Mega-Thread: Coronavirus Pandemic

[Pann]

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Ooh, you're doing that dishonest, selective quoting thing again! But I thought you weren't going to reply? It probably would have been better if you hadn't to be honest.

What are you struggling with? And why do you use 'british isles' [sic] as an insult?

Anyway I've forwarded your concerns on to both Sky News and Oxford Uni, I'm sure they'll issue a correction any minute now!

[Gaidax]

Starting tomorrow everyone 16+ yo can get a vaccine.

[Pann]

Starting tomorrow everyone 16+ yo can get a vaccine.

Excellent news! The Israeli vaccination program really has been impressive, hopefully this will lead to you getting some form of normality back (I'm not jealous at all!).

[Granyala]

Starting tomorrow everyone 16+ yo can get a vaccine.

Very cool. I'm so curious about your caseload data 2 months from now.
@Pann & @Forogil: can you pass the popcorn, please?

[Pann]

Very cool. I'm so curious about your caseload data 2 months from now.
@Pann & @Forogil: can you pass the popcorn, please?

Certainly, salted or sweet?

[Granyala]

Certainly, salted or sweet?

Salted, please.

[Forogil]

Very cool. I'm so curious about your caseload data 2 months from now.
@Pann & @Forogil: can you pass the popcorn, please?

You can have all of my popcorn, as I normally don't eat it and I'm not going to the cinema for obvious reasons.

I swear I haven't touched it!

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For sport-fans eager to get to Tokoy 2020, remember to clap - not sing and chant!

And stay 2 meters away from athletes, and 1 meter away from everyone else.
No hugs, high-fives and handshakes.
No talking in crowded areas like elevators.

https://www.news.com.au/sport/olympi...43a9fcedc88bd2

https://www.olympic.org/tokyo-2020-playbooks
(Technically this is from the staff handbook, but expect the visitor handbook to have similar restrictions if visitors are allowed.)

[Pann]

More excellent vaccine news: AZ are working on the next generation of their vaccine to combat the new strains and to have it ready for the autumn - hopefully the other manufacturers will also have new vaccines around the same time or not be far behind.

https://twitter.com/BBCFergusWalsh/s...55594968686592

[Forogil]

More excellent vaccine news: AZ are working on the next generation of their vaccine to combat the new strains and to have it ready for the autumn - hopefully the other manufacturers will also have new vaccines around the same time or not be far behind.

They might already be ahead.

Moderna announced they were starting trials of a booster against variants January 25th; https://investors.modernatx.com/news...tivity-against
Pfizer announced the same on January 27th; https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/pf...ts/ar-BB1d7XSv

Based on how quickly they could develop the original vaccines it seems likely that tweaking them would be very fast; so it's mostly a matter of testing and approval.

GSK and Curevac also seemed to have announced this, but Sputnik and Sinovac seems less clear.
Johnson & Johnson also seems unclear, and their vaccine seems quite weak against some variants.

[Crispin]

They might already be ahead.

Moderna announced they were starting trials of a booster against variants January 25th; https://investors.modernatx.com/news...tivity-against
Pfizer announced the same on January 27th; https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/pf...ts/ar-BB1d7XSv

Based on how quickly they could develop the original vaccines it seems likely that tweaking them would be very fast; so it's mostly a matter of testing and approval.

GSK and Curevac also seemed to have announced this, but Sputnik and Sinovac seems less clear.
Johnson & Johnson also seems unclear, and their vaccine seems quite weak against some variants.

From what I read, Pfizer said they can alter the mRNA vaccine to new mutations in 6 weeks.

https://www.ft.com/content/26f396c2-...7-aa6784a2abd9

If he's correct, then they'll have it ready before summer.

It's a relief to see that new mutations can be dealt with fairly quickly. As soon as the vaccine supplies really gets rolling worldwide, Covid19 seems to be something we can vaccine ourselves out of. Thank fucking god.

[Forogil]

From what I read, Pfizer said they can alter the mRNA vaccine to new mutations in 6 weeks.

https://www.ft.com/content/26f396c2-...7-aa6784a2abd9

Makes sense, but it's paywalled - is that 6 weeks from starting until the product gets into the vials, or would there be some additional time?

(And I don't know when they started. It seems they started at least a week ago, but it might be earlier.)
Obviously testing and approval can take a lot more time, but I don't know how much phase 3 testing will be needed for such a tweak.

And speaking of approval there was a bit of a problem for another vaccine manufacturer today.
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news...-more-14106346
"Swiss delay AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine approval"

And, of course, a british tabloid writes "Switzerland bans AstraZeneca vaccine for ALL citizens as Europe declares war on UK jab"
/facepalm

[Edge-]

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/whi...ornia-n1256611

Hot diggity dog, government funded/supported vaccination sites in partnership with states! Man, it would have been nice to have this kind of leadership and coordination throughout the past year, but better late than never.

I'm hopeful this speeds things up a bit, because I'm still likely not up for a vaccination until late summer, and I have absolutely no desire to line-jump like an asshole. I can work from home, folks who are at-risk and/or have to go into work and deal with the public absolutely deserve to get it before I do.

[Zan15]

Starting tomorrow everyone 16+ yo can get a vaccine.

WOW, i guess the world has no excuse now that they have an outline to an awesome plan


Reminds me of the book World War Z, one of only two countries that really came up with a great plan. the others laughed at them but eventually came around after staggering losses.


scary.

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I live in Sweden. Getting treated at hospital costs me pretty much nothing. I want a law to passed by the government that people will get economic compensation should anything go wrong with vaccination. As it stands all that exist is a promise that there will be compensation if something goes wrong.

14th of January they said they will get to it as fast as they can. Now we're in February and there's no sign of what they said would happen.

Only Pfizer's vaccine is covered by it and we don't get to choose which one we get. So I'm not taking any until all of them are covered. A promise is worth nothing.

"costs me pretty much nothing"

Till the extreme influx and massive cost to the system requires taxes to be raised the following years to pay down the cost caused by COVID.....then those taxes having to remain higher and increase because of the long term implications of complications due to COVID.

hmmm.....

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https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/whi...ornia-n1256611

Hot diggity dog, government funded/supported vaccination sites in partnership with states! Man, it would have been nice to have this kind of leadership and coordination throughout the past year, but better late than never.

I'm hopeful this speeds things up a bit, because I'm still likely not up for a vaccination until late summer, and I have absolutely no desire to line-jump like an asshole. I can work from home, folks who are at-risk and/or have to go into work and deal with the public absolutely deserve to get it before I do.

Imagine actually using the mult-trillion dollar govt military and FEMA/federal monster organization's..... you know the ones that excel at this kind of thing.

Shocking. Why didn't anyone think of this before!!!
Oh right they were too worried about finding 16,000 votes

[Edge-]

https://apnews.com/article/indictmen...c18ea42fe008ac

Huh, a member of the Death Cult party apparently was selling "stem sell cures" for covid. While being a state Representative. I hope the state level Death Cult doesn't continue their successful efforts into covids second year, especially now that we seem to have competent leadership that listens to the science.

[Zan15]

Raising taxes isn't some bad thing. In fact, we should increase taxes and implement a wealth tax again.

I have no idea why you even try to use raised taxes as an argument.

Never said it was or wasn't

"costs me pretty much nothing"

is basically wrong.

[Zan15]

No, it isn't.

is this where i say "Yes, it is"?


Sorry?

explain how an extreme bump in cost to the system would not result in corresponding increase in cost to taxpayers? The only question is 'when'



or???
Do you not pay taxes? Which is possible and would be something you should include in your explanation

[Felya]

No, this is where you say "I have no fucking clue how the system works in sweden because I thought it costs you a lot of money if you get sick".

He is saying it costs you a lot through taxes and it will cost even more with covid.

Edit: Actually, he didn’t even say it costs a lot through taxes. He only said it will cost more, due to covid.

[Zan15]

No, this is where you say "I have no fucking clue how the system works in sweden because I thought it costs you a lot of money if you get sick".

Oh so everyone does the work for free huh?
You get free drugs from pharma, doctors work for free, supplies, power, gas all free!!!!

Yes Yes i get it you have a national healthcare plan but you still pay for it.

You don't think if they have an abnormal long term spike in required services for COVID and the long term effects of COVID the system won't experience an increase in cost? You don't think high utilization in some of the most expensive parts of the healthcare system will result in an overall increase in expenses for said system?

You don't think that cost will have to be adjusted in some way?

You don't think your cost sharing will increase? You don't think your taxes will have to be adjusted to pay for the spike?


Sweeden's healthcare system is actually one of the easier ones to understand, especially someone who's worked in the health insurance/industry for a few decades.



Again the only way YOU would not experience increased cost is if you don't pay taxes or they plan on taxing everyone but you.
Of course they could cut back services, but i doubt they would do that.

[Granyala]

WOW, i guess the world has no excuse now that they have an outline to an awesome plan

Actually, it has: Not enough Vaccines to go around.
Israel basically cheated the system by paying more and offering unlimited data on it's citizens, so they can play lab-rat.

[Gaidax]

National healthcare is not free.


We got it - it works like this: for your whole working life you pay 5% of your income as healthcare tax, it can be a bit less if you're a senior citizen or some other exempt but the very least is 3% of income.

Then the way it works - you register with one of the 4 healthcare providers and they give you basic coverage which includes access to all professional doctors affiliated with that provider, as well as their clinics. If you get a drug prescribed by affiliated doctor you get a big discount on these base - my elderly mother has literally like 5-6 different prescription drugs she takes and it's like ~15 bucks a month or so total for all of them.

Some of the more specialized physicians do require additional fee, but it's some pittance like ~4 bucks per visit paid once in 3 months (meaning you pay once and you can visit the doctor free for all for 3 months).

What is not covered-ish - hospitalization and ICU, you get a decent discount there if provider's physician on hotline decided to do that. Second opinions, private physicians and so on. Healthcare providers offer extended insurance for about 20-ish bucks per month to offer big discounts to all the previously mentioned services.

What is not included in that is serious exotic/complex operations or drugs - to get these covered you need to get a healthcare plan from some insurer, prices range from 10 to 50 bucks a month, usually decent workplace covers part of it.

Another BIG issue with basic 5% plan is that while you do get access to specialists, there is usually a shortage of appointments - sometimes it can take months for appointment to something like neurologist. The way to work around this is with additional plans above, then order semi-private one and get a discount.

---

So bottom line if you want to have proper healthcare plan - you pay 5% to govt, then you pay another ~20 bucks a month to healthcare provider, then you pick insurance for another 20-50 bucks a months. You still will pay for drugs (big discount) and hospitals (discount).

It is national healthcare, but definitely not free. There is no free national healthcare, it's a myth - you pay one way or another.

The 5% is a law, you can't opt out. The rest depends on how much you like to gamble with your health - you really want at the very least extended coverage for 20 bucks.

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In other news, seems like our lockdown ends Sunday. Not that we've got some great situation there, but mostly because it's no longer sustainable.