outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

mRNA vaccines are extremely cool technology to me btw

Yeah

Needs two doses, so half the number of doses = number of people getting it, wouldn't get too cocky yet even if it works.

Also, distribution of RNA vaccines is going to be tough. The Pfizer vaccine candidate requires a cold chain at -80 °C for stability, so you most likely won't be able to pop into your local drugstore or family doctor's office to get the shots. Pfizer evidently has secured a significant fraction of the the nation's dry ice supply for distribution.

Moderna's apparently isn't as difficult (though still challenging climate wise) and it is also mRNA.

Fingers crossed that it also works

The Pfizer vaccine candidate requires a cold chain at -80 °C for stability

Sounds exotic until you realize dry ice has a temp of -78°C. Even yahoos like me regularly handle lab supply shipments that have to stay super-frozen. Hazardous and controlled materials are way more of a hassle.

I got a text from the vaccine testing people today asking me if I was still interested in taking part in a trial. Waiting for a call to discuss. Interested to know which vaccine it is for, the day I assume is coincidental.

Sweet! Do it if ya can.

I totally could believe they purposefully held back the news until after the election, and I'm totally fine with that

Not to put myself into the position of defending big pharma here, but I have to imagine it was less about sticking it to Trump and deciding that maybe throwing that bombshell into the midst of an already contentious election was probably not good for anyone.

Agree with both of these--when I woke up to the vaccine news this morning, I started on the first and then the second occurred to me.

I.e., I think both could be true.

Urgh at the predictable and yet still depressing replies to this tweet

VACCINE SURVEY
Will you have the Pfizer vaccine? If not, why not.
(Please share so we can get a representative response).

— Dr Nigel Kellow 🩺 (@NigelKellow) November 10, 2020

"Have" the vaccine?

with some fava beans and a nice chianti

Hardly surprising. See, for instance:

https://www.euronews.com/2020/10/16/coronavirus-only-around-1-3-of-french-respondents-would-take-covid-19-vaccine-euronews-pol

twitter surveys aren't exactly a very accurate measure of anything either, tbf.

I have 10 twitter accounts for example. 9 are banned though.

the replies to that tweet tho

I think the important thing to also consider = people's reactions to a possible vaccine now may not mirror the reactions when one actually arrives, esp if people think it's their only chance of ending possible quarantines (which would take forever even after the distribution of said vaccine).

but yes there's a large anti-vax contingent and then there are also people who aren't anti-vax that may object on grounds that the process was rushed (which I don't entirely blame them for).

but...sigh...idk!

i'll let a few million other humans be the first guinea pigs and see how it shakes out

Sweden having a huge spike. prior to 10/23, their daily record was 1698, and they'd been having between 300-700 cases a day. Now they're about 3000 - 5000 per day.

death rates haven't sharply spiked, though have increased, but that's a trailing statistic

treatment options are (hopefully) better so deaths might not rise as fast as they did

probably won't

treatment options are better, but the capacity of hospitals and the number of trained health care workers have hard limits and can be overwhelmed. that's soon going to come into play in Sweden and presumably many other places, just as it already has in Belgium.

^^^ key point the anti-vax anti-lockdown clowns keep forgetting.

It's >99% survivable in current conditions with suppressed numbers and empty beds. As soon as those beds are filled it's a different world. It doesn't matter how good the treatment is if you can't access it.

hernias start to become unsurvivable when there is no one to operate on you

I was worried this morning about Australia cocking up its vaccine procurement and not ordered enough doses, but thanks to anti-vaccine idiocy it looks like I’ll have no trouble getting one of the limited number of doses.

The mayor of San Francisco (the first US city to shelter-in-place from COVID-19) just announced that a second Shelter-In-Place order is being considered as cases nearly triple over the last 3 weeks.

SF is what pushed Chicago to virtually the same thing back in March, I'm half surprised we aren't there yet but I think the business owners have been in the ears of Lightfoot and Pritzker to a degree that it'll never happen here again, no matter how bad things get.

Sacramento County back up into highest restriction tier again though i dont think we are at the shelter in place level

it’s so frustrating, plus every other county is at a different level so its just this yo yo of opening & closing, there has to be a better way but the better way is way more draconian & ppl just seem to want to do whatever the fuck they want anyway

Nearly 10% of the new US COVID cases are in Illinois, and we've maintained that pace pretty much every day for the past week or so. I expect we'll exceed it soon enough.

The mayor of San Francisco (the first US city to shelter-in-place from COVID-19) just announced that a second Shelter-In-Place order is being considered as cases nearly triple over the last 3 weeks.

in Chicago, our cases have nearly tripled as well over the last 3 weeks (7-day moving averages are up 2.66x). Our 7-day moving positive rates have doubled (5.5% to the current 10.8%), and the moving 7-day deaths are doubled as well (up 86%, 36 to 67).

I guess the same thing comes through more clearly just by looking at hospitalizations, ICU, ventilators:

https://i.imgur.com/WTirF5O.png

Meanwhile, in Brazil:

https://www.deccanherald.com/international/world-news-politics/jair-bolsonaro-asks-brazilians-not-to-deal-with-covid-19-like-fags-914199.html

Can’t wait for this guy to get it a fourth time but hopefully for real, covid has been very disappointing in this regard

Seriously.

ffs

NYS is taking action to stop the spread in response to rising COVID numbers.

Any establishment with a state liquor license, including bars and restaurants, must close at 10pm.

Gyms must also close at 10pm.

These new statewide rules will take effect Friday, 10pm.

— Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) November 11, 2020

Sure that’ll help

Man and here I thought Chicago surely had the lock on completely throwing public safety out the window in favor of kowtowing to business leaders.

tbf, it's not just business leaders they are kowtowing to, but a large enough percentage of the population who bridle at any restrictions on their Precious Freedoms that enforcing genuinely strict measures would predictably become a test of wills between the maga-rabble and the government, requiring escalating use of force. Which would do no one any good for actually stopping the pandemic.

That's all fair and completely valid, but in Lori Lightfoot's case it has most definitely been a case of caving as soon as the business leaders shook a fist in her face. Not that the other part of your equation doesn't also apply, mind.

Viruses can't tell time

larry hogan has already written a book talking about what a good job he did in the pandemic

With surging hospitalizations and a rising positivity rate, Maryland reported 1,714 new coronavirus cases Wednesday, the third-highest single day total so far during the pandemic.

The 14-day average new case rate hit new highs again Wednesday. My story: https://t.co/IeK4I09bAL pic.twitter.com/KncjqCMLbq

— Ben Leonard (@Ben___Leonard) November 11, 2020

I know this is obviously an over-simplification, but it really feels like we all got distracted by the election for two weeks and thing just absolutely blew up everywhere.

I mean I remember being aware during election time that we were spiking nationally. FL hasn't yet matched other states in terms of severity but a) I don't trust our data and b) we are definitely starting to spike

i thought cuomo was shutting down in-person dining entirely at 10pm on friday, but i guess i read that wrong.

indoor dining is almost certainly done (as it should be)

New York follows the science.

We know indoor gatherings and parties are a major source of COVID spread.

To slow the spread, NYS will limit indoor gatherings at private residences to 10 people.

This limit takes effect Friday at 10pm.

— Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) November 11, 2020

xpost - Oh yeah, I mean the "we all" tongue in cheek, obviously many of us were paying attention to the numbers. It just seems like a lot of politicians and public health people seem to be legit shocked this week.

Surely we'd be seeing the impacts of Halloween weekend right about now, was there that many parties and gatherings going on? It was really, really subdued and careful around here, but we do live in a lib heavy, mask wearing zone.

the reason people are shocked, at least in new york, is we are now at end-of-April levels of new cases

everybody in the world trick or treated downtown here, mostly unmasked, though I don't think *that* was likely a big spreader. parties, though, uhh let's just say there were pics of downtown areas that looked like a Japanese train car. I can't believe it was allowed to go on.

Even as I watched the numbers going up in recent weeks, I was thinking about a) long voting lines, b) people going home for Thanksgiving, c) the people who hadn't yet been hobbled by the 'vid going home for Christmas. Can't help but feel by January the numbers are going to be utterly dire.

deep thoughts: when the pandemic was pounced on by trump as yet another wedge issue to exploit for polarization, the USA lost any hope of the unified national effort needed to combat this virus. so, thousands will die needlessly. but the stupidest part of it all is, that if trump had stood up as the bearer of the unified banner, he'd have easily been re-elected as the leader of a unified nation. when he fucks up, he doesn't go halfway.

yea NY is a unique scenario as they'd previously gotten on the other side of things, whereas states like FL merely plateaued and never really squashed the curve. in fact we've never been back to the levels we were at pre-Phase 1.