Coronavirus thread

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

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Madiel

Quote from: Pohjolas Daughter on January 25, 2022, 02:58:24 AM
Neat!  Have you two ever met in person?

Not that I know of... I mean, I only have an avatar to go on.  :laugh:
I am now working on a discography of the works of Vagn Holmboe. Please visit and also contribute!

Karl Henning

Pfizer opens study of COVID shots updated to match Omicron

By The Associated Press The Associated Press, Updated January 25, 2022, 7:03 a.m.

Pfizer has begun a study comparing its original COVID-19 vaccine with doses specially tweaked to match the hugely contagious Omicron variant.

Pfizer and its partner BioNTech announced the study on Tuesday.

COVID-19 vaccine makers have been updating their shots to better match Omicron in case global health authorities decide the change is needed.

While Omicron is more likely than previous variants to cause infection even in people who've been vaccinated, it's not yet clear that a change to the vaccine recipe is needed.

The original vaccines still offer good protection against severe illness and death. Studies in the U.S. and elsewhere have made clear that adding a booster dose strengthens that protection and improves the chances of avoiding a milder infection.

"We recognize the need to be prepared in the event this protection wanes over time and to potentially help address Omicron and new variants in the future," Kathrin Jansen, Pfizer's vaccine research chief, said in a statement.

The new U.S. study is enrolling up to 1,420 healthy adults, ages 18 to 55, to test the updated Omicron-based shots for use as a booster or for primary vaccinations. Researchers will examine the tweaked vaccine's safety and how it revs up the immune system in comparison to the original shots.

In one study group, about 600 volunteers who received two doses of the current Pfizer vaccine three to six months ago will receive either one or two Omicron-based shots as boosters. Another 600 who've already gotten three regular doses of the Pfizer vaccine will be given a fourth dose of either the regular vaccine or the Omicron-matched version.

The study also will enroll some unvaccinated volunteers who will receive three doses of the Omicron-based vaccine.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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

Pohjolas Daughter

Quote from: Madiel on January 25, 2022, 05:02:51 AM
Not that I know of... I mean, I only have an avatar to go on.  :laugh:
I thought that you might have PM'd here on the forum and perhaps contacted each other like for a cup of coffee, a concert, etc.

PD
Pohjolas Daughter

Madiel

Quote from: Pohjolas Daughter on January 25, 2022, 09:03:04 AM
I thought that you might have PM'd here on the forum and perhaps contacted each other like for a cup of coffee, a concert, etc.

PD

He's on the forum so infrequently that we've never chatted. It was super weird when I realised I was probably the closest member.
I am now working on a discography of the works of Vagn Holmboe. Please visit and also contribute!

Holden

I'm headed your way in early April to stay with a mate of mine. While he's working during the day I'll go touring. The Mint is on my list of things to do (already done the War Memorial) and might have a look at the surrounding countryside as well. I'm not expecting Covid or anything to stop this trip. WA, is a different story. When McClown announced the April 5 border opening I booked a flight - silly me! That guy couldn't lie straight in bed.
Cheers

Holden

Madiel

Quote from: Holden on January 25, 2022, 02:10:58 PM
I'm headed your way in early April to stay with a mate of mine. While he's working during the day I'll go touring. The Mint is on my list of things to do (already done the War Memorial) and might have a look at the surrounding countryside as well. I'm not expecting Covid or anything to stop this trip. WA, is a different story. When McClown announced the April 5 border opening I booked a flight - silly me! That guy couldn't lie straight in bed.

What's silly is you thinking that a decision shouldn't change if the circumstances change.  Do you seriously go through your life never changing your plans based on new information? I doubt it.
I am now working on a discography of the works of Vagn Holmboe. Please visit and also contribute!

Mandryka

Quote from: Madiel on January 25, 2022, 12:29:27 PM
He's on the forum so infrequently that we've never chatted. It was super weird when I realised I was probably the closest member.

Are you in Tasmania?
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Madiel

#6927
Quote from: Mandryka on January 26, 2022, 01:10:54 AM
Are you in Tasmania?

Canberra. It says that as my location though whether you see that depends what device you're using to access the forum.

When I say close... look I don't know Dungeon Master's exact location, but from a previous bit of information I guess he's within 15 minutes drive. And with the new house it might be more like 5. Not certain but likely.
I am now working on a discography of the works of Vagn Holmboe. Please visit and also contribute!

Mandryka

Quote from: Madiel on January 26, 2022, 03:06:23 AM
Canberra. It says that as my location though whether you see that depends what device you're using to access the forum.

When I say close... look I don't know Dungeon Master's exact location, but from a previous bit of information I guess he's within 15 minutes drive. And with the new house it might be more like 5. Not certain but likely.

Ah yes. I somehow thought that dungeonmaster lived in Tasmania. Some people in the same street as me are from Australians and once they started to talk about Tasmania . . . .what they said left quite a strong impression.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Karl Henning

White House announces 400 million vaccination doses made to global effort
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

U.S. hits highest seven-day death average since last year

By Lateshia Beachum 4:02 a.m.

The seven-day average for covid deaths in the United States reached 2,230 on Tuesday, its highest point since late February last year, according to Washington Post data.

The highly transmissible omicron variant led to an explosive increase in coronavirus cases nationwide in December and January. Omicron, which has been shown to have less severe symptoms and outcomes than other variants, quickly overtook the delta strain of the virus. It now makes up more than 99 percent of new U.S. cases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Deaths in the nation started climbing before the surge, brought on by the more deadly delta variant, according to data. The deadliest point of the pandemic came in January last year, when the seven-day average of new covid deaths was more than 3,300 per day.

More than 866,670 people in the United States have died of the coronavirus since the pandemic's onset, Post data shows.
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

Mass. reports 18,536 new coronavirus cases among public school students and 3,150 among staff — 5:44 p.m.
By Colleen Cronin and Felicia Gans, Globe Staff

COVID cases in the Massachusetts public schools decreased for a third consecutive week, as state education leaders on Thursday reported 18,536 new cases among students and 3,150 among staff members for the week that ended Wednesday.

The 21,686 total cases were 11,223 fewer, or about 34 percent fewer, than those reported last week. Total cases had started decreasing three weeks ago, during the week that began Jan. 6, but this reporting period only marks the second time since early December that both staff and student cases have decreased.
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

Zappa sang: well, ladies you can be an asshole, too:

Sarah Palin dines in NYC restaurant after testing positive for COVID and defying vaccine requirements — 11:43 a.m.
By The Washington Post

Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, who is unvaccinated and revealed this week that she tested positive for coronavirus, dined again at a New York City restaurant Wednesday night, flouting local health and safety measures calling for positive cases to isolate.

Elio's, an Italian restaurant on the Upper East Side, has faced blowback after Palin dined indoors at the establishment on Saturday, in violation of the city's dining mandate for people to show proof of vaccination. The Manhattan judge in Palin's defamation trial against the New York Times revealed Monday that the proceedings would be delayed because the Republican tested positive for the virus. It's unclear when Palin first tested positive.
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

#6933
Quote from: MusicTurner on January 24, 2022, 06:07:15 AM
Yes, I think the fatalities number is also related to old Delta and then other diseases, cf. the hospitalizations share of 40%. Haven't seen any exact stats though.

The DK re-opening has received a lot of attention, debate, critique and appraisal from elsewhere. So now we have the full support of those militant Canadian truckers, for example ... The other Nordic countries are about to do the same re-openings.

Apparently infections are finally going down somewhat, as predicted, but it's still to early to establish for sure. And the numbers of people on ICUs and ventilators are now extremely low. I watched a TV programme with four of the absolutely leading experts here, and they all agreed the worst of the pandemic has been overcome.

But some negative news are: a rise in the number of fatalities (even if only ~60% of them being actually corona-caused). More babies, obviously non-vaccinated, are being hospitalized now, and this might become a trend. But about 30-40% of the generally rising corona-registered hospitalizations are not actually related to corona, and the treatment at hospitals is faster and more efficient.
Finally, there's been a change in the procedures for ICU hospitalizations since December, which might influence the lower ICU numbers. I'm unable to say, but since the  number of people on ventilators has also gone down, I suspect the effect of that change was rather modest.

Karl Henning

Could the new COVID subvariant, BA. 2., slow our exit from the Omicron surge?

By Martin Finucane Globe Staff, Updated January 31, 2022, 4:03 p.m.

While the Omicron surge appears to be waning in some regions of the United States, some experts are cautioning that progress against the coronavirus could be hindered by the arrival of a highly contagious new Omicron subvariant, BA.2.

Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former director of the US Food and Drug Administration, said Sunday that pandemic numbers were "coming down, and coming down quite sharply in parts of the Northeast, Florida, the mid-Atlantic," but said "you might see, as this new strain starts to pick up, you might see that we start to slow down in that decline."

Gottlieb said on CBS-TV's "Face the Nation" that "the decline will happen nonetheless" and he didn't expect "a huge wave of infection."

"We have so much Omicron immunity that's probably going to be a backstop against this really taking off," said Gottlieb, who is now a board member of Pfizer.

Thomas Peacock, a virologist at Imperial College London, also said in The New York Times this weekend that the arrival of BA. 2 "may mean higher peak infections in places that have yet to peak, and a slowdown in the downward trends in places that have already experienced peak Omicron."

BA.2, which is a cousin of BA.1, the original version of Omicron, has been found in more than 50 countries, including the United States, where, according to one expert's estimate last week, it already accounts for 8 percent of cases.

It is now predominant in Denmark - and researchers there have been studying it. In a preprint study released Sunday, researchers said they had found that "BA.2 is inherently substantially more transmissible than BA.1, and that it also possesses immune-evasive properties that further reduce the protective effect of vaccination against infection."

Previous preliminary research from Denmark has suggested there is no difference in the risk of hospitalization for BA.2 compared with the original Omicron variant, which causes less severe disease than the Delta variant it replaced in December.

"For public health, it is reassuring that BA.2, like BA.1, seems to be associated with favorable outcomes relative to the Delta variant, and that vaccines protect in particular against hospital admissions and severe illness," the researchers from the Statens Serum Institut (SSI), Copenhagen University, Statistics Denmark, and Technical University of Denmark, wrote in the preprint.

The researchers emphasized that "even with the emergence of BA.2, vaccines have an effect against infection, transmission and severe disease, although reduced compared to the ancestral variants."

While the spread of less-severe variants has "raised optimism," the paper said, it is "important to follow the future evolution of the BA.2 subvariant closely, as well as future emergent subvariants."
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

Following the talked-about, recent DK re-opening, numbers aren't really going down these days, and unfortunately, for the first time with several family members getting positive tests. But luckily, mild cases so far.

There is a wide-spread acceptance of the new, restriction-free situation, in spite of the mostly rising numbers. The stable, very few ICU-and ventilator-cases form the most positive thing to mention, besides the potential, longer-term immunity, due to the many vaccinations and infected. Hopefully, late February will see a slow-down.

Pohjolas Daughter

Quote from: MusicTurner on February 09, 2022, 04:18:43 AM
Following the talked-about, recent DK re-opening, numbers aren't really going down these days, and unfortunately, for the first time with several family members getting positive tests. But luckily, mild cases so far.

There is a wide-spread acceptance of the new, restriction-free situation, in spite of the mostly rising numbers. The stable, very few ICU-and ventilator-cases form the most positive thing to mention, besides the potential, longer-term immunity, due to the many vaccinations and infected. Hopefully, late February will see a slow-down.
Thank you for the updates; I hope that you and your family members stay healthy and don't have any bad and/or long-term issues with it.

PD
Pohjolas Daughter

Karl Henning

Quote from: Pohjolas Daughter on February 09, 2022, 10:22:54 AM
Thank you for the updates; I hope that you and your family members stay healthy and don't have any bad and/or long-term issues with it.

PD

A warm + 1
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

Fauci says U.S. exiting 'full-blown' pandemic; 500,000 deaths globally since omicron

By Amy Cheng, Annabelle Timsit and Brittany Shammas
Today at 3:59 a.m. EST| Updated today at 9:39 a.m. EST


The United States is exiting "the full-blown pandemic phase" of the coronavirus crisis, Anthony S. Fauci, President Biden's top medical adviser, told the Financial Times. World Health Organization officials said half a million covid-19 deaths have been tallied around the globe since the omicron variant was first detected in November.

Fauci said decisions on coronavirus restrictions will be increasingly made on a local level, "as we get out of the full-blown pandemic phase of covid-19, which we are certainly heading out of," Fauci told the newspaper. "There will also be more people making their own decisions on how they want to deal with the virus."

In the United States, covid cases declined 44 percent in the past week compared with the previous seven days, according to a Washington Post tracker, and hospitalizations related to covid-19 also declined over the same period. However, the seven-day average of deaths during the omicron surge has reached 2,600 in recent days, the highest level the country has seen in a year.

Worldwide, coronavirus deaths rose for the fifth consecutive week, with the 68,000 fatalities reported last week representing a 7 percent jump from the previous week. About 100,000 of the global deaths since omicron was detected have occurred in the United States, WHO incident manager Abdi Mahamud said Tuesday in an online Q&A session. He called the death toll "tragic" in a country with a plentiful supply of effective vaccines.
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

Pohjolas Daughter

Wonder what our *Canadian members can share regarding the truckers' strikes and blockades in Ottawa and elsewhere along the Canadian-US border?  From what I've read or heard, for example, there are a number of right-wingers who have traveled long distances to add their voices and protest--though not always about what the truck drivers are protesting (having to be vaccinated in order to do their jobs).

*or others who live close to the border and/or been impacted by the strikes

PD
Pohjolas Daughter