Mega-Thread: Coronavirus Pandemic

[Shadowferal]

I can't ever tell if people are being serious when they say it's too hot/heatwave with temps in the 70s/80s or 20s celsius. I live where it gets 100-120.

Yea...depends on timing and humidity.
Those first days of the year when the temperature hits 80ish it's hot. Add in the damn humidity and it seems unbearable. But after yet again another heatwave involving temps of 95+ and equivalent humidity...well, the 80 degrees we had yesterday felt kinda chilly.

[Rasulis]

I can't ever tell if people are being serious when they say it's too hot/heatwave with temps in the 70s/80s or 20s celsius. I live where it gets 100-120.

I was being facetious. It was comfortable yesterday even with the windows closed due to the smoke from the wild fire up north. Although I was telling the truth when I said 75 is considered a heat wave in the Sunset District. The previous home owner bragged about it. SF had a record breaking heat wave in 2019. Downtown SF was 97, Noe Valley 95, SF airport 100, Half-Moon Bay 89, and Sunset, drum roll, 75. According to the National Weather Service, the average summer high for Sunset is 60.

A satire piece from Dumb Runner circa 2019. Still true today.

As the nation reels from the effects of a widespread heat wave, runners and other outdoor enthusiasts in San Francisco said they’re struggling, too, with daily temperatures there routinely creeping into the upper 60s and low 70s.

With temps this week expected to reach 73, forecasters said, there’s no relief in sight.

“It’s rough, but you’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do,” said Charlotte Brontë, 42, a runner training for a fall marathon. “I’ve been waking up at 5:00 a.m. to do my long runs, just to miss the worst of it.”

Even that strategy, though, has its limits.

“When I started my run yesterday, at 5:45 a.m., it was already 58 degrees,” she said. “I had to remove my gloves almost immediately.”

Others said they aren’t even trying to run outdoors in the heat wave.

“I hate to say it, but I’ve been sticking to the treadmill,” said John Keats, 51, a longtime runner who’s lived in the City by the Bay for three decades. “Why risk running in conditions like this? It’s not worth it.”

The heat wave has had some positive effects, however—for local running stores.

“We’re totally sold out of tanks, singlets, and short-sleeved shirts,” said Sam Coleridge, general manager of Rime Running Company, a specialty running store in the city’s Nob Hill neighborhood. “So, the heat has definitely been good for business.”

Still, Coleridge said, he’s looking forward to the return of cooler temperatures.

“I’m a runner, too,” he said. “There’s only so much of these blast-furnace conditions I can take.”

Yes. San Franciscans are special snowflakes.

[Biglog]

Eventually anti-maskers/anti-vaxxers will probably take their selfish whining to court and it will be argued, but they'll lose badly. That's an easy call because despite their comical use of the pro-life line "my body my choice", this topic has actually been debated ad nauseam and firmly decided about 30-40 years ago with cigarette smoking.

Prior to ~80's, cigarette smoking in public places and businesses was incredibly common. You could smoke at your desk in a corporate office while working, while flying commercial in your seats in planes and plane seats had ashtrays, restaurants, stores, etc. You could even smoke cigarettes in hospital waiting rooms and hallways. All of that was debated in court and it was determined that...(and this is the important part anti-maskers that seems to have been forgotten)... while you have the freedom to smoke in private while warning you and making you aware that this puts yourself at risk, that freedom does not extend into public areas. If a person wants to live in their basement forever without the vaccine and never go in public, go for it. They are only putting themselves at risk, like smoking, in that situation. However, if they are not vaccinated and go in public, just like smoking a cigarette in public has second-hand smoke that goes to others and puts them at risk, putting others at risk being infected is the issue. Like second-hand smoke, that goes beyond your own body and puts OTHERS at risk. That exceeds a person's own freedoms over their body. That is something that morally and ethically anyone living a positive life should understand without being told by law. Going into a McDonald's and sitting down unvaccinated and possibly spreading a deadly disease to others is worse but very comparable to sitting down and lighting up a cigarette, blowing smoke that goes to you. And it's already been determined that can be legally prohibited.

[Teriz]

Well, he’s not taking up an ICU bed any more. At age 30 he leaves behind 3 kids and a pregnant wife.

This dude was a clown. Supposedly he was so far in denial that even when he got sick he refused to go the hospital. By the time he went (because he couldn’t breathe) he was pretty much a dead man walking.

[Granyala]

20+ celsius feels too warm... why? because it's far colder than that most of the year where i live...

Everything above 25°C is annoyingly warm to me.
I prefer temperatures of around 15°C.

[Omega10]

They just moved him to hospice. So what is the price of Mr. Wallace freedom?

Over a month in the hospital and 20 days in ICU bed. A bed that Mr. Wilkinson, a veteran of two deployment in Afghanistal, could have used. Mr. Wilkinson ended up dying from Gallstone Pancreatis which normally only require an endoscopic surgery to remove the gallstone. The mortality rate of Gallstone Pancreatis is normally zero. Except we are living in very unusual time. There was no bed for Mr. Wilkinson.

Sad story. Hopefully not something that becomes par for the course - things that USED to be treatable becoming deadly.

[Logwyn]

Georiga School District's response to rising covid cases in the school district is to let teachers wear jeans all month and not to require masks!
https://www.insider.com/georgia-covi...d-jeans-2021-8

Examples like this is why this is going to spiral out of control again.

[Forogil]

And in non-US news Japan has stopped the rollout of Moderna's vaccine (which is already later than many other developed countries - including the US), after seeing particles in the vaccine vials - possibly due to contamination and possibly even linked to two deaths.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/j...ports-n1277669
https://www.rovi.es/sites/default/fi...8.2021_eng.pdf

I hope it was just a temporary production glitch and that it will be solved quickly.

[Gaidax]

Starting tomorrow everyone 12yo+ can get 3rd shot, provided 2nd was 5 months ago at least.

[Shadowferal]

Judge strips Chicago mother of parental visiting rights for not being vaccinated

[beanman12345]

Judge strips Chicago mother of parental visiting rights for not being vaccinated

Thank you. Wrote down the judges name. Will hundo vote him back into office.

[MikeKramer]

I was vaccinated by Pfizer )

[Forogil]

A new Israeli indicate that the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine may be less effective against new Delta-infections than a past infection (after half a year).
https://www.medpagetoday.com/infecti.../covid19/94258
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1....24.21262415v1

However, the vaccine is safer than risking an infection - and it could be that a mildly symptomatic infection gave less protection (and wasn't detected).

The most important part of the study is, however, something else: "There were no COVID-related deaths reported in any of the cohorts."

[Edge-]

The most important part of the study is, however, something else: "There were no COVID-related deaths reported in any of the cohorts."

Man, even if it ain't bulletproof it's stopping the most important bullet. I'll fuckin take that any day of the week.

[Rasulis]

Covid numbers for CA for week ending 08/29.

New cases down 10.6% (91,505) from previous week (102,367). US increases by 5.4% during the same period.

Cases fell in 22 counties. However, those include the most populous counties - Los Angeles with 19,867 from 32,816; Orange County with 4,714 from 5,834; and San Diego with 8,423 from 9,344.

The worst outbreaks and hospitalizations are in Del Norte, Sierra, Yuba, Sacramento, Kern, Tulare and Fresno. Their hospitals are full. The air ambulance system is stressed out from flying patients to major hospitals in other cities.

706,497 vaccine doses administered including 348,118 first doses. The previous week it was 696,884 including 376,955 first doses.

618 new deaths. Up from 474 the previous week.

California most rural counties are taking a beating. Covid is going through the population like a buzz saw. Doubt, mistrust and conspiracy theories are wreaking havoc on the medical staff and local officials trying to get the recent outbreak under control.

A single unvaccinated & unmasked elementary school teacher in Marin county infected 26 of her students.

California requires all teachers and staffs in all school districts to be vaccinated.

Only one school district requires their eligible student to be vaccinated - Culver City. No such requirement in SF, although with over 96% vaccination rate for those between 12 and 17, the eligible student body is effectively 100% vaccinated.

- - - Updated - - -

S.F. study finds virus mutations behind many breakthrough cases

A study of nearly 1,400 San Francisco COVID-19 cases between February and June found that people with breakthrough cases were more likely to be infected with a variant containing mutations that are resistant to the neutralizing antibodies that vaccines can induce.

This suggests that if a predominant variant emerges after delta that causes another peak in new cases, vaccines would likely be less effective against it, said the study’s lead author, UCSF virologist Dr. Charles Chiu.

“Because of this data … I’m very worried about variants for which vaccines may be less effective,” Chiu told The Chronicle. “We have in the San Francisco Bay Area a highly vaccinated community. In that setting, if we do see another outbreak or peak of cases, it’s going to be due to a variant that’s even more resistant than delta.”

The study was posted on a pre-print server Wednesday and has not been peer-reviewed. It seeks to better understand the link between vaccination and the evolution of variants.

During the time of the study between Feb. 1 and June 30, San Francisco went from 2% vaccinated to 70% vaccinated. Researchers sequenced samples from 1,373 people in San Francisco with COVID-19. Of those cases, 9%, or 125 people, had breakthrough infections. Fully vaccinated people were more likely than unvaccinated people to be infected with variants carrying mutations associated with decreased antibody neutralization.

“As the population gets more vaccinated, and this makes sense intuitively, it’s more likely variants that’ll be selected for are those that are more resistant,” Chiu said.

However, because variants can come with trade-offs — a variant that’s more infectious may not be more antibody-resistant, and vice versa — it’s possible that a future predominant variant that’s more antibody-resistant may not be more infectious.

The study also found that people with breakthrough symptomatic infections are probably as infectious as unvaccinated individuals with COVID. This echoes the findings from a Cape Cod, Mass., study released by the CDC last month that examined an outbreak that was mostly delta cases. Chiu’s study, though, expanded on that, finding that is true for several circulating variants, not just delta. The Bay Area study was done when alpha, delta, gamma, epsilon and other variants were circulating in the community.

Moreover, the study found that people with breakthrough symptomatic infections have much higher viral loads — 400 times higher, and thus likely much more infectious — compared to people with breakthrough asymptomatic infections. This is much more pronounced than in unvaccinated people, where the difference between the viral loads of symptomatic and asymptomatic people is tenfold and not significant, Chiu said. Asymptomatic breakthrough cases are probably not a major source of spread, he said.

Note: I guess that makes sense. It takes a much higher viral load to make a fully vaccinated person sick. So symptomatic breakthrough cases are more virulent than unvaccinated symptomatic cases.

“What that implies is symptomatic vaccinated breakthrough infections may be a potential source of spread,” he said. “It highlights the importance of even if you’re vaccinated, if you have symptoms, it’s important you get diagnosed, and that you wear a mask and stay at home to avoid spreading it to others. Because you’re potentially as infectious as someone who’s unvaccinated.”

The good news is that the vaccines are still very good at preventing hospitalization. The number of hospitalized fully vaccinated patients in SF is still 45 and the City has not seen any new fully vaccinated hospitalized patient through the month of August. # of fully vaccinated death due to Covid complication is still 2.

[Edge-]

California most rural counties are taking a beating. Covid is going through the population like a buzz saw. Doubt, mistrust and conspiracy theories are wreaking havoc on the medical staff and local officials trying to get the recent outbreak under control.

Man, it'd be a big shame if the Republican gubernatorial recall ends up failing because too many Republican voters got sick with covid and couldn't vote.

Big shame.

[PhaelixWW]

California most rural counties are taking a beating. Covid is going through the population like a buzz saw. Doubt, mistrust and conspiracy theories are wreaking havoc on the medical staff and local officials trying to get the recent outbreak under control.

A single unvaccinated & unmasked elementary school teacher in Marin county infected 26 of her students.

California requires all teachers and staffs in all school districts to be vaccinated.

Meh, I feel like this section is a bit misleading, as there's a direct implication that these paragraphs are connected.

(Narrator: They're not.)

First, Marin County is not rural, lol; it's quite literally one of the top 5 most liberal counties in the entire country, voting some 80+% Democrat. Hell, even Mendocino (which was hilariously a part of that Jefferson state proposal) votes 2:1 Democrat over Republican.

Second, the incident with the unvaccinated teacher was back in May, long before the vaccination mandate for teachers, which started this month. Heck, the vaccine was limited to ages 50+ until mid-April in California. The teacher in question was, however, unmasked against policy.

[PhaelixWW]

how is political alignment relevant to whether something is rural or urban?

Seriously?

COVID isn't "going through the population like a buzz saw" in rural counties because they're rural. Vaccine hesitancy, aka "doubt, mistrust and conspiracy theories" are the hallmarks of conservative ideologies, and rural counties are predominantly conservative.

Also, Marin County isn't rural because it's not rural; it's a part of the San Francisco metropolitan area and is listed by the CDC as a "large fringe metro" county.

[Machismo]

Seriously?

COVID isn't "going through the population like a buzz saw" in rural counties because they're rural. Vaccine hesitancy, aka "doubt, mistrust and conspiracy theories" are the hallmarks of conservative ideologies, and rural counties are predominantly conservative.

Also, Marin County isn't rural because it's not rural; it's a part of the San Francisco metropolitan area and is listed by the CDC as a "large fringe metro" county.

If anything, rural areas would be safer than cities, due to population density and proximity to others.

Now, pandemic models have shown that such things would largely hit population centers, then filter out to rural areas (which did happen). Then, rural areas would get hit a bit more, as time progressed, and more and more in the population became infected. Marin is likely to be hit more than once, simply because it's a commuter county for SF.

But, the explosion in rural areas can be directly linked to vaccinations and social behavior, which definitely falls along political lines.

[Strawberry]

Eventually anti-maskers/anti-vaxxers will probably take their selfish whining to court and it will be argued, but they'll lose badly. That's an easy call because despite their comical use of the pro-life line "my body my choice", this topic has actually been debated ad nauseam and firmly decided about 30-40 years ago with cigarette smoking.

Prior to ~80's, cigarette smoking in public places and businesses was incredibly common. You could smoke at your desk in a corporate office while working, while flying commercial in your seats in planes and plane seats had ashtrays, restaurants, stores, etc. You could even smoke cigarettes in hospital waiting rooms and hallways. All of that was debated in court and it was determined that...(and this is the important part anti-maskers that seems to have been forgotten)... while you have the freedom to smoke in private while warning you and making you aware that this puts yourself at risk, that freedom does not extend into public areas. If a person wants to live in their basement forever without the vaccine and never go in public, go for it. They are only putting themselves at risk, like smoking, in that situation. However, if they are not vaccinated and go in public, just like smoking a cigarette in public has second-hand smoke that goes to others and puts them at risk, putting others at risk being infected is the issue. Like second-hand smoke, that goes beyond your own body and puts OTHERS at risk. That exceeds a person's own freedoms over their body. That is something that morally and ethically anyone living a positive life should understand without being told by law. Going into a McDonald's and sitting down unvaccinated and possibly spreading a deadly disease to others is worse but very comparable to sitting down and lighting up a cigarette, blowing smoke that goes to you. And it's already been determined that can be legally prohibited.

Aside terrible text formation, how exactly are people who are not vaccinated endangering your vaccinated ass?
Because we can spread covid? You might want to read up. Vaccinated people spread covid as well.
The only danger is to us who are not vaccinated. Because if you're afraid from covid while being vaccinated, then why the fuck are you getting vaccinated?