I am not sure how the president is supposed to dramatically increase the number of vaccines that can be produced and distributed within like three months
He's not, but we can string him up for the previous administration's failings
It’s not a wildly ambitious goal, but he’s a politician, managing expectations is part of his job.
It’s a huge upgrade from “not our problem and also the virus isn’t real and also it’s the blue states fault”
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
I appreciate that Fauci is able to brief the public directly now. I also appreciate his line, "There's a thing with this new administration that if you don't know the answer, don't guess." Amazing jab at the previous admin.
Faucci laughing and joking around about how he can actually speak freely and speak openly about what is scientific fact is both reassuring and horrifying.
Overall, i don’t think it’s as scary as it sounds. Escaping detection from one set to antibodies in convalescent sera doesn’t mean the entire immune system is moot, and living immune systems are constantly refining their antibodies such that the 6-month post-infection response is more varied and robust than the one-month one. And vaccine-induced immunity should be stronger and more likely to induce a polyclonal response, so it should be more robust to escape mutations.
Which isn’t to say it’s nothing. It could easily be a speed bump to defeating Covid and there’s a very small but non-zero chance it could be worse. The companies that invested in monoclonal antibody treatments might be feeling a little nervous.
Faucci laughing and joking around about how he can actually speak freely and speak openly about what is scientific fact is both reassuring and horrifying.
I mean it confirms what we knew if you wanted to remain working you had to keep the company line.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
Any word on whether Birx is still around? Do her qualifications outweigh her praising Trump for being a big boy with big boy pants and a big boy brain?
Faucci laughing and joking around about how he can actually speak freely and speak openly about what is scientific fact is both reassuring and horrifying.
I mean it confirms what we knew if you wanted to remain working you had to keep the company line.
Yup, he had to walk a real fine line knowing people were dying that didnt need to yet if he spoke out even more would.
I don't envy him being in that situation one bit and think he did the best anyone could have.
Any word on whether Birx is still around? Do her qualifications outweigh her praising Trump for being a big boy with big boy pants and a big boy brain?
Any word on whether Birx is still around? Do her qualifications outweigh her praising Trump for being a big boy with big boy pants and a big boy brain?
Smooth Psaki shows new tone in first Biden press briefing
By DAVID BAUDER
yesterday
A relentless ability to stay on message produced at least one cringe-worthy line: “The issue that he wakes up every day focused on is getting this pandemic under control. The issue he goes to bed every night focused on is getting this pandemic under control,” she said.
First time since Sept. that cases went down in the same week that tests went up.
Lets hope we get the same trend next week too.
tbloxham on
"That is cool" - Abraham Lincoln
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HonkHonk is this poster.Registered User, __BANNED USERSregular
I'm in Sweden and apparently by decree, Denmark is seizing all vaccination needles passing their country.
So they're straight up currently stealing vaccination kits that have been bought and paid for by Sweden, that were en route to Sweden.
At most it'll probably just slow down the rate, I don't think in practice it's going to be a huge deal, but it seems incredibly assholish to steal medical supplies from a neighbour. That's what they are doing. Stealing medical supplies.
I care more about the act than the practical issues they cause. I think people should go to prison for this.
PSN: Honkalot
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daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
I'm in Sweden and apparently by decree, Denmark is seizing all vaccination needles passing their country.
So they're straight up currently stealing vaccination kits that have been bought and paid for by Sweden, that were en route to Sweden.
At most it'll probably just slow down the rate, I don't think in practice it's going to be a huge deal, but it seems incredibly assholish to steal medical supplies from a neighbour. That's what they are doing. Stealing medical supplies.
I care more about the act than the practical issues they cause. I think people should go to prison for this.
Got a link? The Google has nothing on this.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
I'm in Sweden and apparently by decree, Denmark is seizing all vaccination needles passing their country.
So they're straight up currently stealing vaccination kits that have been bought and paid for by Sweden, that were en route to Sweden.
At most it'll probably just slow down the rate, I don't think in practice it's going to be a huge deal, but it seems incredibly assholish to steal medical supplies from a neighbour. That's what they are doing. Stealing medical supplies.
I care more about the act than the practical issues they cause. I think people should go to prison for this.
"Something is rotten in the state of Denmark."
Yeah, that's pretty fucked up. It'd be one thing (though still terrible) if Denmark were producing the material, and not exporting it. It's another to essentially hijack and confiscate material passing through your country.
Has there been a reason given? Looking at Worldometer, it looks like Denmark are on their way out of a wave, though deaths seem to be spiking. But Denmark has less than a third of the deaths per million (329d/m) that Sweden (1078d/m, almost at US 1266d/m levels) has suffered through. The world average is 270d/m.
Which just makes shit worse. It's almost Monty Burns keeping Smithers out of the escape pod "because I like to put my feet up" sinister.
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HonkHonk is this poster.Registered User, __BANNED USERSregular
They are positioning the article as breaking from their reporters which might explain that it's not widespread yet. This newspaper is very hit and miss but it is not like they would be making this kind of thing up, whatever I may feel about the tabloidness of the newspaper I think it's fairly impossible they'd be factually incorrect about this.
Maybe slow down the alarmist stuff, and consider your sources.
For those who don't read Swedish/Danish: a company importing syringes decides to cancel/halt their own, small orders. There is no seizing or disruptions of medical equipment, syringes or otherwise. The government had nothing to do with any of this. That would be crazy.
You don't actually believe that Denmark would just start seizing medical equipment from Sweden, right?
Here:
Maybe slow down the alarmist stuff, and consider your sources.
*snip tweet*
For those who don't read Swedish/Danish: a company importing syringes decides to cancel/halt their own, small orders. There is no seizing or disruptions of medical equipment, syringes or otherwise. The government had nothing to do with any of this. That would be crazy.
Fair point on not being alarmist, but after the past year or so (and the four years preceeding), my threshold for just how "crazy" governments will go, is pretty high.
Given that the previous US President allegedly tried to buy BioNTech, and floated the idea of restricting the export of the vaccine to boost domestic supplies, it's not unprecedented.
Why blame Denmark for the former US President’s xenophobia?
I'm not. Just using the former US President as the worst example, but far from the only terrible national leader, or even non-terrible national leaders that have made some REALLY shitty decisions in the past couple years.
That "confiscating pandemic medical supplies passing through the nation from one country to another" not only isn't crazy to think would happen, it'd not even be very high on some lists.
Indeed, for other countries, you have to consider why they would do that and what they might have to gain vs what they might lose. Trump would just do evil shit for the hell of it even when there was nothing to be gained, even if it hurt him and his supporters and prevented him from carrying out specific campaign priorities. Most other politicians, even bad ones, even dictators tend to have a political philosophy that they care about.
So don’t judge other countries based on ‘would trump have done this’
There's nothing particularly special about nice northern european countries which mean that they won't occasionally do shitty things especially in a time like this
I'd advise caution when reading news about these things but it's not outside the realms of possibility although Denmark and Sweden have really good relations that I know of so it would be surprising
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HonkHonk is this poster.Registered User, __BANNED USERSregular
Maybe slow down the alarmist stuff, and consider your sources.
For those who don't read Swedish/Danish: a company importing syringes decides to cancel/halt their own, small orders. There is no seizing or disruptions of medical equipment, syringes or otherwise. The government had nothing to do with any of this. That would be crazy.
This isn't completely in line with the explanation I read even. A subcontractor said that their stuff was being seized and a pharma company then told Swedish regional governments they wouldn't be able to fulfill orders because of this. Swedish government started talking to Danish government at that stage to figure it out. That is the correction that I read now. So a lie, into a communication of the lie by another party to regional governments.
But fair enough, I did take it at face value and flip immediately to enraged status. It seems both governments had to get involved to figure out what actually caused this so at least I'm not the only one who got worried for a sec.
It's extremely rare that stories in big news oulets here have to be completely denied after the fact so I didn't really think that it was a possiblity in this case. My basis for being fooled here is that everyone was taking everyone-elses PPE and masks back in spring, so it's not like it was unprecedented.
I'm not making excuses but it's kind of upsetting that major massmedia does something unreliable like this, it's not as if we always source information from three different places in order to verify it ourselves.
Maybe slow down the alarmist stuff, and consider your sources.
For those who don't read Swedish/Danish: a company importing syringes decides to cancel/halt their own, small orders. There is no seizing or disruptions of medical equipment, syringes or otherwise. The government had nothing to do with any of this. That would be crazy.
This isn't completely in line with the explanation I read even. A subcontractor said that their stuff was being seized and a pharma company then told Swedish regional governments they wouldn't be able to fulfill orders because of this. Swedish government started talking to Danish government at that stage to figure it out. That is the correction that I read now. So a lie, into a communication of the lie by another party to regional governments.
But fair enough, I did take it at face value and flip immediately to enraged status. It seems both governments had to get involved to figure out what actually caused this so at least I'm not the only one who got worried for a sec.
It's extremely rare that stories in big news oulets here have to be completely denied after the fact so I didn't really think that it was a possiblity in this case. My basis for being fooled here is that everyone was taking everyone-elses PPE and masks back in spring, so it's not like it was unprecedented.
I'm not making excuses but it's kind of upsetting that major massmedia does something unreliable like this, it's not as if we always source information from three different places in order to verify it ourselves.
Sadly the media has been far from useful during the pandemic. In a world where we need precision of communication and clear language, our journalists are more used to issues where opinion matters. Where humans and their thoughts on an issue are the dominant and most important thing, certainly for anything where the news matters today, and needs to be correct today. This has been true for a long time (other than for climate change, but even there there are different perspectives and it doesn't really matter if the truth doesn't come to light for like, 4 weeks). Here we see what happens when a media based on communication about humans and opinions runs into something which literally does not give one shit what we think about it, and isn't being the way it is because a different group of humans disagrees with us. It just IS the way it is. Even scientific papers are having a hard time communicating clearly in this time, as they have not quite realized yet that people are so hungry for facts that the media is digging into their pre-prints and summaries as if they were presenting the absolute and final truth.
Overall data from people who test positive with the new variant suggests greater mortality, Sir Patrick Vallance says, though the data is currently uncertain. For example, among 1,000 60-year-olds with the old variant, 10 might be expected to die. But this rises to about 13 with the new variant, he says
Overall data from people who test positive with the new variant suggests greater mortality, Sir Patrick Vallance says, though the data is currently uncertain. For example, among 1,000 60-year-olds with the old variant, 10 might be expected to die. But this rises to about 13 with the new variant, he says
If true, fantastic.
Because what this bug needs, is to be 30% more lethal. I'm really hoping that this is just a statistical error, and doesn't bear out.
I find this websites data from the UK highly interesting regarding the stances they are taking on the variants. I think Figures 15 and 16 are highly informative, and point towards the UK's communication on these issues tending towards (and correctly towards) overwhelming caution.
Overall data from people who test positive with the new variant suggests greater mortality, Sir Patrick Vallance says, though the data is currently uncertain. For example, among 1,000 60-year-olds with the old variant, 10 might be expected to die. But this rises to about 13 with the new variant, he says
If true, fantastic.
Because what this bug needs, is to be 30% more lethal. I'm really hoping that this is just a statistical error, and doesn't bear out.
I want this year to be better, dammit!
Based on CDC estimates of 12,000-60,000 people dying in the USA each year from the flu, and over 400,000 dying to Covid (and we know this is undercounting), there's a perverse side of me that wants to see the mental gymnastics some will tie themselves in going from "oh it's only 7-35 times worse than the flu" to "oh it's only 9-46 times worse".
(Spoiler, they won't do anything of the sort, it's still just the flu and hundreds of thousands of excess respiratory and circulatory system failure related deaths are just a thing man)
Note: this statement isn't intended to be a scholarly look at the actual lethality of the typical flu in the typical year. I know they're idiots. Perhaps it's a reflexive defense, hoping that something bad enough might actually breach their little bubble where everything is actually okay, but having watched people hope the US political Right would do the same thing for years and years, I know that's folly, no need to drop hawt taeks reminding me. I know.
Forar on
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
My province has rolled out it's vaccination schedule, which is based only on Pfizer and Moderna vaccines being available. Under the spoiler tag to avoid large post
Tweet Description: Infographic of vaccination schedule for Province of British Columbia
Tweet is by the Government of British Columbia. If you're one of those blocking twitter, info is at: https://t.co/0lgUZpl7xG?amp=1
Based on current schedule, I'll be fully vaccinated by August. I'm not sure where we're at with the other vaccines getting approved in US/Canada anymore, but hopefully this schedule will have proved to be very conservative.
:so_raven:
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TetraNitroCubaneThe DjinneratorAt the bottom of a bottleRegistered Userregular
edited January 2021
The lack of additional vaccine supply is making for some drawn out vaccination schedules.
In California, Dr. Erica Pan (State Epidemiologist and Deputy Director of Center for Infectious Diseases) indicated that it could be well into summer before we finish vaccinating seniors 65 and older. Current schedule would move on to 50+ from there. If this pace holds, I doubt I'd be able to get vaccinated until - optimistically - the end of the year. But we need to get these vaccines into the vulnerable population ASAP.
During a state vaccine advisory committee meeting, Dr. Erica Pan said it could take four to five months to complete vaccinations for those 65 and older with the current allocations from the federal government.
“We don’t know when the supply will be increasing,” Pan said. “In a huge state of 40 million people, we’re only getting 400,000 to 500,000 doses a week. So it’s gonna take us, we’re estimating, anywhere from 20 to 22 weeks to get through just (those) 65 years of age and older.”
Keck Medicine of USC health officials said the low vaccine supply is the main concern at their distribution sites.
Hopefully additional supply - and approval for additional vaccines - offsets this. In the short term, though, the complete lack of stockpile that was presumed to be there is going to do us dirty for a while.
TetraNitroCubane on
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OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
There is some good news coming out of WA at least. The WA Department of Health reports that all residents in nursing homes have been given at least the first round of vaccinations. That should help limit the death toll.
AMAZING NEWS! We finished giving the first round of #CovidVaccine to all residents in nursing homes across WA today! Still working on the rest of long-term care, but this is a major milestone. Shout-out to the many pharmacies helping us protect the most vulnerable Washingtonians.
I saw this morning that birx has officially retired, so yeah was allowed to do that so the headline wasn't fired.
Torched her reputation for Donald Trump
For the GOP. The party gave her the position, and she chose loyalty to it over the public. She jumped when Trump became toxic, but she’d already revealed that she was a political appointee and not a neutral civil servant.
Overall data from people who test positive with the new variant suggests greater mortality, Sir Patrick Vallance says, though the data is currently uncertain. For example, among 1,000 60-year-olds with the old variant, 10 might be expected to die. But this rises to about 13 with the new variant, he says
I would take any information like this about the new variant with a huge grain of salt. For one, all the studies I've seen yet are from unpublished, non peer reviewed data. For two, the difference between 10/1000 and 13/1000 deaths is so small it may well just be statistical noise. The whole part of it being more transmissible may well be statistical noise as well.
The fact is there just hasn't been enough time yet to know anything reliable about the new variants. This just seems like the same media fearmongering clusterfuck we had over the summer about the new "mutations" that were in fact nothing of note. It could be otherwise too, but right now my opinion is we just don't know enough to draw any conclusions. Don't draw scientific conclusions from media outlets... just... don't.
Overall data from people who test positive with the new variant suggests greater mortality, Sir Patrick Vallance says, though the data is currently uncertain. For example, among 1,000 60-year-olds with the old variant, 10 might be expected to die. But this rises to about 13 with the new variant, he says
I would take any information like this about the new variant with a huge grain of salt. For one, all the studies I've seen yet are from unpublished, non peer reviewed data. For two, the difference between 10/1000 and 13/1000 deaths is so small it may well just be statistical noise. The whole part of it being more transmissible may well be statistical noise as well.
The fact is there just hasn't been enough time yet to know anything reliable about the new variants. This just seems like the same media fearmongering clusterfuck we had over the summer about the new "mutations" that were in fact nothing of note. It could be otherwise too, but right now my opinion is we just don't know enough to draw any conclusions. Don't draw scientific conclusions from media outlets... just... don't.
Effectively the right way to interpret the UK data is to read into it that they can no longer rule out that something is not the case. This is a real change in statistics, but, it is not "we have 95% confidence of X".
Same for transmission. If you look at the regional trends on the faction of the variants there are some very odd things going on which would certainly not be what you would predict for a virus that is 50% more infectious.
As I say, read it as "We can't rule out that this might be happening"
The lack of additional vaccine supply is making for some drawn out vaccination schedules.
In California, Dr. Erica Pan (State Epidemiologist and Deputy Director of Center for Infectious Diseases) indicated that it could be well into summer before we finish vaccinating seniors 65 and older. Current schedule would move on to 50+ from there. If this pace holds, I doubt I'd be able to get vaccinated until - optimistically - the end of the year. But we need to get these vaccines into the vulnerable population ASAP.
During a state vaccine advisory committee meeting, Dr. Erica Pan said it could take four to five months to complete vaccinations for those 65 and older with the current allocations from the federal government.
“We don’t know when the supply will be increasing,” Pan said. “In a huge state of 40 million people, we’re only getting 400,000 to 500,000 doses a week. So it’s gonna take us, we’re estimating, anywhere from 20 to 22 weeks to get through just (those) 65 years of age and older.”
Keck Medicine of USC health officials said the low vaccine supply is the main concern at their distribution sites.
Hopefully additional supply - and approval for additional vaccines - offsets this. In the short term, though, the complete lack of stockpile that was presumed to be there is going to do us dirty for a while.
The us has 49 million people over 65. We have currently delivered 18 million vaccine doses, likely 10 million to over 65s. We are currently vaccinating 1 million per day. We need to administer 88 million more vaccines. If we don't ramp any more, then everyone over 65 can be vaccinated by April 20th.
We had confirmation over the last few days from multiple sources that there is a second dose stockpile. This is a quote from Pfizer on the 15th
"
“Operation Warp Speed (OWS) has asked us to start shipping second doses only recently. As a result, we have on hand all the second doses of the previous shipments to the US. We are working around the clock to produce millions more each day,” Pfizer said in a statement sent to CNN."
There is no federal stockpile because Pfizer has the doses.
Yes California is lagging behind, but that problem won't last forever, and eventually we will get clarity of communication which will give states confidence that the second doses actually exist, which will allow them to unlock their local doses.
California average rate is about 2/3 National average, so sure, at our current rubbish rate maybe she's right, but that rate will increase to at least the current national average.
Posts
He's not, but we can string him up for the previous administration's failings
that's how this works, right?
It’s a huge upgrade from “not our problem and also the virus isn’t real and also it’s the blue states fault”
Faucci laughing and joking around about how he can actually speak freely and speak openly about what is scientific fact is both reassuring and horrifying.
https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/01/19/memory-b-cells-infection-and-vaccination
A good overview why it shouldn’t invalidate the vaccines:
https://yourlocalepidemiologist.com/vaccines-are-made-with-mutations-in-mind/
Three of the most recent relevant papers:
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.19.21249840v1
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.18.426984v1
https://cmmid.github.io/topics/covid19/sa-novel-variant.html
Overall, i don’t think it’s as scary as it sounds. Escaping detection from one set to antibodies in convalescent sera doesn’t mean the entire immune system is moot, and living immune systems are constantly refining their antibodies such that the 6-month post-infection response is more varied and robust than the one-month one. And vaccine-induced immunity should be stronger and more likely to induce a polyclonal response, so it should be more robust to escape mutations.
Which isn’t to say it’s nothing. It could easily be a speed bump to defeating Covid and there’s a very small but non-zero chance it could be worse. The companies that invested in monoclonal antibody treatments might be feeling a little nervous.
I mean it confirms what we knew if you wanted to remain working you had to keep the company line.
pleasepaypreacher.net
Yup, he had to walk a real fine line knowing people were dying that didnt need to yet if he spoke out even more would.
I don't envy him being in that situation one bit and think he did the best anyone could have.
Retiring.
https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-travel-media-coronavirus-pandemic-thanksgiving-06e2ec564caea570a9ac7e6ddd5e2f21
No word on whether that's retiring or "please retire before I fire you"
First time since Sept. that cases went down in the same week that tests went up.
It’s the latter. All indications are she wanted to stay on board and was told “fuckin noooooope”
Lets hope we get the same trend next week too.
So they're straight up currently stealing vaccination kits that have been bought and paid for by Sweden, that were en route to Sweden.
At most it'll probably just slow down the rate, I don't think in practice it's going to be a huge deal, but it seems incredibly assholish to steal medical supplies from a neighbour. That's what they are doing. Stealing medical supplies.
I care more about the act than the practical issues they cause. I think people should go to prison for this.
Got a link? The Google has nothing on this.
"Something is rotten in the state of Denmark."
Yeah, that's pretty fucked up. It'd be one thing (though still terrible) if Denmark were producing the material, and not exporting it. It's another to essentially hijack and confiscate material passing through your country.
Has there been a reason given? Looking at Worldometer, it looks like Denmark are on their way out of a wave, though deaths seem to be spiking. But Denmark has less than a third of the deaths per million (329d/m) that Sweden (1078d/m, almost at US 1266d/m levels) has suffered through. The world average is 270d/m.
Which just makes shit worse. It's almost Monty Burns keeping Smithers out of the escape pod "because I like to put my feet up" sinister.
https://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/a/zg4lOw/aftonbladet-avslojar-danmark-stoppar-vaccinsprutor-till-sverige
They are positioning the article as breaking from their reporters which might explain that it's not widespread yet. This newspaper is very hit and miss but it is not like they would be making this kind of thing up, whatever I may feel about the tabloidness of the newspaper I think it's fairly impossible they'd be factually incorrect about this.
Here:
Maybe slow down the alarmist stuff, and consider your sources.
For those who don't read Swedish/Danish: a company importing syringes decides to cancel/halt their own, small orders. There is no seizing or disruptions of medical equipment, syringes or otherwise. The government had nothing to do with any of this. That would be crazy.
Fair point on not being alarmist, but after the past year or so (and the four years preceeding), my threshold for just how "crazy" governments will go, is pretty high.
Given that the previous US President allegedly tried to buy BioNTech, and floated the idea of restricting the export of the vaccine to boost domestic supplies, it's not unprecedented.
I'm not. Just using the former US President as the worst example, but far from the only terrible national leader, or even non-terrible national leaders that have made some REALLY shitty decisions in the past couple years.
That "confiscating pandemic medical supplies passing through the nation from one country to another" not only isn't crazy to think would happen, it'd not even be very high on some lists.
So don’t judge other countries based on ‘would trump have done this’
I'd advise caution when reading news about these things but it's not outside the realms of possibility although Denmark and Sweden have really good relations that I know of so it would be surprising
This isn't completely in line with the explanation I read even. A subcontractor said that their stuff was being seized and a pharma company then told Swedish regional governments they wouldn't be able to fulfill orders because of this. Swedish government started talking to Danish government at that stage to figure it out. That is the correction that I read now. So a lie, into a communication of the lie by another party to regional governments.
But fair enough, I did take it at face value and flip immediately to enraged status. It seems both governments had to get involved to figure out what actually caused this so at least I'm not the only one who got worried for a sec.
It's extremely rare that stories in big news oulets here have to be completely denied after the fact so I didn't really think that it was a possiblity in this case. My basis for being fooled here is that everyone was taking everyone-elses PPE and masks back in spring, so it's not like it was unprecedented.
I'm not making excuses but it's kind of upsetting that major massmedia does something unreliable like this, it's not as if we always source information from three different places in order to verify it ourselves.
Sadly the media has been far from useful during the pandemic. In a world where we need precision of communication and clear language, our journalists are more used to issues where opinion matters. Where humans and their thoughts on an issue are the dominant and most important thing, certainly for anything where the news matters today, and needs to be correct today. This has been true for a long time (other than for climate change, but even there there are different perspectives and it doesn't really matter if the truth doesn't come to light for like, 4 weeks). Here we see what happens when a media based on communication about humans and opinions runs into something which literally does not give one shit what we think about it, and isn't being the way it is because a different group of humans disagrees with us. It just IS the way it is. Even scientific papers are having a hard time communicating clearly in this time, as they have not quite realized yet that people are so hungry for facts that the media is digging into their pre-prints and summaries as if they were presenting the absolute and final truth.
If true, fantastic.
Because what this bug needs, is to be 30% more lethal. I'm really hoping that this is just a statistical error, and doesn't bear out.
I want this year to be better, dammit!
pleasepaypreacher.net
I find this websites data from the UK highly interesting regarding the stances they are taking on the variants. I think Figures 15 and 16 are highly informative, and point towards the UK's communication on these issues tending towards (and correctly towards) overwhelming caution.
Torched her reputation for Donald Trump
Based on CDC estimates of 12,000-60,000 people dying in the USA each year from the flu, and over 400,000 dying to Covid (and we know this is undercounting), there's a perverse side of me that wants to see the mental gymnastics some will tie themselves in going from "oh it's only 7-35 times worse than the flu" to "oh it's only 9-46 times worse".
(Spoiler, they won't do anything of the sort, it's still just the flu and hundreds of thousands of excess respiratory and circulatory system failure related deaths are just a thing man)
Note: this statement isn't intended to be a scholarly look at the actual lethality of the typical flu in the typical year. I know they're idiots. Perhaps it's a reflexive defense, hoping that something bad enough might actually breach their little bubble where everything is actually okay, but having watched people hope the US political Right would do the same thing for years and years, I know that's folly, no need to drop hawt taeks reminding me. I know.
Tweet Description: Infographic of vaccination schedule for Province of British Columbia
Tweet is by the Government of British Columbia. If you're one of those blocking twitter, info is at: https://t.co/0lgUZpl7xG?amp=1
Based on current schedule, I'll be fully vaccinated by August. I'm not sure where we're at with the other vaccines getting approved in US/Canada anymore, but hopefully this schedule will have proved to be very conservative.
In California, Dr. Erica Pan (State Epidemiologist and Deputy Director of Center for Infectious Diseases) indicated that it could be well into summer before we finish vaccinating seniors 65 and older. Current schedule would move on to 50+ from there. If this pace holds, I doubt I'd be able to get vaccinated until - optimistically - the end of the year. But we need to get these vaccines into the vulnerable population ASAP.
Hopefully additional supply - and approval for additional vaccines - offsets this. In the short term, though, the complete lack of stockpile that was presumed to be there is going to do us dirty for a while.
AMAZING NEWS! We finished giving the first round of #CovidVaccine to all residents in nursing homes across WA today! Still working on the rest of long-term care, but this is a major milestone. Shout-out to the many pharmacies helping us protect the most vulnerable Washingtonians.
For the GOP. The party gave her the position, and she chose loyalty to it over the public. She jumped when Trump became toxic, but she’d already revealed that she was a political appointee and not a neutral civil servant.
I would take any information like this about the new variant with a huge grain of salt. For one, all the studies I've seen yet are from unpublished, non peer reviewed data. For two, the difference between 10/1000 and 13/1000 deaths is so small it may well just be statistical noise. The whole part of it being more transmissible may well be statistical noise as well.
The fact is there just hasn't been enough time yet to know anything reliable about the new variants. This just seems like the same media fearmongering clusterfuck we had over the summer about the new "mutations" that were in fact nothing of note. It could be otherwise too, but right now my opinion is we just don't know enough to draw any conclusions. Don't draw scientific conclusions from media outlets... just... don't.
Effectively the right way to interpret the UK data is to read into it that they can no longer rule out that something is not the case. This is a real change in statistics, but, it is not "we have 95% confidence of X".
Same for transmission. If you look at the regional trends on the faction of the variants there are some very odd things going on which would certainly not be what you would predict for a virus that is 50% more infectious.
As I say, read it as "We can't rule out that this might be happening"
The us has 49 million people over 65. We have currently delivered 18 million vaccine doses, likely 10 million to over 65s. We are currently vaccinating 1 million per day. We need to administer 88 million more vaccines. If we don't ramp any more, then everyone over 65 can be vaccinated by April 20th.
We had confirmation over the last few days from multiple sources that there is a second dose stockpile. This is a quote from Pfizer on the 15th
"
“Operation Warp Speed (OWS) has asked us to start shipping second doses only recently. As a result, we have on hand all the second doses of the previous shipments to the US. We are working around the clock to produce millions more each day,” Pfizer said in a statement sent to CNN."
There is no federal stockpile because Pfizer has the doses.
Yes California is lagging behind, but that problem won't last forever, and eventually we will get clarity of communication which will give states confidence that the second doses actually exist, which will allow them to unlock their local doses.
California average rate is about 2/3 National average, so sure, at our current rubbish rate maybe she's right, but that rate will increase to at least the current national average.