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

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.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/01/health/pfizer-covid-vaccine-efficacy-six-months-bn/index.html

just incredible. really feels close to the silver bullet everyone said we’d never have.

A useful evisceration.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/04/pandemics-wrongest-man/618475/

Is there something weird going on with the NY data? Zoomed out it looks like a massive sudden spike in cases. Zoomed in it looks like it occurred almost entirely on a single day.

same with deaths too fwiw, giant spike on March 24, then down again

might be that they were unable to report everything on one day so it got pushed to the next

“Vaccinated people do not carry the virus" https://t.co/FnbKbW3f09

— Peter Hamby (@PeterHamby) April 1, 2021

Walensky was referring to a new CDC study that suggests those fully inoculated with the vaccines produced by Moderna and Pfizer don’t transmit the virus. Researchers looked at how the shots protected nearly 4,000 health-care workers, first responders, and other essential workers toiling in eight U.S. locations against the virus and more-contagious variants. Following a single dose of either vaccine, the participants’ risk of infection was reduced by 80 percent, and that figure jumped to 90 percent after the second dose. Without infection, people are unable to spread the virus. The results are similar to what scientists saw in clinical trials for the vaccines, which found that two doses of either two-dose vaccine had an efficacy rate of around 95 percent.

Apparently one of the companies licensed to make the J&J vaccine screwed up and ruined 15 million doses. Seems like poor quality control not to catch this earlier. At least it was caught before shipping them out.

More vaccinations = less spread = fewer mutations, surely.

New overall SF data page:

https://data.sfgov.org/stories/s/COVID-19-Vaccinations-Progress/7mye-zncy/

Key takeaways now that access has expanded to 50 and up in California: we've just done gangbusters here on several key fronts. Already at 46% of overall 16 and up population with one shot, a full quarter with a complete regimen, 65 and up with one shot about 85% and full regimen something approaching 60% I think. VERY pleased to see Bayview/Hunter's Point and Exclesior with nearly 50% already vaccinated as well, absolutely key for equity. Way too early still to be completely happy but if the vaccination numbers maintain and maybe even ramp up further we are going to be sitting pretty in a month's time for sure.

This is hardly a useful metric for anyone but me, but everyone I know through work or personally is either vaxxed or scheduled to be vaxxed before May or just isn't trying to get an appointment so that's my peek into life among the middle class in NYC.

DISCLAIMER: I am not an evolutionary microbiologist but I have worked with them

While random mutations are less likely to become established variants if they appear in less-susceptible populations, the virus will continue to mutate when spreading between susceptible individuals. It’s not impossible that evolutionary pressure applied by widespread vaccination and acquired immunity will end up generating immune escape variants. But it’s also perhaps not impossible that the rate of molecular evolution will be low enough and the structure of the Spike protein constrained enough that immune escape variants wouldn’t put us back in uncontrolled pandemic conditions.
― Canon in Deez (silby), Thursday, April 1, 2021 12:43 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

I mean, I'm not an evolutionary microbiologist nor have I worked with them, but it just kind of seems like if there was a really good chance of the virus continuing to mutate in more deadly, more contagious, and immune-escaping fashions then we'd also see that more often with other viruses. Although I guess otoh we have new flu vaccines all the time due to mutations. Either way, I think the sci fi version of things tends to get people overly scared.

what does happen to surplus vaccine. Is it tken somewhere and stored indefinitely or incinerated or something?
NOt having much luck with finding an answer. But assume that it can't just be dumped because t might have a negative effect on surroundings.
Also is it just antibiotics taht there is fear of developing immunity to since a vaccination depends on triggering human antibodies. Not sure what effect of misdisposing of out of date vaccines on environment would be. New diseases breeding in whatever crossover nodes you get, like pigs and things.

Is there normally a single disposal protocol and does it tend to include incineration.

yeah that's an interesting question but i've never heard what they do

what becomes of the surplus vaccines?

we're a long way of knowing anything about really long COVID, but some early UK research on short-term prospects after recovery:

Nearly a third of people who have been in hospital suffering from Covid-19 are readmitted for further treatment within four months of being discharged, and one in eight of patients dies in the same period, doctors have found.

The striking long-term impact of the disease has prompted doctors to call for ongoing tests and monitoring of former coronavirus patients to detect early signs of organ damage and other complications caused by the virus.

Poopy G Stinkgarten 😮