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

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.

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?

Great, so some lucky sob who got the vaccine the first time around can muscle me out of line for a second go round.

This is like someone winning the lottery and then trying to explain to me how to win the lottery. Just buy winning tickets, duh?

table, I absolutely do not disagree with either of your other points regarding shitty management and vaccine hoarding by the West, both are absolutely true.

What I'm saying is that even if, by some absolute miracle, the US and UK managed well defined and well funded shutdowns that kept everyone home and that significantly slowed the spread, leading to several hundred thousand fewer deaths, I still think we would very likely be looking at necessary boosters.

allow me to humbly pimp my thraed:

what are your plans for when we STOMP COVID'S STANKASS INTO THE MFING DIRT

though with the 4th surge i am feeling a bit of the despair myownself, the happy glow of my pfirst jab last week fizzling out. urgh, fricking disease, maybe consider fucking off already ye spiky prick

and this is admittedly turning a blind eye to the criminal actions, war crimes? genocidal sadism? committed by the pharmcos & my government that led to the privilege of me getting vaxxed in the first place because what the hell can i even do about any of that aside from hate them more

yr welcome guys :)

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.

You think the Kent variant would be on its way to being the most prevalent strain in the US, and now basically the only one arriving in Australia at all, if Heathrow wasn't open with no checks, tests, or quarantines?

I'm saying that I still think variants would have developed somewhere on the globe no matter how good the US/UK did and, to some degree, boosters would still be part of the solution.

I don't know why you guys seem to think I'm defending the shitty job the US and UK have done, I'm not by any means!

I don't think that, I just don't think that there would be so many variants abounding if we would have actually shut things down properly in the first place and put the lid on this shit. But yknow, another day another dollar.

Fewer, presumably less rapid spreading variants for sure. Zero variants? Unlikely. S'all I'm saying.

Oh, for sure— the Brazilian variants would be flourishing, as others have noted

IANA epidemiologist but we are opening up again having half-vaccinated half the population with a vaccine that is 70% effective after one dose and the cohort most likely to be on that 30% side were recently told they should be less cautious wrt Covid restrictions, this is the kind of thing that worries me re creating a variant Petri dish

Brazilian variants would be flourishing

the UK has actively pursued multiple policies designed to spread and mutate the virus too. not as aggressively as Brazil, but they literally paid people £849 million in vouchers to go out and spread it in Summer!

Ontario has just passed their previous peak level of COVID ICU admissions.

It seems odd taht the virus did seem to be pretty stable at one point. I thought it was teh nature of viruses to work through populations and in the process mutate just as a matter of course. So weird that it took a while for major variations to show.
I was also thinking that Covid probably wasn't going to be the only disease breaking out that man hadn't had contact with so would have a heavily negative effect.
Are things finally working themselves to a point that once thsi specific pandemic becomes less all pervasive anywhere is going to be ready for a different one. I'm glad the US is finally at a point where teh importance of science has some hold though it also has a great deal of opposition, but are other places in anyway prepared for a different disease to become widespread or preferably not, which would hopefully be the case if people were remotely prepared for it.

The virus seemed stable at one point because no-one was doing much genetic sequencing, especially the US. Once sequencing started becoming routine the variants started to be identified.

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?

― armoured van, Holden (sic),

yah, doomposting!

tbc "A second booster [if you count the second Pfizer/Moderna jab as a first booster] in the next calendar year" /= "purdah"

Bring on the boosters, I have no problem with becoming a human pin cushion.

ppl were complaining about the thread being too posi!

I assumed "purdah" was australian slang for "hell" or something but apparently it means something else

I have to give myself a subq shot every other week and I already get a flu shot every year so if the price of public health is an annual mRNA vaccination with a revised target sequence, dayenu

I get a flu shot every October. Stick me again.

I wish I had two or more comorbidities putting me at higher risk for covid-19 infection instead of one so I could get a shot rn

(the concern re needing a booster would be how fast and numerous the variants proliferate, and to what degree each vaccine will keep up with them, not that it's a mega hassle to get a flu shot annually.)

ha xp

ha xxp

remind me is it good news or bad news when case incidence is increasing

useful thread about the goal of trials in children (it's mainly about safety)

The news about Pfizer's adolescent trial is excellent. As some debate whether we have enough data to reliably estimate vaccine efficacy in this subgroup, some important context is that efficacy was not even the primary outcome of the trial. 1/4 https://t.co/9UWTqn5122

— Natalie E. Dean, PhD (@nataliexdean) March 31, 2021

LOL EYE LUV ALL D EPEEDEEMILOGISTS ITT SHARON DERE NOWLEDGE

Are countries preparing for further pandemic outbreaks for non Covid diseases. So they have some preparation for any unknown forthcoming epidemics or pandemics or is everything currently focused on Covid as though it is the sole threat. Hope people are looking forward too even if this is a major threat still. Would seem a bit shortsighted not to.

I'm just stuck with teh idea that obama had a pandemic task force set up which was dismantled by trump at exactly the wrong time. So wondering if anybody else thought of the idea and have anything set up accordingly

Well this is news:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/31/world/johnson-and-johnson-vaccine-mixup.html

Key bits further down:

It does not affect Johnson & Johnson doses that are currently being delivered and used nationwide. All those doses were produced in the Netherlands, where operations have been fully approved by federal regulators....

Federal officials still expect to have enough doses to meet President Biden’s commitment to provide enough vaccine by the end of May to immunize every adult. The two other federally authorized manufacturers, Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, are continuing to deliver as expected.

Pfizer is shipping its doses ahead of schedule, and Moderna is on the verge of winning approval to deliver vials of vaccine packed with up to 15 doses instead of 10, further boosting the nation’s stock.

But yeah, obviously not good and I'd heard something about this Baltimore plant being not the best before? Like past shutdowns and investigations.

Some good news about variants: https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/t-cells-recognize-recent-sars-cov-2-variants

My mom got vaccinated today. (Her email subject line: "Got shot". She is my mom, after all.)

Shots acquired

Wow hours after my last complainte Inslee announced all 16+ eligible starting on 4/15. Whining Whorks!

the squeaky wheel gets the jab! congratulations!!

Don’t congratulate me yet I still need an appointment (I’m just going to wait for my doctor’s office to tell me what to do I’m not feeling the need to hit refresh on Walgreens with everyone else in the state)

Did get told that a lot of people weren't turning up for jab appointment but neglected to ask if there was some protocol for prevention of wastage.
Location where people are getting the vaccine is way out of town so don't think people are hanging around waiting on spec or anything. & you needed to go through security to get in to where the jab was administered.
Really hope something is being done with the unused stuff. Would be a shame if it was just dumped.

My wife just woke me up at 3am and we're now scheduled for our first dose on Monday afternoon.

Just rereading my ccomment from earlier and wondering what disposal process for waste unused vaccine is. If it has deleterious effect on where it's disposed of or anything. Though would hope that anything going into my arm isn't going to poison the environment or anything.

or to put that another way anything deemed fit for intravenous human consumption should not have a negative effect on the surroundings of where its disposed of

THough of course they could automatically be deemed hazardous waste I guess.