Originally Posted by Bwana:
Once again, don't come in this thread with some kind of political agenda, or you will be shown the door. If you want to go that route, there is a thread about this in DC.
Originally Posted by Dartgod:
People, there is a lot of good information in this thread, let's try to keep the petty bickering to a minimum.
We all have varying opinions about the impact of this, the numbers, etc. We will all never agree with each other. But we can all keep it civil.
Thanks!
Click here for the original OP:
Spoiler!
Apparently the CoronaVirus can survive on a inanimate objects, such as door knobs, for 9 days.
California coronavirus case could be first spread within U.S. community, CDC says
By SOUMYA KARLAMANGLA, JACLYN COSGROVE
FEB. 26, 2020 8:04 PM
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is investigating what could be the first case of novel coronavirus in the United States involving a patient in California who neither recently traveled out of the country nor was in contact with someone who did.
“At this time, the patient’s exposure is unknown. It’s possible this could be an instance of community spread of COVID-19, which would be the first time this has happened in the United States,” the CDC said in a statement. “Community spread means spread of an illness for which the source of infection is unknown. It’s also possible, however, that the patient may have been exposed to a returned traveler who was infected.”
The individual is a resident of Solano County and is receiving medical care in Sacramento County, according to the state Department of Public Health.
The CDC said the “case was detected through the U.S. public health system — picked up by astute clinicians.”
Officials at UC Davis Medical Center expanded on what the federal agency might have meant by that in an email sent Wednesday, as reported by the Davis Enterprise newspaper.
The patient arrived at UC Davis Medical Center from another hospital Feb. 19 and “had already been intubated, was on a ventilator, and given droplet protection orders because of an undiagnosed and suspected viral condition,” according to an email sent by UC Davis officials that was obtained by the Davis Enterprise.
The staff at UC Davis requested COVID-19 testing by the CDC, but because the patient didn’t fit the CDC’s existing criteria for the virus, a test wasn’t immediately administered, according to the email. The CDC then ordered the test Sunday, and results were announced Wednesday. Hospital administrators reportedly said in the email that despite these issues, there has been minimal exposure at the hospital because of safety protocols they have in place.
A UC Davis Health spokesperson declined Wednesday evening to share the email with The Times.
Since Feb. 2, more than 8,400 returning travelers from China have entered California, according to the state health department. They have been advised to self-quarantine for 14 days and limit interactions with others as much as possible, officials said.
“This is a new virus, and while we are still learning about it, there is a lot we already know,” Dr. Sonia Angell, director of the California Department of Public Health, said in a statement. “We have been anticipating the potential for such a case in the U.S., and given our close familial, social and business relationships with China, it is not unexpected that the first case in the U.S. would be in California.”
It is not clear how the person became infected, but public health workers could not identify any contacts with people who had traveled to China or other areas where the virus is widespread. That raises concern that the virus is spreading in the United States, creating a challenge for public health officials, experts say.
“It’s the first signal that we could be having silent transmission in the community,” said Lawrence Gostin, director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center on National and Global Health Law. “It probably means there are many more cases out there, and it probably means this individual has infected others, and now it’s a race to try to find out who that person has infected.”
On Tuesday, the CDC offered its most serious warning to date that the United States should expect and prepare for the coronavirus to become a more widespread health issue.
“Ultimately, we expect we will see coronavirus spread in this country,” said Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. “It’s not so much a question of if, but a question of when.”
According to the CDC’s latest count Wednesday morning, 59 U.S. residents have tested positive for the new strain of coronavirus — 42 of whom are repatriated citizens from a Diamond Princess cruise. That number has grown by two since Messonnier’s last count Tuesday, although the CDC was not immediately available to offer details on the additional cases.
More than 82,000 cases of coronavirus have been reported globally, and more than 2,700 people have died, with the majority in mainland China, the epicenter of the outbreak.
But public health leaders have repeatedly reminded residents that the health risk from the novel coronavirus to the general public remains low.
“While COVID-19 has a high transmission rate, it has a low mortality rate,” the state Department of Public Health said in a statement Wednesday. “From the international data we have, of those who have tested positive for COVID-19, approximately 80% do not exhibit symptoms that would require hospitalization. There have been no confirmed deaths related to COVID-19 in the United States to date.”
CDC officials have also warned that although the virus is likely to spread in U.S. communities, the flu still poses a greater risk.
Gostin said the news of potential silent transmission does not eliminate the possibility of containing the virus in the U.S. and preventing an outbreak.
“There are few enough cases that we should at least try,” he said. “Most of us are not optimistic that that will be successful, but we’re still in the position to try.”
Originally Posted by TLO: Get Ready for False Side Effects
By Derek Lowe 4 December, 2020
We’re in the beginning of the vaccine endgame now: regulatory approval and actual distribution/rollout into the population. The data for the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines continue to look good (here’s a new report on the longevity of immune response after the Moderna one), with the J&J and Novavax efforts still to report. The AZ/Oxford candidate is more of a puzzle, thanks to some very poor communication about their clinical work (which suffered from some fundamental problems itself).
Now we have to get people to take them. Surveys continue to show a good number of people who are (at the very least) in the “why don’t you take it first” category. I tend to think that as vaccine dosing becomes reality that more people will get in line for a shot, but that remains to be seen. I wanted to highlight something that we’ll all need to keep in mind, though.
Bob Wachter of UCSF had a very good thread on Twitter about vaccine rollouts the other day, and one of the good points he made was this one. We’re talking about treating very, very large populations, which means that you’re going to see the usual run of mortality and morbidity that you see across large samples. Specifically, if you take 10 million people and just wave your hand back and forth over their upper arms, in the next two months you would expect to see about 4,000 heart attacks. About 4,000 strokes. Over 9,000 new diagnoses of cancer. And about 14,000 of that ten million will die, out of usual all-causes mortality. No one would notice. That’s how many people die and get sick anyway.
But if you took those ten million people and gave them a new vaccine instead, there’s a real danger that those heart attacks, cancer diagnoses, and deaths will be attributed to the vaccine. I mean, if you reach a large enough population, you are literally going to have cases where someone gets the vaccine and drops dead the next day (just as they would have if they *didn’t* get the vaccine). It could prove difficult to convince that person’s friends and relatives of that lack of connection, though. Post hoc ergo propter hoc is one of the most powerful fallacies of human logic, and we’re not going to get rid of it any time soon. Especially when it comes to vaccines. The best we can do, I think, is to try to get the word out in advance. Let people know that such things are going to happen, because people get sick and die constantly in this world. The key will be whether they are getting sick or dying at a noticeably higher rate once they have been vaccinated.
No such safety signals have appeared for the first vaccines to roll out (Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech). In fact, we should be seeing the exact opposite effects on mortality and morbidity as more and more people get vaccinated. The excess-death figures so far in the coronavirus pandemic have been appalling (well over 300,000 in the US), and I certainly think mass vaccination is the most powerful method we have to knock that back down to normal.
That’s going to be harder to do, though, if we get screaming headlines about people falling over due to heart attacks after getting their vaccine shots. Be braced.
Originally Posted by TLO:
Probably. I was thinking about this the other day when they were discussing vaccinating folks in nursing homes.
I don't want this to sound dickish, but I feel like the average life expectancy for someone in a nursing home isn't all that long.
If these folks are dying shortly after receiving a vaccine, it's gonna give anti-vaxxx folks ammo to use.
Gonna have a hard time not morbidly chuckling if an inordinate amount of vaccinated elderly die because of complications and the narrative magically changes to "well, complications can be expected because of their advanced age." [Reply]
Originally Posted by Discuss Thrower:
Gonna have a hard time not morbidly chuckling if an inordinate amount of vaccinated elderly die because of complications and the narrative magically changes to "well, complications can be expected because of their advanced age."
Someone will likely die because of the Covid vaccine. Even if it is only one, the media will lose their minds - and the feeble minded facebook anti vaxxer crowd. [Reply]
Given that there are, on average, two cases of anaphylaxis per million vaccines administered in the US, and that every pharmacy and doctor's office where the vaccine is administered should have access to injectable epinephrine, and that is the most dangerous side effect of vaccines, I'd say that Discuss' hope for deaths is going to end up being largely fruitless. [Reply]
Originally Posted by Discuss Thrower:
Gonna have a hard time not morbidly chuckling if an inordinate amount of vaccinated elderly die because of complications and the narrative magically changes to "well, complications can be expected because of their advanced age."
You cannot reconcile the fact that the virus is costing 10+ years of life from every fatality and then turn around to claim that those who pass away after receiving a vaccination were at the end of their lifespan anyway.
And that's exactly what will happen if elderly recipients (or any particular stratum of whole populations for that matter) die off in rates that exceed what I assume have been modeled by the laboratories creating these vaccines. [Reply]
You cannot reconcile the fact that the virus is costing 10+ years of life from every fatality and then turn around to claim that those who pass away after receiving a vaccination were at the end of their lifespan anyway.
And that's exactly what will happen if elderly recipients (or any particular stratum of whole populations for that matter) die off in rates that exceed what I assume have been modeled by the laboratories creating these vaccines.
I'm not attempting to reconcile that. I'm pointing out that someone who would morbidly chuckle at someone, anyone, dying from getting this vaccine isn't well and should seek help.
Originally Posted by Donger:
I'm not attempting to reconcile that. I'm pointing out that someone who would morbidly chuckle at someone, anyone, dying from getting this vaccine isn't well and should seek help.
Namely, you.
Nope. Laughing at people who unquestionable accepts whatever narrative becomes propagated that also fits best with your confirmation bias.
And yes, that means I'm laughing at someone who admits to having mental illness. Which is you and your Borderline Personality Disorder.
No sympathy for liars and hypocrites like yourself. [Reply]
Originally Posted by Stryker:
I will gladly answer. It is not really a question of winning me over. It is a question of why now there is a miraculous 'cure" especially after the election. I am not concerned about a long term effect of said immunization but more so why now? If this was now the answer, then why are they so sure that this will work and all will be ok? How can one not be speculative as the immunization is the answer? I am on the fence in the fact that there is no positive proof yet, that said if the vaccine is reducing the "numbers". to me, when i see said vaccine is administered and the "numbers" decline, then I will be a believer. Just my .02
Thanks for the response. I was genuinely curious. So it sounds like you want to wait and see if hospitalizations and deaths starts declining. That's not unreasonable, I guess, if you don't trust the government.
It makes me wonder when that'll happen. If the vaccine is 95 percent effective and people start getting out and about while most are still not vaccinated, we could actually see an uptick in cases in the early stages of vaccinations before they go down. That may be my bet - a light uptick before figures plummet. [Reply]
Originally Posted by Stryker:
Not going to argue with a mod - not looking to be banned for BS. Bottom line, we are all Chiefs fans. I apologize for the # thing. I guess .02 does not matter any more on this board.
He’s not a mod. More of an emeritus kind of dude. [Reply]
I can't remember who asked how Sweden was doing recently and then I saw this article from the WSJ today. Appears Sweden is abandoning their stupid herd immunity experiment. Their health leader who basically got demoted will go down as much of an idiot as Scott Atlas.
Lots of businesses are going under in Sweden because of their no lockdown policy with no government financial assistance. This because the virus is not contained so their people aren't going out as much.
I think we have learned several things during this past year with covid but among them is you can't get herd immunity with covid without a vaccine (at least not without a lots of death) and if you want to have a stable economy you must control the virus first.
Originally Posted by : Sweden’s Covid-19 experiment is over.
After a late autumn surge in infections led to rising hospitalizations and deaths, the government has abandoned its attempt—unique among Western nations—to combat the pandemic through voluntary measures.
Like other Europeans, Swedes are now heading into the winter facing restrictions ranging from a ban on large gatherings to curbs on alcohol sales and school closures—all aimed at preventing the country’s health system from being swamped by patients and capping what is already among the highest per capita death tolls in the world.
Weeks later, with total Covid-19-related deaths reaching almost 700 per million inhabitants, infections growing exponentially and hospital wards filling up, the government made a U-turn.
In an emotional televised address on Nov. 22, Prime Minister Stefan Löfven pleaded with Swedes to cancel all nonessential meetings and announced a ban on gatherings of more than eight people, which triggered the closure of cinemas and other entertainment venues. Starting Monday, high schools will be closed.
“Authorities chose a strategy totally different to the rest of Europe, and because of it the country has suffered a lot in the first wave,” said Piotr Nowak, a physician working with Covid-19 patients at the Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm. “We have no idea how they failed to predict the second wave.”
In recent months, Dr. Tegnell predicted that Swedes would gradually build immunity to the virus through controlled exposure, that vaccines would take longer than expected to develop, and that death rates across the West would converge.
Instead, the West’s first coronavirus vaccine was authorized in Britain last week, Sweden’s death rate remains an outlier among its neighbors, and Dr. Tegnell acknowledged in late November that the new surge in infections showed there was “no sign” of herd immunity in the country.
Meanwhile, Sweden’s laissez-faire pandemic strategy has failed to deliver the economic benefits its proponents had predicted. In the first half of the year, Sweden’s gross domestic product fell by 8.5% and unemployment is projected to rise to nearly 10% in the beginning of 2021, according to the central bank and several economic institutes.
Businesses such as restaurants, hotels and retail outfits are facing a wave of closures; unlike in the rest of Europe, where governments coupled restrictions with generous stimulus, Swedish authorities have offered comparatively less support to businesses since they didn’t impose closures.
“This is worse than a lockdown and it has been a catastrophic year for everyone in the business: they haven’t closed us so they don’t give us any substantial support, yet they say to people ‘don’t go to restaurants’,” said Jonas Hamlund, who was forced to close one of his two restaurants in the coastal city of Sundsvall, laying off 30 people.
Fear of the virus and the government’s advice to avoid social interactions have weighed on domestic demand, damaging business and investor confidence, said Lars Calmfors, an economist and member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
“Countries that had mandatory restrictions have done better than us,” he added.
In Stockholm, Anna Lallerstedt runs a chain of three popular restaurants that was started by her parents in the 1980s. Last month she closed two of them, shedding nearly 100 jobs. She says she fears that her last restaurant, now employing just over 10 people, might also be at risk with the current surge expected to peak around the Christmas season, which traditionally brings substantial revenues.
“Maybe we should have had masks earlier,” Ms. Lallerstedt said.
