Mostly Apolitical Thread for Discussing/Venting our Rational/Irrational COVID-19 Fears and Experiences in 2020

what

Thread moves so fast it's difficult to keep up. I think the only people who've had two jabs in the UK are, like, 90, so US ILXors having their 2nd shot is blowing my mind somewhat.

If you’re asking the thread whether information is available about the rate of efficacy for different stages of the various vaccines, someone answering “yes” and telling you the easiest place to find it is... perhaps the exact opposite of gatekeeping?

If you’re just giving it some Basil Fotherington-Thomas “hallo vaccines, hallo mathematics, sa i,” nobody suggested that you shouldn’t.

xp Tom - that’s largely down to, I take it, the UK’s decision to push the second jab back for months against the manufacturers’ advice. Pretty much everywhere in the US afaik is sticking strictly to two weeks after the first.

(Australia’s fallen short on their “4 million first shots by March 31” target by 3.5 million: vaccine acquisition & distribution is m/l the first time any aspect of COVID public health has been handled by Morrison’s federal government, rather than states and local govs.)

Pfizer says Covid vaccine is 100% effective in kids ages 12 to 15 https://t.co/2xR8EfneuR

— Jay Yarow (@jyarow) March 31, 2021

xp Tom - that’s largely down to, I take it, the UK’s decision to push the second jab back for months against the manufacturers’ advice. Pretty much everywhere in the US afaik is sticking strictly to two weeks after the first.

afaik the reason that decision was taken was because we'd have run out of vaccine in about two weeks. We're used to having to ration stuff with a nationalized health service though.

meanwhile the US is taking a nationalised approach to a public health matter for the first time in decades, and finding its way more efficient than the local and private bottlenecks once the vaccines arrive

Suggests there'a a hell of a lot of vaccine in the US!

it's good to be king

hegemony isn't just for christmas

meanwhile the US is taking a nationalised approach to a public health matter for the first time in decades, and finding its way more efficient than the local and private bottlenecks once the vaccines arrive

What US is that?

Philadelphia is still in Phase 1A

xp yeah maybe thats how they do it in Upper Samaraland but here in the home of the brave we're still hanging out behind walgreens after closing time

^^ sharpest line Lana Del Rey ever wrote

lol Alfred

can we all agree to the fact that the US is doing extremely well with vaccines overall, but that there are also many cities that are well behind where they should be?

Yes, I think that is absolutely still fair to stay.

yes, im just goofing - even earlier this year, i never expected the US to be at this level (much less that i would have a shot in my own arm by now)

tomorrow, i am going to meet a friend at her apartment for dinner together and then we're going to go see a movie in theaters together. it's kind of amazing.

I want to go see a movie so badly

I am hyped right now!

I'm not changing habits at all until at least May and even then cautiously -- that's when my family will get together for the first time properly in a year and we'll have all had our shots. I really am content to ride things out until the vaccination levels are absolutely through the roof here, and thankfully we've been going great on that level. By the end of the week I'm guessing we'll be 50% of the eligible population with at least one shot and we're definitely about to hit 25% with a completed regimen.

(it should be noted that both i and my friend are two weeks past our second vax)

I think Ned's taking precautions because he has seniors to worry about

Srsly thinking about going to see Nobody tonight.

so basically what we've been doing for the past year?

i forgot you work with an older population Ned. Better days soon!
I'm gonna see "The Assistant" which I have been assured is not a date movie but i believe was one of alfred's faves.

Indeed!

Moodles, this is a ymmv situation. I have started dining out again, albeit outdoors. I will likely see more friends.

Starting to think all the vaccine-love and reopening talk needs to be taken to the KIP thread and leave us miserable morlocks alone.

Just saw well-known bell-end David Goodhart, who I suspect was involved in the report, say that there are proportionally more Pakistani origin people living in the poorest areas of the country, but in terms of actual numbers there are more white people living in those areas. I mean...

Sorry, wrong thread, fucking browser playing up.

First shot of Moderna yesterday, looking forward to going on dates again, traveling, hugging, etc.

Starting to think all the vaccine-love and reopening talk needs to be taken to the KIP thread and leave us miserable morlocks alone.

― the last unvaccinated motherfucker on earth (PBKR), Wednesday, March 31, 2021 12:25 PM (one hour ago)

otm. I am genuinely thrilled people are getting vaccinated, but this thread is getting hard to read

i forgot you work with an older population Ned. Better days soon!

Thank you but not strictly true; the library is for all and it's been closed anyway since last March. However, my parents are 80 and 76 respectively so yes, I am extremely anxious not to be a carrier even slightly. The fact that the vaccine apparently does lock down transmission per that study result yesterday is a huge relief, of course, but even so, I'd rather not pick up anything in the meantime. After our get-together and depending on how things are looking by then, I'll maybe relax some.

(We're not planning on returning to onsite work until at least in July and even then it'll be staggered. For non-COVID reasons (there's a massive software upgrade happening that will go into effect late July) I'm hoping I won't have to go back until maybe September or so; while my particular library is not tied into the wider academic year, there'll be more activity regardless. The decision will also partially be the city's as much as the institution's.)

Does it help if I note that the vaccines may only be effective for nine months, so even double-jabbed US-based people itt might be back in purdah for Thanksgiving?

xp re kip

I mean I'm operating under the assumption that annual COVID shots will be a thing, like flu shots.

Moderna shot number one done.

Yeah, I assume some sort of annual/booster type thing will be part of the routine.

xxxp Where are you reading this?

https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/two-thirds-epidemiologists-warn-mutations-could-render-current-covid-vaccines

In a survey of 77 epidemiologists from 28 countries, carried out by The People’s Vaccine Alliance, two-thirds thought that we had a year or less before the virus mutates to the extent that the majority of first-generation vaccines are rendered ineffective and new or modified vaccines are required. Of those surveyed, almost a third gave a timeframe of nine months or less. Fewer than one in eight said they believed that mutations would never render the current vaccines ineffective.

Basically, we're going to be getting booster shots for years because many western governments didn't want to shut down their economies for too long.

This “rule of six” returned this week (for non UKers this means that different households can get together outside and talk about what a great job the LOTO is doing) and coincided with the first really nice spring weather in many places. The sense of release has been tangible gotta say - the last 4 months of lockdown have been brutal here on rainy fascist island

Part of that is winter always being shit, partly Britain is just miserable anyway, & a big part I think is the half-arsed nature of our Covid response - four months of (varying degrees of) lockdown is much harder when you go into it knowing it’s to some degree a failure from the start and all your sacrifice is facilitating is an “acceptable” wave of death. To sic’s point itt passim it has been fully internalised that any response to the pandemic will just have to entail constant circulation of the disease and we have to kind of wilfully forget that other countries have managed it a different way (it is btw generally a point well taken but I have to say the very idea of saying to Johnson & Patel “can we make uk more like Australia pls” makes me want to step in front of a bus), we have never had a functional test & trace system & prob never will at this point

It takes a toll. We had a minute silence to “reflect on” this shit the other day but I think ppl here have barely begun to process any of it, vaccines will not bring 150k people back to life... I kinda lost the thread of what I was saying, was trying to say why I was in a good mood in the park today lol

xpost - I'm mean I'm as cynical about the shitty job western governments have done as the next guy, but I don't think that is the reason we'll have boosters.

Well, there's that and the gross hoarding of vaccines and primacy of pharma iNtElLeCtUaL pRoPeRtY over non-Western lives, too.

By that article, we’ll be getting boosters because rich countries won’t share with poor countries, not because of a lack of shutdowns now.

see my second post.

Also, let's not pretend like my first point wasn't also true.

Then there’s Brazil, where even if the US/EU weren’t evil, the Brazilian right is hellbent on turning COVID-19 into an unstoppable plague.