Coronavirus thread

Started by JBS, March 12, 2020, 07:03:50 PM

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Mandryka

#5940
The border closures are total theatre. A useless gesture from a health point of view, but far from useless politically. The electorate don't like Johnny Foreigner and they feel that their country should be protected against barbarian invaders. So closing the borders goes down well with the groundlings, which, from a politician's point of view, is excellent. Nobody cares about the suffering caused by the closures -- families who are driven apart. People see this sort of cruelty as a good thing in fact -- like the refugee camps in Calais and Lesbos.

Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

BasilValentine

Quote from: Mandryka on December 07, 2021, 01:55:20 AM
The border closures are total theatre. A useless gesture from a health point of view, but far from useless politically. The electorate don't like Johnny Foreigner and they feel that their country should be protected against barbarian invaders. So closing the borders goes down well with the groundlings, which, from a politician's point of view, is excellent. Nobody cares about the suffering caused by the closures -- families who are driven apart. People see this sort of cruelty as a good thing in fact -- like the refugee camps in Calais and Lesbos.

Yes, and worse. One researcher I heard interviewed on NPR said South Africa is being punished for having a testing program that discovered an early case and epidemiologists who managed to sequence the genome before anyone else. The danger is that this kind of "do something politics" will discourage those ahead of the curve from going public with the data and research we all need.

Karl Henning

"A useless gesture from a health point of view, but far from useless politically." Like protesting masks, then?
Karl Henning, Ph.D.
Composer & Clarinetist
Boston MA
http://www.karlhenning.com/
[Matisse] was interested neither in fending off opposition,
nor in competing for the favor of wayward friends.
His only competition was with himself. — Françoise Gilot

Karl Henning

Karl Henning, Ph.D.
Composer & Clarinetist
Boston MA
http://www.karlhenning.com/
[Matisse] was interested neither in fending off opposition,
nor in competing for the favor of wayward friends.
His only competition was with himself. — Françoise Gilot

MusicTurner

Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on December 07, 2021, 06:32:26 AM
"A useless gesture from a health point of view, but far from useless politically." Like protesting masks, then?

Do you mean 'protective masks' ?

Karl Henning

Karl Henning, Ph.D.
Composer & Clarinetist
Boston MA
http://www.karlhenning.com/
[Matisse] was interested neither in fending off opposition,
nor in competing for the favor of wayward friends.
His only competition was with himself. — Françoise Gilot

Karl Henning

Antibody treatment found effective against Omicron variant
Karl Henning, Ph.D.
Composer & Clarinetist
Boston MA
http://www.karlhenning.com/
[Matisse] was interested neither in fending off opposition,
nor in competing for the favor of wayward friends.
His only competition was with himself. — Françoise Gilot

Karl Henning

Large South African hospital group sees fewer severe COVID cases — 9:23 a.m.
By Bloomberg

Mediclinic International Ltd., one of South Africa's three biggest hospital groups, said while it is seeing an increased influx of Covid-19 patients "only a few require admission for further care."

The group, in a statement on Tuesday, said its seeing a greater proportion of children under 12 than in previous waves and many asymptomatic patients admitted for other ailments.

Of Covid-19 patients admitted 25% are vaccinated as are 16% of those in intensive care, the company said.

The variant "appears to be highly transmissible," Mediclinic said. Still, "so far, a lower percentage of admitted Covid-19 patients require intensive care and ventilation."
Karl Henning, Ph.D.
Composer & Clarinetist
Boston MA
http://www.karlhenning.com/
[Matisse] was interested neither in fending off opposition,
nor in competing for the favor of wayward friends.
His only competition was with himself. — Françoise Gilot

Karl Henning

Kids in 5-14 age group show highest COVID rates in Europe, WHO says — 8:25 a.m.
By The Associated Press

The World Health Organization's office for Europe said Tuesday that children in the 5 to 14 age group now account for the highest rates of reported COVID-19 infection in the region.

WHO Europe regional director Dr. Hans Kluge also argued that vaccine mandates should be "an absolute last resort," and said that COVID-19 deaths remain "significantly below previous peaks." But he said that coronavirus cases and deaths have more than doubled in the last two months in the 53-country region stretching to central Asia.
Karl Henning, Ph.D.
Composer & Clarinetist
Boston MA
http://www.karlhenning.com/
[Matisse] was interested neither in fending off opposition,
nor in competing for the favor of wayward friends.
His only competition was with himself. — Françoise Gilot

Mandryka

#5949
In the UK they are saying that the doubling time of omicron is about two days, and that there are at least 1K cases here, maybe 2K. Assume 1K -- and assume it doubles 15 times between now and January 7.

1K,2K,4,8,16,32,64,128,256, 500k, 1M, 2M, 4M, 8M, 16M . . .

So basically we're all going to get omicron in the next four or five weeks.

I think on any scenario this is serious news -- even if omicron rarely produces serious illness in vaccinated people, it is serious news -- a small percentage of a large number is a large number.  Don't forget that in the Northern hemisphere the winter flu epidemic is about to start. It isn't a good time to need hospital care.

If it produces serious illness more often, it's a catastrophe, potentially apocalyptic,  and not one that's obviously avoidable. Was it avoidable three weeks ago? I don't know.

Anyway, I suggest we all stock up with some good wine, because there's nothing more that anyone can do. The ball is rolling.





Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Karl Henning

No one taught me that epidemiology is political — but it is

Our current triage has been as ineffective as it is unethical.

By Rachel R. Yorlets Updated December 6, 2021, 4:31 p.m.

As scientists-in-training, we are taught the parable of people drowning in a river. Medicine extends her hands to pull each person out while public health runs upstream to prevent people from falling into the water. The idea that some of these lives matter less than others is so unspeakable that we don't name it.

But the recent naming of the COVID-19 variant Omicron places health inequity in headlines once again. Across pathogens and places, pandemics are nothing if not socially driven: Widespread global efforts to control spread reach a tipping point after which the burden of infectious diseases is shifted to the shoulders of the poor. Slowly, the lettered plagues — TB, HIV, COVID — recede from the front page. One might argue that their unfolding is not newsworthy, since we have tolerated the poverty traps of these plagues for centuries, decades, and years, respectively.

Recent advocacy side-steps the need for global vaccine equity in favor of strategies that are complementary at best, such as increasing genomic sequencing within viral surveillance or restricting country-specific travel. Last week, President Biden addressed the National Institutes of Health with an updated pandemic plan. His proposal overlooks the one thing we have known from the start: The global community is in this together.

When vaccines became available one year after the first known case of COVID, the epidemiologic strategy was clear: To save the most lives, vaccine campaigns would have prioritized populations in which non-pharmaceutical interventions were not feasible. Immunization efforts would have sought out those in overcrowded housing, densely populated cities, migrant-dependent households, and settings with a high prevalence of people who are immunocompromised — to say nothing of the 3 billion people who lack access to soap and running water at home. Instead, the first immunizations were administered in populations that had the means to prevent and reduce transmission with face coverings, ventilation, testing, and isolation strategies, distanced outdoor gatherings, and working from home.

No one taught me that epidemiology is political. But it is.

About three-quarters of all doses have been administered in resource-rich settings. About 10 percent of all residents in the United States and Canada have received a booster — the same percentage of the entire African continent that has received any shots. The shock deepens when we reflect on the irony that pre-modern smallpox inoculation was brought to the New World colonies (to Boston, in fact) by an enslaved African man. Our current triage has been as ineffective as it is unethical. Pandemics are global by definition, so the critical threshold for herd immunity needs to be met throughout the human population; infectious diseases move with the people they infect. Worse, failure to meet this goal will enable the coronavirus to circulate and evolve, making it all the more difficult to eradicate.

In settings with vaccine access, leaders undermined equity by neglecting those experiencing vaccine hesitancy. Just as virologists warned in 2017 to prepare for SARS-like viruses, vaccine hesitancy was designated as a top-10 threat to global health by the World Health Organization the year before COVID emerged. It is not too late, and now more important than ever, to address the complex reasons why people decline vaccination. Overcoming hesitancy means tackling its causes through consistent messaging from both political and public health leadership:

▪ First, we must combat misinformation, cited by Anthony Fauci and other health experts, as a primary driver of hesitancy, and disinformation campaigns targeting vaccines. Fraudulent science is more easily found in an online search than, for example, the fact that vaccines prevent about five deaths every minute (pre-COVID).

▪ Second, we must confront historic events that have generated mistrust of health systems or governing bodies. Safe vaccines are often caught in the middle.

▪ Third, we must communicate that vaccines are a paradox of their own success. Vaccine-preventable diseases fade from our lived experience, tempting the idea that vaccines are no longer necessary (when in reality, disease incidence declines because of continued vaccinations).

▪ Finally, we cannot forget that these causes and others take hold quickly in a vacuum of education and support. Not only is patient-blaming antithetical to our ethos, but evidence also shows that shaming and labeling someone for their health behavior reinforces those decisions. We can empower vaccine uptake by providing information, building trust in public health, and engaging in respectful public dialogues. Low-cost interventions save lives.

Pandemics are neither unpredictable nor unprecedented. The phases common to all of them are denialism, activism, scientific research, and economic arguments. But as with other diseases that have spread worldwide, we long ago reached a point where we know enough to act. We have passed the time for debate over patents, profits, or production logistics. It is past time to vaccinate the global population, or else face the moral injury. It's not too late to run upstream. Until we do, we will live with the pandemics we choose.
Karl Henning, Ph.D.
Composer & Clarinetist
Boston MA
http://www.karlhenning.com/
[Matisse] was interested neither in fending off opposition,
nor in competing for the favor of wayward friends.
His only competition was with himself. — Françoise Gilot

Mandryka

Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on December 07, 2021, 09:44:44 AM
It is past time to vaccinate the global population, or else face the moral injury. It's not too late to run upstream. Until we do, we will live with the pandemics we choose.

Easier said than done. How would you distribute the vaccines in Africa?
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Karl Henning

Austria to keep lockdown restrictions in place for the unvaccinated

By Maite Fernández Simon1:50 p.m.

Austria plans to lift its coronavirus lockdown this Sunday while keeping restrictions in place for the unvaccinated, Chancellor Karl Nehammer said Tuesday.

Austria shut down restaurants and closed hotels for tourists Nov. 22 in an effort to bring down rising coronavirus rates, as Europe became the center of a new wave of the virus.

Nehammer, who took office Monday after the sudden resignation of Sebastian Kurz, which prompted a government crisis, said at a news conference that "the lockdown for the unvaccinated is staying," according to Reuters. Close to 68 percent of Austria's population is fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, according to Our World in Data.

The country has had a tougher stance toward people who are not vaccinated. It is the first country in Europe to mandate coronavirus vaccination for all starting in February, and it had imposed a lockdown for the unvaccinated a week before the Nov. 22 containment measures.
Karl Henning, Ph.D.
Composer & Clarinetist
Boston MA
http://www.karlhenning.com/
[Matisse] was interested neither in fending off opposition,
nor in competing for the favor of wayward friends.
His only competition was with himself. — Françoise Gilot

Karl Henning

CDC sees New York City anime convention as test case for omicron

By Brittany Shammas 1:42 p.m.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention investigators are taking an in-depth look at a New York City anime convention attended by a man who contracted one of the nation's first confirmed cases of the omicron variant of the coronavirus.

Speaking Tuesday during a White House coronavirus task force briefing, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky said the agency was working with health officials in New York City and Minnesota, the home state of the infected man. They have been in touch with health agencies in all 50 states, Puerto Rico, the District of Columbia and 27 other countries with residents who attended the convention.

Of the reported 53,000 attendees, they've made contact with about 35,000, encouraging them to get tested, Walensky said.

"Data from this investigation will provide some of the earliest looks in this country on the transmissibility of the variant," she said.

The convention ran Nov. 18-22 at the Javits Center, with vaccination and masks required. Peter McGinn, the Minnesota man who was infected with omicron, told The Washington Post he had mild symptoms and some fatigue over about two days. Several friends who attended the convention with the 30-year-old health-care consultant also contracted the virus.

McGinn credited his Johnson & Johnson vaccine and Moderna booster shot with protecting him from more serious symptoms.
Karl Henning, Ph.D.
Composer & Clarinetist
Boston MA
http://www.karlhenning.com/
[Matisse] was interested neither in fending off opposition,
nor in competing for the favor of wayward friends.
His only competition was with himself. — Françoise Gilot

fbjim

Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on December 07, 2021, 08:11:02 AM
Large South African hospital group sees fewer severe COVID cases — 9:23 a.m.
By Bloomberg

Mediclinic International Ltd., one of South Africa's three biggest hospital groups, said while it is seeing an increased influx of Covid-19 patients "only a few require admission for further care."

The group, in a statement on Tuesday, said its seeing a greater proportion of children under 12 than in previous waves and many asymptomatic patients admitted for other ailments.

Of Covid-19 patients admitted 25% are vaccinated as are 16% of those in intensive care, the company said.

The variant "appears to be highly transmissible," Mediclinic said. Still, "so far, a lower percentage of admitted Covid-19 patients require intensive care and ventilation."

To an extent, the best case scenario is if this variant causes mild symptoms and becomes the dominant strain, in which case this may mark the virus's turn into becoming something as manageable as the seasonal flu.

Que

Quote from: Florestan on December 07, 2021, 01:38:10 PM
This would indeed be the way of all flesh pandemics --- all natural pandemics, I mean.

Oh, you mean like cholera, the bubonic plague, small pox and HIV/AIDS?

fbjim

as i recall a few people died back then

JBS

Quote from: Florestan on December 07, 2021, 02:24:58 PM
What caused the bubonic plague to subdue in Middle Ages Europe? Certainly not the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines. What then?

Brown rats replaced black rats, and human/rodent interaction became rarer.

From Wikipedia.
Quote
Appleby[78] considers six possible explanations:

People developed immunity.
Improvements in nutrition made people more resistant.
Improvements in housing, urban sanitation and personal cleanliness reduced the number of rats and rat fleas.
The dominant rat species changed. (The brown rat did not arrive in London until 1727.)
Quarantine methods improved in the 17th century.
Some rats developed immunity so fleas never left them in droves to humans, non-resistant rats were eliminated and this broke the cycle.
Synder suggests[79] that the replacement of the Black rat (Rattus rattus), which thrived among people and was frequently kept as a pet, by the more aggressive and prolific Norway or brown rat (Rattus norvegicus) was a major factor. The Brown rat, which arrived as an invasive species from the East, is skittish and avoids human contact, and their aggressive and asocial behavior made them less attractive to humans. As the Brown rat violently drove out the Black rat in country after country, becoming the dominant species in that ecological niche, rat-to-human contact declined, as did the opportunities for plague to pass from rat fleas to humans. One of the major demarcations for hot spots in the third plague pandemic was the places where the Black rat had yet to be replaced, such as Bombay (now Mumbai) in India.[citation needed] It has been suggested that evolutionary processes may have favored less virulent strains of the pathogen Yersinia pestis.[80]

In all probability, almost all of the existing hypotheses had some effect in bringing about the end of the pandemic, though the main cause may never be conclusively determined.[citation needed]

The disappearance happened rather later in the Nordic and eastern European countries but there was a similar halt after major epidemics.[citation needed]

Yersinia pestis still around, especially in wild rodents, and 20th/21st century cases seem to be associated with them.

Cholera was beaten not so much by medicine as it was by modern plumbing and sewage systems. Smallpox is the great example of a disease disappearing because of a vaccine. HIV/AIDS is controlled by medicine but certainly still present.

Hollywood Beach Broadwalk


Mandryka

#5959
Quote from: MusicTurner on December 07, 2021, 09:53:53 PM
"Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine partially protective against Omicron - Bloomberg News"

https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-pfizer-variant/pfizer-covid-19-vaccine-partially-protective-against-omicron-bloomberg-news-idUKL4N2SS3RV

As far as I can see the observed reduction is at the antibody level,  not at the level of memory cells.

By the way, I hope you'll keep us informed how things are going in Denmark, which seems to be a bit at the eye of the omicron storm in Europe. Especially vis-à-vis hospitalisations and child illnesses.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen