous, bitches?

R416 You need to ask?

It's curious to me how many vaccines there seems to be in Florida and how many people have been vaccinated there compared to other states where it's not even available.

How's Worldwide Vaccination going (as of 1/16/21)?

Percentage of population vaccinated:

25% - Israel

6% - UK (1.6% - Ireland)

4.2% - 'merica

1.4%- Canada

1% - Russia

.26% - Mexico

What the fuck happened to vaccines? Did Javanka steal those like they did with the PPE to sell it to Russia? WTF? Give my daughter the shot!

They are supposed to be poking the octogenarians but it’s a very slow going. My next door app is full of complaints that you are on hold for hours to make an appointment. At least the teachers are getting theirs on Monday. I won’t get one until the summer since I’m in no category of importance.

Has there been any more information released about the new strain that popped up in Brazil they say might be vaccine resistant?

A Texas trauma surgeon says it's rare that X-rays from any of her COVID-19 patients come back without dense scarring. "Post-COVID lungs look worse than any type of terrible smoker's lung we've ever seen. And they collapse. And they clot off. And the shortness of breath lingers on... & on... & on."

"Everyone's just so worried about the mortality thing and that's terrible and it's awful," the surgeon told CBS Dallas-Fort Worth. "But man, for all the survivors and the people who have tested positive this is — it's going to be a problem."

She says patients who've had COVID-19 symptoms show a severe chest X-ray every time, and those who were asymptomatic show a severe chest X-ray 70% to 80% of the time.

Time to invest in lung drug COPD-type stocks...

That's alarming r423 re: 70-80% of asymptomatics. Think we're almost @ point when we'll start getting controlled studies w/sufficient sample sizes on long-term (>1 yr) effects of Covid. Hopefully it'll be self-affirming for those who have diligently followed public health guidelines

Yesterday was the one year anniversary of when I first understood there was this thing coming and it scared people that I considered fearless.

It’s been a strange and stressful 12 months since.

Wishing you all health and peace.

And the same to you and yours ElderLez.

Yeah, thanks to Datalounge I stocked up on toilet paper, canned food, bottled water and soap a year ago. Still using it

Yup. I wish I'd gotten more N95s, but I didn't want to hoard them. Turns out Javanka did instead.

Same. Between the DL and Reddit I saw this thing coming and tried to warn everyone. Only a few listened. It took Tom Hanks getting it and the NBA shutting down for people to wake up. I STILL buy TP and paper towels so that I have some extra on hand. For some reason paper towels have still been hard to find in my area, so I grab them when I see them.

I'm grateful that we never truly saw the food shortages that I envision in my worst case scenarios, but now I still have cans of Trader Joe's Turkey Chili that I bought in Feb. 2020.

Do a *South of the Border* themed Thanksgiving this year, Sylvia!

R432 - as unappealing as that sounds, it's slightly more of a turnoff to be serving almost 2 year old turkey chili out of a can.

Not reading the whole thread, but have ElderLez and SylviaFowler died yet?

Asking for a friend.

r433 - Just make the pumpkin-spiced margaritas extra strong, Sylvia.

This is such a minor thing, but I'm a little bummed that the cruise industry is being decimated. So far, the industry had had to sell or scrap 26 ships.

It's mostly older ships, but still.

r435, if your name is referring to a cat in French, it should be Le Chat, as it's masculine.

I believe you mean *masculin*, r437.

Has the board officially turned over to 400,000 yet?

I wish more people understood that there really is no recovering from COVID. Yes, you'll probably live, but at what cost?

The Earth hates us and wants us gone.

It's taking forever r441.

Apparently, it thought so to R442 and has sped things up.

Not to worry. You'll reach herd immunity one way or another.

R440 I totally agree. A dear friend was just diagnosed and he is a smoker in his 40s. I am beyond worried about him and he is 1000 miles away. I feel so helpless

LA TIMES: So many people have died in Los Angeles County that officials have temporarily suspended air-quality regulations that limit the number of cremations. The change is because the current death rate is “more than double that of pre-pandemic years, leading to hospitals, funeral homes and crematoriums exceeding capacity, without the ability to process the backlog."

This, as health officials said Sunday that a new strain of COVID-19 — different from a highly contagious variant first identified in the United Kingdom — is popping up more frequently across the state. It’s not yet clear whether the variant is highly contagious or is just being identified frequently as lab work becomes more sophisticated.

I live in the UK and had the first vaccine injection 3 days ago, since yesterday afternoon I've felt like hell. I have a high level fever, hard to breathe, dizzy spells, no appetite and I've been throwing up.

Covid is eventually going to kill or disable most of humanity, isn’t it?

R448 Yeah, probably. I won't be surprised if there's a mass die-off in 10 or 20 years when latent effects start catching up with people.

And bets on how long it takes for Covid to become sentient and start chasing humans down with tiny baseball bats?

Sorry, "Any"

A new variant of the coronavirus has been identified in a hospital in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, a Bavarian ski town, local media reported Monday.

Last Tuesday, the hospital discovered an "abnormality" for the first time in a coronavirus test device that indicated it was not one of the variants from the U.K., South Africa, or Brazil.

It's too early to say whether this variant is more contagious or aggressive than the original coronavirus.

Oh goody!

Gottcha!

A hopeful piece in the New York Times

Early in the pandemic, many health experts — in the U.S. and around the world — decided that the public could not be trusted to hear the truth about masks. Instead, the experts spread a misleading message, discouraging the use of masks. Their motivation was mostly good. It sprung from a concern that people would rush to buy high-grade medical masks, leaving too few for doctors and nurses. The experts were also unsure how much ordinary masks would help. But the message was still a mistake. It confused people. (If masks weren’t effective, why did doctors and nurses need them?) It delayed the widespread use of masks (even though there was good reason to believe they could help). And it damaged the credibility of public health experts.

“When people feel as though they may not be getting the full truth from the authorities, snake-oil sellers and price gougers have an easier time,” the sociologist Zeynep Tufekci wrote early last year. Now a version of the mask story is repeating itself — this time involving the vaccines. Once again, the experts don’t seem to trust the public to hear the full truth. This issue is important and complex enough that I’m going to make today’s newsletter a bit longer than usual.

Right now, public discussion of the vaccines is full of warnings about their limitations: They’re not 100 percent effective. Even vaccinated people may be able to spread the virus. And people shouldn’t change their behavior once they get their shots. These warnings have a basis in truth, just as it’s true that masks are imperfect. But the sum total of the warnings is misleading, as I heard from multiple doctors and epidemiologists last week. “It’s driving me a little bit crazy,” Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown School of Public Health, told me. “We’re underselling the vaccine,” Dr. Aaron Richterman, an infectious-disease specialist at the University of Pennsylvania, said. “It’s going to save your life — that’s where the emphasis has to be right now,” Dr. Peter Hotez of the Baylor College of Medicine said.

Pt 2-

The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are “essentially 100 percent effective against serious disease,” Dr. Paul Offit, the director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said. “It’s ridiculously encouraging.”

The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines — the only two approved in the U.S. — are among the best vaccines ever created, with effectiveness rates of about 95 percent after two doses. That’s on par with the vaccines for chickenpox and measles. And a vaccine doesn’t even need to be so effective to reduce cases sharply and crush a pandemic.

If anything, the 95 percent number understates the effectiveness, because it counts anyone who came down with a mild case of Covid-19 as a failure. But turning Covid into a typical flu — as the vaccines evidently did for most of the remaining 5 percent — is actually a success. Of the 32,000 people who received the Moderna or Pfizer vaccine in a research trial, do you want to guess how many contracted a severe Covid case? One.

Although no rigorous study has yet analyzed whether vaccinated people can spread the virus, it would be surprising if they did. “If there is an example of a vaccine in widespread clinical use that has this selective effect — prevents disease but not infection — I can’t think of one!” Dr. Paul Sax of Harvard has written in The New England Journal of Medicine. (And, no, exclamation points are not common in medical journals.) On Twitter, Dr. Monica Gandhi of the University of California, San Francisco, argued: “Please be assured that YOU ARE SAFE after vaccine from what matters — disease and spreading.”

The risks for vaccinated people are still not zero, because almost nothing in the real world is zero risk. A tiny percentage of people may have allergic reactions. And I’ll be eager to see what the studies on post-vaccination spread eventually show. But the evidence so far suggests that the vaccines are akin to a cure. Offit told me we should be greeting them with the same enthusiasm that greeted the polio vaccine: “It should be this rallying cry.”

Why are many experts conveying a more negative message? Again, their motivations are mostly good. As academic researchers, they are instinctively cautious, prone to emphasizing any uncertainty. Many may also be nervous that vaccinated people will stop wearing masks and social distancing, which in turn could cause unvaccinated people to stop as well. If that happens, deaths would soar even higher.

But the best way to persuade people to behave safely usually involves telling them the truth. “Not being completely open because you want to achieve some sort of behavioral public health goal — people will see through that eventually,” Richterman said. The current approach also feeds anti-vaccine skepticism and conspiracy theories.

After asking Richterman and others what a better public message might sound like, I was left thinking about something like this: We should immediately be more aggressive about mask-wearing and social distancing because of the new virus variants. We should vaccinate people as rapidly as possible — which will require approving other Covid vaccines when the data justifies it. People who have received both of their vaccine shots, and have waited until they take effect, will be able to do things that unvaccinated people cannot — like having meals together and hugging their grandchildren. But until the pandemic is defeated, all Americans should wear masks in public, help unvaccinated people stay safe and contribute to a shared national project of saving every possible life.

What about people who are allergic to eggs because if this vaccine is incubated in chicken eggs like a lot of vaccines are that could be a serious issue.

The mRNA vaccines aren’t chicken eggs vaccines.

If you are allergic to chicken eggs don’t take the Palese vaccine if it gets approved.

Thanks for the information R458.

Almost 1/3 of recovered COVID-19 patients in a UK study ended up back in the hospital within five months — and up to one in eight died of complications from the illness.

Researchers were surprised that many people were readmitted with a new diagnosis.

“We don’t know if it’s because COVID destroyed the beta cells which make insulin and you get Type 1 diabetes, or whether it causes insulin resistance, and you develop Type 2, but we are seeing these surprising new diagnoses of diabetes,” he said.

“We’ve seen studies where survivors have had MRS scans and they’ve cardiac problems and liver problems,” Khunti added. “These people urgently require follow-up and the need to be on things like aspirin and statins.”

My niece (who is a 21 YO diabetic) got the second round of Pfizer today and feels really sick. She has a bad headache.

R448, sorry to burst your gruesome bubble, but reports are that over 90% of people who get the coronas have mild illness. The mortality rate in the U.S. is less than 2%, and that's among those tested. That means it's not killing off or disabling most of humanity, even though I realize that a mortality rate that high is still disturbing I had COVID-19 twice in the past year, and although not enjoyable, it wasn't worse than a bad cold. The second time was easier than the first. Come to think of it, I never really get colds either. It's flu or nothing.

R461, that sucks. I got my second shot and thought it was better than the first!

I can't wait to see the x-rays of R462's lungs. Maybe he could put them on next year's Christmas card.

If r462 makes it to next Christmas.

Fitting that on the last full day of the presidency, the US has surpassed 400,000 coronavirus deaths (per NBC News).

Remember when Trump promised to immediately sign an order to give out the "miracle cure" he got at Walter Reed, free to every American who needed it?

Since then, 191,484 Americans have died, and 16,772,008 more have tested positive.

2/3 of all cases & nearly 1/2 of all deaths in the US came AFTER Trump promised this cure!

Have the Capital loonies started dropping yet?

Older people really want the vaccine and there is a shortage of it now, but Dr. Scott Gottlieb sees another problem coming up-

[quote] Dr. Scott Gottlieb estimates only about 120 million people in U.S. really want Covid vaccine

[quote] Covid vaccination efforts in the U.S. need to contend with Americans who don’t want to receive the shot, Dr. Scott Gottlieb told CNBC.

[quote] “I think once we get to 100 million, maybe 120 million vaccines, the demand is going to get soft,” the former FDA chief said.

100 - 120 million is not herd immunity, apparently. So more infections (and deaths) will get us there eventually.

I really can’t worry about things beyond my control. I’ll get the vaccine, as will everyone in my family. . If people don’t want to get it, that’s not my business.

Media Matters for America's Lis Power today:

The number of times "caravan" has been mentioned on Fox News today: 38

The number of times the 400,000 American deaths from coronavirus have been mentioned on Fox News today: 1*

* The 1 mention was someone reading an excerpt from an AP article that mentioned the death toll

Bless you, R464 R465. My lungs are fine per an xray in November (between infections). I had some other weird symptoms, like a rash on my face and forehead. The first infection I coughed up blood for a day.

I talked to a nurse friend last night. She's not getting the vaccine. Her son, a blackjack dealer in Las Vegas, will also not be getting the vaccine. A phlebotomist who drew my blood in December won't get it either.

Congrats r471! Your entire life sounds like a super-spreader event!

R472 I stay home when I'm ill and for several days afterward per my doc. I take ivermectin and I check my oxygen levels and temperature. I had it the first time before we knew what was going on. The second time was around the holidays even though I didn't go anywhere. Just happy it wasn't too bad and I know now that I won't get too ill if I do get it again. I wonder if this is how the common cold became common. Did it begin as something more lethal, then through generations of infections and adaptations, became less so?

Hooray! R471 knows a stupid nurse who raised an equally stupid son.

National COVID Memorial begins at 5:30 EST

So moving, and so needed.

Good luck with the new strain coming out of Brazil because you know what they say Third times the charm.

I hate to be the bearer of doom and gloom (I really do and am hoping someone can honestly tell me this is not what I think it is), but has anyone seen this thread on Twitter?

Just heard on PBS that everyone on the White House campus will be COVID tested every day beginning today.

Of no interest to anyone I suppose, but I got the first shot yesterday, Moderna, and feel just a bit punk today. No real side effect, just a bit lazy, hazy. But a real shit show in California grocery store pharmacy. One nurse and a line of sad old people out the door. A paperwork nightmare.

Criminal how this crisis and vax is operated. I told the nurse, no need to spend 15 minutes of explanation, JUST SHOVE IT IN. Which is what I often times say to romantic partners!

So it's gone from Covid to Covids?... Great.

i had to go to the dentist last week. My dentist got the Moderna vaccine, first shot. no reaction.

I gotta get the fuck out of Los Angeles once and for all.

R466 And truth be told there have probably been over 500,000 (HALF A FUCKING MILLION) people who have died of COVID in the US - there are all those deaths above the average number of deaths.

Plus all the people who have died of things that could have been cured (heart attacks, strokes, cancer) that haven't been able to get treatment because they are either too scared to go to a hospital (I can understand that) or did put couldn't get treatment.

What a disgraceful legacy for Trump. Frankly it is criminal.

CNN: Biden inheriting nonexistent coronavirus vaccine distribution plan and must start 'from scratch.'

In the immediate hours following Biden being sworn into office on Wednesday, sources with direct knowledge of the new administration's Covid-related work told CNN one of the biggest shocks that the Biden team had to digest during the transition period was what they saw as a complete lack of a vaccine distribution strategy under former President Donald Trump, even weeks after multiple vaccines were approved for use in the United States.

This was the headline exactly one year ago today.

"This is certainly not a moment for panic or high anxiety. The risk is low"

China to give half a million vaccine doses to Pakistan for free

From CNN's Adeel Raja and Sophia Saifi in Islamabad

China will gift Pakistan 500,000 doses of the Sinopharm vaccine, according to Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi.

The minister told media Thursday in Islamabad that the Chinese-made Covid-19 shot would be provided by January 31.

In December, Pakistan announced that it will be receiving 1.2 million doses of the Sinopharm vaccine to administer to the country’s first responders.

Qureshi added that the 500,000 doses of the vaccine will arrive in Pakistan from February.

Hungary becomes first EU country to approve Russia's Sputnik V vaccine

From CNN’s Vasco Cotovio in London and Zahra Ullah in Moscow

The Hungarian pharmaceutical authority has approved both the Oxford/AstraZeneca and Russia’s Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccines, a spokesperson for the Hungarian government told CNN on Thursday.

Hungary becomes the first European Union country to approve both vaccines, but as far as the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine goes, it says it has to wait for a decision by the European Medicines Agency before it can distribute the shot.

Speaking about Sputnik, the spokesperson said talks with Moscow to buy the vaccine were “ongoing.”

“We hope that vaccines will be available in Hungary from as many places and in as large quantities as possible,” the spokesperson added.

In a statement, Russia’s sovereign wealth fund (RDIF) said the National Institute of Pharmacy and Nutrition of Hungary approved the vaccine under the emergency use authorization procedure.

“The approval is based on the results of the clinical trials of Sputnik V in Russia and a comprehensive assessment of the vaccine by experts in Hungary,” the RDIF statement said.

Kirill Dmitriev, CEO of the RDIF, said that Hungary is "the first EU country to realize all the advantages of Sputnik V vaccine and authorize its use. This decision is very important as it demonstrates that the vaccine's safety and efficacy of over 90% are highly regarded by our partners in Hungary.”

How being creative in the kitchen can help cope with loss of smell, a common Covid symptom

From CNN's Terry Ward

Turmeric chunks as a pasta topping may seem like a bad idea, but they showed Sarah Yeats, 31, an emergency nurse from Florida, that she was beginning to regain her sense of taste after contracting the coronavirus in August.

Anosmia -- a condition known as "smell blindness," or loss of smell -- is a common symptom of Covid-19 (and other viruses), and can severely impact people's ability to taste, since the senses are intertwined.

Yeats, along with her husband Alex who also caught the virus, had been coaxing any sensation they could muster from foods by dousing chicken in lemon juice, throwing fistfuls of fresh herbs at soups and salads, and getting daring with food textures.

The day Sarah noticed she no longer found turmeric lumps acceptable on pasta, she said, was when she realized her sense of taste might be rebounding.

While most people regain their sense of smell or taste within days to weeks, emergency physician and CNN Medical Analyst Dr. Leana Wen said, "there are still many who have not regained their sense of smell after months."

Creativity in the kitchen is how some people recovering from the virus are battling anosmia, and a way to remember how their favourite food used to taste and how flowers used to smell.

Londoner Kaya Cheshire has amped up the use of herbs and spices in her cooking since losing her sense of smell from a mild case of Covid-19.

At her doctor's suggestion, Cheshire recently began "scent training," using things like rose, lemons, cloves, garlic, eucalyptus and menthols that have a really strong smell to retrain her brain.

I don't understand how that could come as a surprise to them, r484, let alone a shock.

The entire Biden COVID-19 plan in PDF form.

That I got a little choked up over a PDF embarrasses me. Competence returns!

Thanks, SylviaFowler.

MARY! @ R492

I'm pissed off at the vaccination speed here in Norway. We are worst of all of Europe. UK managed to vaccinate 15 million in 2 months. Norway: 100k. And our government keep making excuses. Fuck them. They have blood on their hands if people die while waiting for the vaccine.

The mutated virus has reached Norway. This should be fun...

I heard this morning on the news that China has stockpiles of vaccine while we in the US are woefully under-stocked. Did anyone else hear this?

Which of the known variants do they think might be the one to cause real trouble?

Hundreds of Guard members who poured into Washington, D.C., after the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol have tested positive for Covid-19 or are quarantining in nearby hotels. Guard leadership has declined to release an official number of positive cases, but troops and lawmakers alike worry that the deployment is becoming a superspreader event.

“We did not get Covid tests on arrival,” said one Guard member. “Right after the holidays they packed us together like sardines in buses and rooms for this.”

[quote]“We did not get Covid tests on arrival,” said one Guard member. “Right after the holidays they packed us together like sardines in buses and rooms for this.”

"...and we totally forgot to wear our mandated masks." Based on the pictures I saw all over the news, I fixed this for him.

UK coronavirus variant may be linked to "higher degree of mortality," prime minister says

From CNN's Nada Bashir

The coronavirus variant first identified in the UK "may be associated with a higher degree of mortality" in infected patients, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said during a news briefing Friday.

"I must tell you this afternoon that we’ve been informed today that, in addition to spreading more quickly, it also now appears that there is some evidence that the new variant – the variant that was first identified in London and the South East – may be associated with a higher degree of mortality," Johnson said.

"Both the vaccines we’re currently using remain effective both against the old variant and this new variant," he added.

Despite Johnson's comments, the British government’s chief scientific adviser said there is "no real evidence of an increase in mortality for those in hospital."

"When we look at data from hospitals, so patients who are in hospital with the virus, the outcomes for those with the original virus or the new variant look the same," Sir Patrick Vallance said during the news briefing.

"There is evidence that there is an increased risk for those who have the new variant, compared to the old virus," he added, cautioning however that the evidence for this is "not yet strong."

According to the prime minister, one in 10 of all adults in England have received their first dose of the vaccine, including 71% of people over the age of 80 and two-thirds of elderly care home residents.

"We remain on track to reach our goal of offering a first dose to everyone in the top four priority groups by the middle of February," the prime minister added.

baseball legend hank aaron died in his sleep at age 86. He received the vaccine on Jan 5...I wonder if there is a connection...RIP

Yeah, R501. I'm sure an 86 year old dying in his sleep was caused by a vaccine he received 17 days earlier because 86 year olds dying in their sleep just doesn't happen! Put your head back in your ass so we don't have to read your nonsense anymore.

fauci got botox and fillers!!! he's old as fuck! c'mon...what's the point?!

Nah, R503, that's just what happens when Trump is out of your life.

R497 Yesterday, Dr. Fauci indicated that the South African strain is cause for concern, because it's possible that vaccines will have to be reworked to combat it.

[quote] "We're seeing in the much more concerning mutations that are in South Africa—and in some respects, Brazil, which is similar to South Africa—that it is having an effect on the monoclonal antibodies … that are being used for treatment, in some cases, and prevention," Fauci said during the Jan. 21 press conference. "Since monoclonal antibodies bind to a very specific part of the virus, when there's a mutation there, it has much greater chance of obliterating the efficacy of a monoclonal antibody."

The Norwegian police literally blocked the border crossings between Norway and Sweden. This has never happened before. At least not in recent times.

Monoclonal antibodies are treatments, they are not the vaccines.

Bloomberg News' Josh Wingrove:

In arguing for a new coronavirus aid package, Biden says "well over 600,000" people will die of the coronavirus in the U.S.

About 412,000 have died so far.

Miami Heat will employ Covid-19 detection dogs to screen fans at basketball games

From CNN's Kevin Dotson

The Miami Heat announced that beginning Jan. 28, a limited number of fans will be in attendance at Heat home games.

The Heat will adopt many of the policies that other sports organizations have used to allow fans to attend games, but they’ve added one very unique extra: Covid-19 detection dogs.

How it works: A specially trained dog will screen every fan in line before continuing with the entry process to the American Airlines Arena.

Other policies include the standard mandatory mask policy, physical distancing, and no food service.

How is Florida getting on with life and having basketball games, while CA is still staying at home?

R510, it's easy when you lie about your numbers and don't care if your older citizens all drop dead in their retirement villages where they leave their bodies to rot until they are found a couple weeks later. Plus, I think some of those "missing" vaccines were shipped by Trump's team to Florida weeks ago.

Florida has more Covid deaths per capita than CA has.

Has there been any discussion or study about whether people who have no reaction at all to the vaccine or who have a strong reaction having already been asymptomatically infected? Wonder if that could help determine the actual spread of infection.

All this false hope is very dangerous and misleading. First of all, less than half this country even voted, let alone voted for Biden - and that’s not even counting the 10+ million illegal immigrants. Even if Biden can somehow “require” people to get vaccinated, they won’t. If even 30% of people in the USA are vaccinated by the end of December I will be totally shocked. Plus, now it seems the vaccine only works for a limited time (a year? Less?). And, also, people are getting vaccinated and using it an excuse to go on vacations, break protocol, not wear masks, etc. which only makes this worse. The whole thing is such a clusterfuck. I’ll be amazed if we are even close to the “old” normal by 2025 at this point. It’s sad.

Uh, "Truth Fairy" at R514, about 90% of what you just wrote is bullshit.

Fauci on Maddow last night

Thanks for posting that, R516.

What a relief to be able to hear Dr. Fauci talk without having to dance around the ignorant elephant in the room.

Fauci should have ALWAYS spoken up.

He would have been fired if he spoke up.

The UK has the "highest death rate" in the world

From CNN’s Haley Brink and Rob Picheta

The United Kingdom currently tops the global list of highest deaths per 100,000 residents, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University (JHU).

The country reported its highest ever single day death toll on Wednesday with 1,820 daily new deaths reported, and has been averaging about 1,240 daily new deaths over the last seven days.

Country-by-country comparisons are imperfect, given that they rely on data from each individual nation.

But the UK's recorded death toll, from a population of 66 million, far outweighs the record tolls in other major countries, including the US, on a per capita basis.

So far the United Kingdom has tallied 96,166 total deaths since the pandemic began.

Countries with the highest deaths per capita

United Kingdom: 142.53

Czech Republic: 140.91

Italy: 139.34

United States: 125.35

Spain: 117.80

Via CDC--States with most cases of the new (uk) variant:

California: 72

Florida: 50

New York: 22

Update on Johnson & Johnson vaccine expected within weeks, Fauci says

From CNN Health's Andrea Diaz

News about how well the single-dose coronavirus vaccine by Johnson & Johnson works could come in two weeks, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top US infectious disease expert.

"I don’t want to get ahead of them, but I have to tell you I would be surprised if it was any more than two weeks from now that data will be analyzed, and decisions would be made,” Fauci told MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Friday . "The data will be analyzed in the similar fashion, the way we analyzed it with the Moderna and the Pfizer candidate,” added Fauci, who as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has helped with some of the clinical trials involving the Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines.

Vaccines made by Pfizer and Moderna secured emergency use authorization (EUA) from the US Food and Drug Administration in December. Johnson & Johnson is widely expected to be the third company to apply for an EUA for a coronavirus vaccine in the US.

Why it's still spreading, pt. 307:

While 90 percent of adults in December reported wearing masks most of the time while grocery shopping, the figure dropped down to 51 percent among those who made close contact with non-household members. Similarly, only 47 percent of adults who attended gatherings of more than 10 people wore masks most of the time. 21 percent didn't wear masks while visiting other households.

Meanwhile, mask-free hot yoga rolls on...

[quote]"Yeah, message is for Evan . . . whatever his little name is. Stop sending me citations. Stop harassing me. You have no authority but to do nothing but harass people and try to bully people. Do not come by my business again or you will face the wrath of me. Do not step on my property, do not call me, do nothing to associate with my business. My business will remain open. I’ll do as I want. You have no right to fine me nothing. You’re a peasant. Stay away."

[quote]"Yeah, this is Pacifica Beach Yoga. I don’t, there’s a problem with you guys. You seem to keep coming by my business. You’re not welcome at my business, ok? F— you. You understand what ‘f— you’ means? Don’t ever come by my business again. Stop putting citations, which you know ain’t worth a f—. You’ll never get a nickel. You’ll never get nothing. I’ll never close.

[quote]"So do what you think you need to f—ing do, but stop coming by my business because it really bothers my clients. You understand? I don’t give a f— whether you guys live or f—ing die because you don’t care whether I live or f—ing die. So don’t come by my f—ing business no more. I’m tired of telling you this. It’s the same thing over and over again. You’re harassing me. I have a bad heart. You’re about to put me into cardiac arrest, you f—ing scumbags. Stay away from my f—ing business. Understand? I’m open. I’m still open. I just ripped it off the door. I’m ripping it into pieces. You’re not getting paid. I’m running another class right now. Putting it right in your f—ing faces. Every f—ing minute of the day, I’m going to stick it right in your f—ing faces, you lowlife scumbags. Shame on you. Come see me, bitches."

Just wondering out loud here. When the first wave of COVID began here, it was earlier than official reports said. People were getting sick in December, possibly November 2019. The first reported case was in late January 2020 here. Some but not a lot of people got sick and then the wave passed. The second summer wave didn't affect many people in my immediate community. But then recently, starting a month ago or so in December, the third wave seems to have hit fast and hard. Lots of people are ill around here. I can name 10 or more people who got COVID in the past month, more than I knew about all year prior. I wonder if this is the new more contagious variant, again arrived earlier than official reports.

I hope someone burn's the business at R524 down. It would be the first case of self-defense arson.

R521, unfortunately, those numbers are irrelevant since we are doing nothing to limit interstate travel. It will be dominant everywhere next month. Even at the current infection rate (which of course won't hold because the new strain is way more contagious), that means at least a 3% rise in death rates based on the newest findings of that strains mortality.

All preventable if everyone wore a mask whenever they went anywhere there were other people present. Humans are selfish and pathetic creatures.

Twins With Covid Help Scientists Untangle the Disease’s Genetic Roots.

35-year-old twins Kelly and Kimberly Standard both had the coronavirus last spring. Kelly was hospitalized for less than a week. Kimberly spent almost a month in critical condition. Weeks after Kelly had returned to their shared home, Kimberly was still relearning how to speak, walk and chew and swallow solid food she could barely taste.

Gloomy piece from National Geographic.

[quote]All preventable if everyone wore a mask whenever they went anywhere there were other people present.

Is this really true? It seems to be our best defense but it is not 100%

I would like to know the per capita difference in infection rates between states that are pretty much open and states that are locked down.

Those whores in Mexico should go to prison for spreading this shit.

[quote]Those whores in Mexico should go to prison for spreading this shit.

They've all gone to Aspen Ski Week, so...

r525, the CV threads here correctly predicted that it would get exponentially worse in the winter.

The whores in Mexico can get in line after China and Trump. I'd like to see both strung up publicly for mass murder.

R529, it is true. It would have brought infection numbers so low that the likelihood of being infected in any setting would be too low to sustain continued person-to-person infection. It's, somewhat, the same way that herd immunity protects the vulnerable by keeping the likelihood of encountering an infected person so low that there's almost no chance some unvaccinated against, say, measles, will encounter someone with measles. At that point, life goes back to normal. There might be an occasional outbreak that would quickly be contained. By not masking every single person up in March, we let covid take over the world and it said, "Thank you, may I have some more?"

Elsewhere....

One year ago today...

I don't know how much more of this we can take. I really don't. I cannot put my life on hold indefinitely, and I'm sure many others feel the same way. If there's no hope that this will get righted soon, then what's the fucking point?

Oh for chrissakes, r537...

Mary me all you want, but really- we can have all the vaccines and a president who recognizes the urgency of what's happening, but it's not going to do any good if A- people are too fucking stupid to take the vaccine and B- they wind up not being effective to new strains. I've been sitting on my ass in my apartment for over 10 months and it's never been worse than it is right now. What's it gonna take to move the needle already?

R537, don't despair, there is light at the end of the tunnel. Obviously it's been terrible in LA. Our death rate is up BUT our positivity rate is down. The death surge are hopefully that last remnants of the holiday travel repercussions. I bet the death rates start to go down within the next 10 days. Between that and vaccinations, we might be on track to over a semi-open spring in a month or so and maybe a almost full open summer. We are in the home stretch!

I'm not Mary-ing you, r539, I'm throttling you. Your "What's the fucking point?" attitude certainly isn't moving the needle. And, in case you haven't been paying attention, the needle started moving January 20th.

I'm not sure about that, R538. I understand what you're saying and trust me, I sat in front of the computer the entire Election week and felt like a huge weight had been lifted once it was clear Biden had won. Trump could not have fucked up the response to COVID any worse than he did. And I love that Biden is taking things seriously. But what Biden cannot do (and no one can, so it's not his fault) is make people act responsibly. I think that ship has sailed. And I'm baffled as to why.

I know I'm taking things to an extreme in terms of what I will and won't do during this whole thing (and I've basically made myself a shut in for nearly a year) because I'm terrified of getting this and I know if I do, it won't be a mild case because of medical issues I have, and I don't expect anyone to go to the lengths I have, but the shunning of masks and the gathering together and the unnecessary traveling, and really the basic full out DENIAL of how serious this is by so many people, even nearly a year later.. that's what's making me feel so hopeless.

We are still fucked and will remain so for the coming years. There is no light at the end of the tunnel as far as I can see. Reality bites.

Well, r543, ain't you just the life of the party!

The 1918 pandemic lasted from February 1918 to April 1920.

Why expect this one to be all that different?

Vaccines and an understanding of virology.

No R544. Just realistic. We have a virus raging out of control. New mutations popping up. Flawed vaccine distribution in "rich countries " and very limited doses in poor ones. On top, lots of questions still about the long term effectiveness of the vaccines and long term health of "recovered" patients. Also, some hospitals and health care workers at already at the breaking point. So when I read comments like yours and from 540 talking about the possibility of a "full open summer " in LA, I become angry and irritated OP. Hoping the situation improves. But just wishful thinking at this point

R546 More humans on the planet and widespread travel-mobility among populations might counter the progress of Big Science.

I'm not being a Pollyanna about it, r547. I'm well aware of what we're facing and I certainly don't see a "full open summer". I'm being just as realistic as you are, but I'm choosing not to go on and on how fucked we are, how there's "no light at the end of the tunnel", and how you "can't put your life on hold indefinitely". Since the beginning of March I gave it two years of this. We were told fairly early on how bad the winter would get and how mutations were possible. I can only control what I can control. I can't do anything about anti-maskers, but I *can* avoid them.

yup, it's over

it doesn't matter who is president...people are sick of being stuck at home. and it's now even more infectious than ever...

young people just don't give a shit-----------

Police break up illegal rave of more than 300 people in east London

From CNN's Rob Picheta

Police in the United Kingdom broke up a rave that saw more than 300 people packed under a railway arch in the early hours of Sunday morning.

Officers arrived at the party in Hackney, east London, at 1:30 a.m. local time, and said they have issued more than £15,000 ($20,500) to revelers for breaching the UK's lockdown policy.

The Metropolitan Police said "numerous attempts were made to engage with organisers and others but they were uncooperative." The doors to the building were padlocked from the inside to stop police getting in, they added.

The UK has been under a strict lockdown since earlier this month, with indoor gatherings banned.

Officers stopped 78 people and issued £200 fines at the event.

"Officers were forced, yet again, to put their own health at risk to deal with a large group of incredibly selfish people who were tightly packed together in a confined space - providing an ideal opportunity for this deadly virus to spread," Chief Superintendent Roy Smith said in a statement. "Our frontline officers continue to police this public health crisis with compassion & professionalism but it is completely unacceptable they have to face such needless risks to their own health and to their families too."

R547, Why shouldn't one have hope that things might get better. I'm very aware of our situation, as it is. I wear masks, now double masks when I go out to run errands, work out outdoors, and have not travelled when everyone else did over the holidays. We have not been allowed indoor dining or sitting at a bar basically since March 2020, with a few week exception in June which resulted in an explosion of cases. However, I want life to get better and I want to be hopeful while still being realistic. Is it probable that we will have a summer where things open up, maybe not. Is it possible, perhaps. It's better than being hopeless. Some of you doom posters are probably shut ins to begin with and having the pandemic allows you justification and superiority of your lifestyle. When things are given a green light, people will travel, dine, and live life and you'll still be a shut in with no excuses.

New Zealand might have just had its first community Covid-19 transmission in over 2 months

From CNN's Sophie Jeong in Hong Kong

New Zealand has reported a probable case of Covid-19 community transmission, authorities said.

If confirmed, it would be the first instance of community transmission seen in the country sine November 18.

Chris Hipkins, the New Zealand minister for the country's Covid-19 response, said Sunday the case was a 56-year-old woman who has recently been through isolation in Auckland after returning from Europe.

“The person had traveled in Spain and the Netherlands late last year. While in the Netherlands, she was with family members, all of whom were well at the time, but subsequently one or two of those family members have tested positive for Covid-19,” said Director General of Health Dr. Ashley Bloomfield.

Bloomfield said she tested negative twice and did not have symptoms while in managed isolation. She returned home on January 13. She started to feel very mild symptoms on January 15 and these got progressively worse before she was tested.

Bloomfield added that after being released from managed isolation, she traveled around the southern part of the Northland region with her husband and has been in roughly 30 locations in the five days or so. He said a thorough interview has suggested just four close contacts and those people have all been spoken to, isolated and tested.

New Zealand's strict quarantine policies for inbound travelers and regional lockdowns early in the pandemic helped keep its Covid-19 numbers down.

Fewer than 2,300 cases have been confirmed in the country, and only 25 people have died.

Why THE FUCK hasn't international travel been shut down??? Even just one month of no international travel except for essential things like shipping cargo and supplies would help. What the hell is wrong with this world?

Has there been any more news about the strain found in Africa?

The mRNA vaccine platforms are very flexible, and if the targets just need to be tweaked the required testing wouldn’t be the 30,000 - 45,000 participant studies needed for the initial emergency approvals. The J&J vaccine will likely be approved in a month. Biden is using and will aggressively use the war powers to speed up manufacturing.

Yes, people are selfish jerks and being stuck at home sucks and my glasses fog up at the most inconvenient times, and long haul illness for the already infected is real and terrifying , but despair now? This is a great hopeful time.

As R548 said back in March we were told 18 months to a year for the US and as far as I can tell we are a little ahead of schedule.

Rioting in the Netherlands today and tonight over the nightly curfew which started last night at 9 pm and goes until February 10th.

What kind of fucking morons are rioting over a 9pm curfew? I with they'd just start welding these assholes into their homes as the threats to public health that they are. China got that part right.

R556 . Indeed the situation in the US seems more hopeful now, especially with Biden in charge. But looking at this from a more global perspective. Some less fortunate countries have not given a single vaccine dose yet. Not one! This is one of the reasons that I remain concerned about the future. Even with vaccine distribution in rich countries, the problem will continue to circulate in poor countries (and back to rich countries thanks to widespread travel) for many years to come. Sobering

At some point, the poorer countries will get their immunity through herd immunity and much death. This is what happens when there are about 4 billion too many people on the planet. Nature will nature and controlling populations through death is how nature works. We brought this on ourselves. We are Earth's covid infection.

That is a very real, legitimate concern R559. Economically prosperous countries face a moral imperative and also a public health self interest in suppressing uncontrolled spread, with its likelihood of spawning a new strain, anywhere in the world. We have to continue to invest in researching cheaper, more shelf stable vaccine candidates.

R555, Nicole Saphier who is a doctor on Fox News said a few weeks ago that the South African virus is resistant to the vaccine.

Other doctors are claiming it's "somewhat" resistant.

Either way, we're fucked!

This new strain is going to make it that much harder to get people to take the vaccine. They'll all say- why should I take a vaccine that's going to wind up not being effective when they find ANOTHER strain that is resistant?

After testing positive for COVID-19 in December, Dae’shun Jamison “did not have one symptom,” his mother Brittney Autman said. But a few weeks later, the 10-year-old Shelby boy was hospitalized and doctors amputated his right leg because of a rare syndrome linked to the novel coronavirus.

Jamison was diagnosed with MIS-C, multi-system inflammatory syndrome in children. The overactive immune response inflames organs and can severely affect the heart.

[quote]They'll all say- why should I take a vaccine that's going to wind up not being effective when they find ANOTHER strain that is resistant?

Notwithstanding the fact that we don't know anything about the real-life resistance of the South Africa strain (all the conjecture is based on lab tests), the vaccine is certainly effective against the majority of variants.

But stupidity runs rampant in this world, so you're probably right.

That poor kid at R564. That's what scares the shit out of me most regarding COVID. I have a freaky overactive immune system that has gone super haywire on me twice in the past 12 years or so, and causes smaller issues with some regularity. I'm terrified if I were to contract it, my immune system would go into super overdrive and cause a cytokine storm directed by Michael Bay.

Same here, R566. I got a flu shot for the first time this year and has freaky side effects for two months. This was on the heels of an insect bite that caused a cascading, incredibly itchy rash over every inch of my body.

You mean to tell me that Trumptarded mammographer Nicole Saphier, who wrote [italic]Make America Healthy Again: How Bad Behavior and Big Government Caused a Trillion-Dollar Crisis[/italic], has suddenly veered into doom-and-gloom territory when previously it had been all about how Trump was well on his way to winning this war despite know-nothing Fauci constantly trying to cock-block him? That Nicole Saphier? Well, I never in all my life!

Next you’re going to tell me that her change of heart came late at night on 11/3.

No, we're not fucked about this South African variant. All viruses mutate -- polio, measles, the 1918 flu, any that you can think of. And yet we successfully vaccinated polio and measles, and the 1918 flu eventually went away before everyone was infected. We have dealt with viruses since our ancestors were little rodents, and even long before that. Our immune system knows the shit they play and is terrifyingly good at handling them. This will not be the first pandemic in history to last forever. Quit freaking out.

R569, just so you know, one day there will be the last pandemic humanity will ever face. The extinction causing pathogen might be out there right now in the lungs or gut of some as yet undiscovered shrew or bat or monkey.

And, I wouldn't be so nonchalant about the growing number of mutation in Covid19. The mutations are accelerating due to the sheer number of hosts it is being given by the fucking morons around the world. Right now, they are small mutations to the spike protein. All it takes is one big, stable mutation that maybe makes it able to attach to a different receptor location or cell type and we get to start all over again. Right now there are trillions upon trillions of copies of the virus being manufactured in billions of hosts. Mutations will grow exponentially from this point. With all those variables, we have zero idea how this ends at this point and anyone who says otherwise is wrong.

R570, are you the ebola catastrophist from years back?

Nope, R571. It's called reality. I've never understood the people who think that because something hasn't happened, it won't happen. The entire history of humanity is a blip in time on this planet. People don't think longterm enough. It's called deep time and people are afraid of it. Stay in the cloud of ignorant bliss with the masses if you want but, sorry, that won't change reality.

COVID denialism in the U.S. has reached Holocaust denial levels. We're rapidly gaining on half a million dead and these assholes are still calling it a plandemic and claiming it's no worse than the flu. They should all die unattended in their homes turning blue and gasping for air, and then be eaten by roaches. Which is where many of them are headed.

Yeah, the BBC was talking about Nipah virus last week. It's also on WHO's "Top 10" list. No vaccine for that. 75% death rate.

Don’t drink the date palm juice and you should be fine R574.

COVID denialism and being equally terrified of all infectious disease threats are two sides of the same stupidity coin.

I am reading, "Wolf Hall" (takes place during Henry XIII reign) right now, and the mention the "Sweating Sickness". That is some scary shit

Did anyone hear that they've found yet another new strain in California?

R537 I understand how you feel. My sister is a receptionist in a doctor's office in London. He's only seeing his patients over the phone or video chat. She said they are inundated with people requesting anti-depressants, sleeping pills, tranquilizers which the doctor is reluctant to prescribe without seeing the patient in person but he's also afraid one of them with commit suicide and he'll be asked why he didn't help.

I think it's very difficult because people who are struggling are silenced and told that there are so many people worse off so shut the heck up when their feelings are completely valid and their depression/anxiety cannot just be switched off no matter how sad they also are for the people who have passed away.

Thank you, R578

Keilar calls out Dr. Birx's post-Trump reputation rehab tour

The world’s first analysis of fully vaccinated patients has indicated that the Pfizer vaccine is at least as effective as suggested by clinical trials.

Israel’s Maccabi Healthcare Services revealed Monday that only 20 of its 128,600 members got infected in the week after receiving their second shot of the vaccine. That's an infection rate of 0.015 percent.

None of the 20 vaccinees was hospitalized or suffered from a fever higher than 38.5C (101.3F) degrees. That may be an indicator that the vaccine prevents serious illness even when people are infected -- but it is impossible to know what trajectory their symptoms would have taken without the vaccine.

Just off the phone with my sister in Lindon and there was a rumor online today that mandatory quarantine, masks etc would be required in the UK until summer 2022. My sister doesn't know the source and didn't see it herself but it was shared enough that she had to stay at work at extra 2 hours to deal with the number of calls they got from people saying they cannot go on like this much longer. She was pretty upset herself from hearing people's stories. Thought I'd share since I had just posted at R578 before she called me. She did add that her friends who were mocked for studying 'useless' degrees like counseling or physcology are having the last laugh.

My 76 year-old mother got her shot yesterday in Chicago. Meanwhile, my 74 year-old aunt in Los Angeles is still waiting for hers.

Would anyone else like to see the number vaccinated announced every day along with the cases/deaths. I was thinking it might be something positive to see every day.

My grand aunt in Ireland is 77 with COPD and her son who lives with her is a firefighter who has to go out to work. We were told it could be April before she's vaccinated. My aunt who is a nurse in a hospital still isn't vaccinated and won't be until February. I can't believe so many countries/States are making a balls of this when they had a year to plan.

I keep hearing news of new and deadlier variants all over the place and no one is sure if the current vaccine is effective against them.

Yeah. Brazilian variant is in the us!

German Media: AstraZeneca Vaccine is only 8% to 10% effective in the elderly.

AstraZeneca refutes that claim.

[quote] AstraZeneca's main trial in Britain started testing on adults no older than 55 because it initially focused on healthcare personnel and frontline workers in active duty.

[quote] Elderly trial participants were recruited later so that infections, which are needed to arrive at reliable efficacy data, were also coming in later.

[quote] Researchers at Oxford University said in a paper published in medical journal The Lancet on Dec. 8, when details of key vaccine trials held in Britain and Brazil were released, that efficacy data based on infections in the elderly were still limited.

[quote] "Efficacy data in these cohorts are currently limited by the small number of (infection) cases, but additional data will be available in future analyses," they said in the paper.

So, limited data about effectiveness in the elderly, but more data to come.

Brazil has only given us *one* good thing r586!

[quote]Has there been any more news about the strain found in Africa?

The woman in New Zealand who quarantined for 14 days and passed two clean tests was later found to have the South African strain.

She became sick and gave a positive 10 days after completing quarantine, suggesting there may be a longer incubation period for this variant. So far, no other cases have been detected in NZ, but authorities are treating this as a "probable community case". The woman had not traveled to Africa. She had returned to NZ after traveling to the Netherlands and Spain.

So far, the South African variant is not known to be spreading in either the US or the UK. The variant has been detected by UK customs control, but does not seem to be spreading via community transmission there yet.

B.1.1.7 (the UK or Kent strain) is showing clinical signs that it may be more virulent than previously thought. This is based on CDC data. There is some evidence that b.1.1.7 may also have a degree of resistance to vaccines.

WHY are people still travelling? Yes it’s difficult when families are separated. My mother, who I’d dearly love to visit, lives in another country. I was due to go last year. It’s been 3 years now and at this rate it looks likely we won’t see each other for at least another 18 months to 2 years, if ever (she just turned 90).

In Europe, it is up to individual EU members to make decisions for their own borders. While some countries are strict and forcing self-isolation to varying degrees for international travel, the 26 Schengen Agreement countries are still allowing open travel across borders.

With the slow vaccine roll out across Europe, the mixing of varients, and the spike of cases in Portugal this will very likely lead to massive problems come March.

R576 The "sweating illness" remains a medical mystery as to its cause. It is probably still out there lurking in an animal reservoir. Ann Boleyn famously survived this disease.

They say that Henry Tudor brought it to England when he landed in 1485, because of course he would.

Moderna said in a press release yesterday that its vaccine "retains neutralizing activity against emerging variants first identified in the UK and Republic of South Africa."

"The study showed no significant impact on neutralizing titers against the B.1.1.7 (UK) variant relative to prior variants. A six-fold reduction in neutralizing titers was observed with the B.1.351 variant relative to prior variants. Despite this reduction, neutralizing titer levels with B.1.351 (SA) remain above levels that are expected to be protective."

My partner had a meeting yesterday afternoon with some colleagues who have been talking to researchers at Oxford. The Oxford guys have been giving MRIs to 'long COVID' patients and in 40% of them have seen structural changes not just in the lungs, but in the pancreas and other organs.

CA 50+: keep an eye out, you may be next in line, provided there's supply

Berlin set to enforce two-test strategy to detect new coronavirus variants

From CNN's Inke Kappeler and Stephanie Halasz

Authorities in Berlin will now require citizens to take a second coronavirus test in order to better detect new variants of the virus, a spokesperson for Berlin’s Health Minister Dilek Kalayci said Tuesday.

According to the spokesperson, the new strategy will be implemented from the first week of February and will apply to all tests carried out in the city of Berlin.

A spokesperson for the Berlin Senate added that the new measure is to be enforced in an effort to prevent the closure of further hospitals in the city.

Some background: The move comes just days after the Vivantes Humboldt-Klinikum hospital in Berlin was placed under quarantine following an outbreak among both patients and staff of the coronavirus variant first detected in the UK.

As of Tuesday, 24 cases of the UK variant have been detected at the hospital, including 13 patients and 11 members of staff, the hospital confirmed.

In a different Berlin hospital — the Klinikum Spandau — two additional cases have been identified in patients.

Since the start of the pandemic, the number of people infected with coronavirus in Germany has reached 2,158,407 and 53,317 have died, according to figures from John Hopkins University.

What we know about the 4 variants the CDC is monitoring via CNN

Officials with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are closely watching at least four coronavirus variants.

Here's what we know so far about them:

Officials in Minnesota announced Monday they detected the P.1 variant of the virus in a traveler from Brazil. It appears to be more easily transmissible. Until Monday, it had only been reported in Brazil and among a group of four travelers from Brazil to Japan.

The B.1.1.7 variant, which was first spotted in the UK, has been detected in more than 20 states. The variant appears to spread more easily, and has also been found in at least 60 countries worldwide, according to the World Health Organization.

The 1.351 variant was first spotted in South Africa in October and has now been found in more than a dozen countries. Emerging evidence from last week suggested that this variant could be problematic for vaccines. (But note: In both studies, the work was done in the lab and not in people, so more research is needed to gauge the true threat of the new variant.)

Finally, there's the L425R variant seen in California, that may or may not be driving renewed spread there. "We don't know yet what the significance of that one is," said Gregory Armstrong, who directs the Office of Advanced Molecular Detection at CDC. It also has a mutation in the receptor binding domain of the spike protein.

Regeneron says its antibody therapy prevents Covid-19

From CNN Health’s Jamie Gumbrecht

nterim results from an ongoing trial show that Regeneron’s monoclonal antibody cocktail prevented Covid-19 among people at high risk of infection, the company said in a news release Tuesday.

The study involved 400 people who were exposed to the coronavirus within their households. Half received injections of the antibody therapy, known as REGEN-COV, and half received a placebo, which does nothing.

The number of infections was lower among those who received the treatment, and they were all asymptomatic, the company said. Among those who received the therapy, infections lasted no more than one week, while 40% of infections in the placebo group lasted three to four weeks. None of the infected people who received the therapy had high viral loads, while 62% of people in the placebo group who were infected had high viral loads.

There was one death and one hospitalization in the group that received the placebo, and no deaths or hospitalizations in the treatment group.

"These data using REGEN-COV as a passive vaccine suggest that it may both reduce transmission of the virus as well as reduce viral and disease burden in those who still get infected," Dr. George Yancopoulos, president and chief scientific officer at Regeneron said in a news release. "Even with the emerging availability of active vaccines, we continue to see hundreds of thousands of people infected daily, actively spreading the virus to their close contacts. The REGEN-COV antibody cocktail may be able to help break this chain by providing immediate passive immunity to those at high risk of infection, in contrast to active vaccines which take weeks to provide protection.”

Regeneron expects to see the full data on the study early next quarter, and said it will discuss with the US Food and Drug Administration whether to expand the emergency use authorization for the therapy. The EUA allows it to be used to treat people with mild or moderate Covid-19 who are not currently hospitalized, but are at high risk of developing severe symptoms and requiring hospitalization.

Eli Lilly and Company announced last week its monoclonal antibody combination therapy, known as LY-CoV555 or bamlanivimab, was found to help prevent Covid-19 among nursing home residents and staff in a Phase 3 trial.

Chinese woman receives one-year suspended sentence after flying from US with Covid symptoms

From CNN's Beijing bureau

A Chinese woman received a one-year suspended sentence for flying from the US to China in March last year while showing Covid-19 symptoms.

The woman, identified as Li Jie in court documents, is a resident of Massachusetts, and her family had been living and working in the US, according to Beijing's Shunyi District court. In early March 2020, the woman showed signs of fever, fatigue, and other Covid-19 symptoms and got tested for the virus on March 11. Before the test result came out, the woman returned to China from Boston with her family.

"In order to board the plane, Li Jie took febrifuge to lower her body temperature before boarding, and passed the body temperature checks," the district court verdict said. "After boarding, when the flight required passengers to declare fever and other uncomfortable symptoms, Li Jie did not declare and did not truthfully answer the crew's inquiries about physical condition, contact history, and accompanying personnel."

Before the plane landed, the woman admitted her real condition to the flight crew.

She and her family landed in Beijing on March 13 and she was immediately sent to the hospital for treatment, where she was diagnosed with Covid-19. She and 63 of her close contacts were quarantined, the court added.

Beijing police later launched a criminal investigation and Shunyi District Court ordered a one-year suspended sentence Tuesday for "the crime of obstructing the prevention and control of infectious diseases."