outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

That’ll show Matt Hancock

this is a good summary figure

(and also explains a bit why people are taking the israel results with a pinch of salt: they are not consistent with results elsewhere)

Nice graphic from @FT comparing vaccine efficacy vs alpha compared vs delta pic.twitter.com/4oPovlucKa

— Prof Peter Hotez MD PhD (@PeterHotez) July 11, 2021

oh cool I follow Peter too.

yeah supposedly that study also showed 64% efficiency against both asymptomatic AND symptomatic, which seems...unlikely?

only gripe with Peter is that he RTs Feigl-Ding a *lot*

Been reading up on Thailand, which goes under a strict lockdown today and had an all-time record 86 deaths and 8,500 new cases yesterday.

My dad had GBS, it's no joke, but not good news.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/12/us/politics/fda-warning-johnson-johnson-vaccine-nerve-syndrome.html

at this point I wonder if they're just going to focus on the mRNA vaccines. J&J's perception, low risk or not, took a hit that it didn't really recover from, only 3% of vaccinated have gotten J&J, and the mRNA vaccines provide better protection.

I don't see it being pulled, as the risk is low, but definitely not going to build confidence.

i'm sorry to hear, the table is the table.

my uncle's father-in-law died after getting vaccinated. he was a healthy guy in his early 60s. an investigation was underway but the hospital was not very cooperative and it just made it difficult to even find out how it happened. one day he was fine and the other day he was no longer with us.

vaccine apartheid https://t.co/ecCZuF3moy pic.twitter.com/6SHrKZqMoc

— Model failstate citizen 🍞🌹 (@failstater) July 20, 2021

I don't think it's accurate to talk about deaths "across Africa" -- the numbers are massively higher in Namibia than anywhere else on the continent. That rate of 28/million in Namibia is 6 in South Africa, 0.9 in Uganda, 0.1 in Kenya, 0.05 in Ghana. I guess it's possible that COVID deaths are being massively underreported everywhere in Africa except Namibia. Maybe there WILL be a huge new wave of cases and deaths across Africa but it didn't happen the last time there was one in the Americas and Europe.

NEW: The J&J coronavirus vaccine is much less effective against Delta and Lambda variants than against the original virus, acc to a new study -- suggesting the 13 mil people who got it should get a second dose, ideally one of the mRNA vaccines.https://t.co/ctxIQT1qvL

— Apoorva Mandavilli (@apoorva_nyc) July 20, 2021

that's odd, Topol was just sharing another study suggesting J&J did just fine against it. but the article does mention this study differs from previous ones.

But the conclusions are at odds with those from smaller studies published by Johnson & Johnson earlier this month suggesting that a single dose of the vaccine is effective against the variant even eight months after inoculation.

The new study has not yet been peer reviewed nor published in a scientific journal, and relied on laboratory experiments. But it is consistent with observations that a single dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine — which has a similar architecture to the J.&J. vaccine — shows only about 33 percent efficacy against symptomatic disease caused by the Delta variant.

kinda hesitant to suggest millions of people get new jabs when so many people haven't had one here and overseas, but....I can't imagine older people or those with co-morbidities will feel too assuaged by that.

this whole pandemic is a shit sandwich.

otoh, only about 3% of the shots in this country were J&J

The NYT article is less absolute about J&J's ineffectiveness against Delta than the tweet that cites it. Which sums up the difference between solid journalism and most of Twitter.

Miami's Jackson Health System, Florida's largest public hospital, is raising its Covid-19 alert level to high and banning most visitors again because of the virus surge. Meanwhile, just 58 percent *of its staff* is vaccinated, a percentage the hospital's CEO called "low."

— Patricia Mazzei (@PatriciaMazzei) July 20, 2021

Yeah, that tweet was a fairly egregious example of this fucking noise that is drowning out actual signal right now. It's not flat out wrong, but amplifies the wrong aspects of the story to generate clicks and scares.

xp I agree with the hospital's CEO

Dr. Abbo said the Delta variant is making unvaccinated people sicker, faster. She said some people will have a dinner party on a Thursday and show up very sick at the hospital by Sunday.

— Patricia Mazzei (@PatriciaMazzei) July 20, 2021

yeah that seems to be consensus now. that the incubation period is much shorter and symptoms come on a lot faster.

that's good and bad (mostly bad obviously), in that you can get infected and quickly turn around and spread the fucker, esp if you're unvaccinated. otoh, if you're symptomatic, you'll know sooner and hopefully quarantine?

guess it's more bad than good.

sounds like one for the packaging:

COVID-19
"Guess it's more bad than good!"

with a singing bear flipping you off on the cover

I've gone to dinner parties after which I've been very sick, sometimes hours afterwards. I can relate.

told ya to avoid the shellfish mang.

otoh, only about 3% of the shots in this country were J&J

https://cdn.britannica.com/82/191982-131-D3194343.jpg

We already know all this in the UK btw.

sorry, the American way is that nothing counts until we personally experience it ourselves

No comment.

not only that, but I grew up in Missouri - "the show me state". we were taught this dogmatic shit in elementary school

We're that Zillow commercial.

ME
ME
ME
ME
ME
ME
ME
ME

Is the Aussie zero covid policy collapsing

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/jul/21/australias-pm-defends-covid-vaccine-rollout-as-half-of-population-awakes-in-lockdown

"I guess it's possible that COVID deaths are being massively underreported everywhere in Africa except Namibia."

Yeah the biggest problem with these graphs are the variance on data collection.

Worth a read.

https://www.al.com/news/2021/07/im-sorry-but-its-too-late-alabama-doctor-on-treating-unvaccinated-dying-covid-patients.html

“One of the last things they do before they’re intubated is beg me for the vaccine. I hold their hand and tell them that I’m sorry, but it’s too late.”

Film this scene for a PSA. Don't hold any punches.

“They cry. And they tell me they didn’t know. They thought it was a hoax. They thought it was political. They thought because they had a certain blood type or a certain skin color they wouldn’t get as sick. They thought it was ‘just the flu’. But they were wrong. And they wish they could go back. But they can’t. So they thank me and they go get the vaccine. And I go back to my office, write their death note, and say a small prayer that this loss will save more lives.”

Film this scene for a PSA. Don't hold any punches.

Shown before every movies, inserted into every streaming ad. Remember at the start of the pandemic when all the streaming sites were getting safety tips and CDC screens? That, but with this.

Make sure this PSA has a voice track comprised of the gasps and wheezes of COVID patients asphyxiating.

Maybe a Herman Cain hologram should deliver the message.

do they actually think the vaccine will go and start attacking the virus that's already in their body?

Yes?

Yes, because this is what happens when critical thinking skills have been utterly sledgehammered.

I mean these people being described have basically just completely given up on thinking for themselves on any meaningful level. They read a thing on Facebook and it becomes insta-tattooed on their brains as knowledge.

I just sent this article to an unvaccinated friend in Florida. This was her response. She's going to be another person killed by Trump and GOP lies. pic.twitter.com/Z3rQiJWGjv

— Trump & GOP murdered 623,000 + 🇺🇸 🌊 (@KatCapps) July 21, 2021

Hope you're ready for your soul to move to a new temple pretty soon.

I mean obviously I know they think that, the question was more one of feigned incredulity at how dumb people are to think "well if COVID isn't a hoax, I guess I can just get the vaccine last minute and be ok". it's the whole Protestant "I can beg forgiveness on my deathbed" belief.

the hilarious thing is how it doesn't make sense for Trumpers to actually actively bash the vaccine as Trump went out of his way to try and take full credit for Operation Warp Speed, which we talked about the other day when Fox talking heads started asking people to take it seriously.

like the vaccine is harmful, but your President claims he helped develop it and singlehandedly brought it to market himself, so...you're saying he's poisoning you? or that liberals messed with the vaccine he created and are now killing us? or there's no virus, or that the virus is

malfunction malfunction

1 0 0 1 0 0 1 S O S

*shutdown*

it's the whole Protestant "I can beg forgiveness on my deathbed" belief.

even then, though, it can be complicated. even when patients get put on ventilators and ECMO, there's this denial that runs through everything. "oh, it's just for an afternoon because he had a bad reaction to some of those tranquilizers from earlier." then a week passes and the patient is still unconscious

xp Shock horror scenes in PSAs are ki d of notoriously bad at changing behavior--they tend to create denial, instead.

i think a common but rarely voiced belief among white evangelicals is that they believe the virus is god's punishment in some way, and that they will be spared because they're true believers. like the final plague in Exodus, the one the true believers were spared from because they smeared lamb blood (or whatever) above their doors. or the great flood, when noah was spared and the non-believers were not. or sodom and gomorrah.

i think my dad and many other racist evangelicals probably also had similar thoughts during the AIDS epidemic, and there's certainly a long line of southern preachers who have filled up many a sunday morning with warnings about how god is punishing various enormous groups of people for their wickedness. it's in the blood. white christians grow up with this shit, and by the time they're 70 years old, they're the ones passing it on to new generations

would accept that blood if it came with prime rib