Mega-Thread: Coronavirus Pandemic

[JohnBrown1917]

2 cases and we are back to 2020 again. Sigh, its getting beyond a joke now. I wont be adhering to mask mandates at this point, "I'm exempt" Thank you very much much.

Good for you? Have fun increasing the spread even further. Bit of a weird kink tho

[Egomaniac]

2 cases and we are back to 2020 again. Sigh, its getting beyond a joke now. I wont be adhering to mask mandates at this point, "I'm exempt" Thank you very much much.

If everyone would have adhered to mask mandates over the last ~20 months... maybe we wouldn't be seeing these variants pop up.

[Poopymonster]

If everyone would have adhered to mask mandates over the last ~20 months... maybe we wouldn't be seeing these variants pop up.

*COUGH* But muh fREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEdoms.

[Zan15]

2 cases and we are back to 2020 again. Sigh, its getting beyond a joke now. I wont be adhering to mask mandates at this point, "I'm exempt" Thank you very much much.

what the hell do you mean the flu has a new varriant that i have to get a DIFFERENT shot every year!!!???
wait the measles shot was changed how many times in the first 10 years and then combined as a MMR shot???


Thank god you were not around for any of these really bad years because it was not like the measles, small pox or polio disapeared in a year or two....

[Corvus]

Australia has confirmed cases of omicron now with two quarantined international travellers.

[Kaleredar]

*COUGH* But muh fREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEdoms.

I want to know what today would look like if the entire world had basically just shut down for four weeks at the start of 2020 and we just called those four weeks a mulligan for everyone monetarily.

Whatever immediate economic toll that would have incurred could not have been worse than the constant slow burn we're seeing. And it certainly wouldn't have been "too great a cost" to make up for the millions of people that have died.

[Forogil]

That graph is wildly misleading.

It's only talking about doses that were manufactured in and then exported from the country. It has nothing to do with the country's government.

No, they are discussing different time-frames and things.

The main point was that the rich countries aren't hoarding the vaccine in some secret bunkers, but that the vaccines that are produced are put to use; and that it wouldn't be easy to make more.

That more persons haven't been vaccinated in the world is thus due to lack of production capacity, challenges in delivering, vaccine hesitancy etc.

There is a good case to be made that more lives could have been saved if vaccines were distributed in another way, but it is not clear if that would have reduced the risk of new variants as Omicron.

Quite obviously the US isn't going to be mass producing the vaccine for export, because it's extremely cost prohibitive and just doesn't make sense..

Sorry, if I stepped on any US toes - and I agree that the graph was a bit misleading, but not for that reason.
Instead the misleading parts are due to the differences between a country: the US, and a trading union: the EU, different time-frames (May vs. Now), and exports vs. donations.

First a background:

Until May the EU allowed vaccine manufacturers to export vaccine from the EU, as long as they met their obligations in the EU (even though everyone who wanted hadn't been vaccinated in the EU), whereas the US in practice didn't and required almost all doses produced in the US to be used in the US.
Added: You can see that US vaccination peaked in mid-April and dropped off after May, but EU vaccinations peaked in June and had a slower decline until October.
After May, in particular in July, the US donated vaccines, and sometimes vaccine ingredients, to other countries.
After that, the EU has continued to export vaccines whereas the US seems to have been more focused on donating vaccines (although there are exports as well; it's not easy to see the split).

That's because the EU is a trading union, whereas the US is a country with a foreign policy.
Therefore it makes sense that the US has donated more vaccines (and taken care of some special countries), and the EU has exported more and earlier.

So, back to the question of where are the US-donated vaccines made?

As noted before the traditional main vaccine manufacturers in the world are the US, the EU, India (in particular Serum Institute), and China (primarily used domestically before 2019); where the US and EU are more in the premium market. For covid the US have primarily donated US-approved vaccines - not the low cost alternatives used in other countries (primarily as the US also donated some AstraZeneca vaccine that was in the US pending approval that never came).

So, what low-cost alternative would make the vaccines that the US donates?
Note that the point about patent waiver being a distraction, as there are lots of other problems with building a vaccine factory still stands.

Note that India has recently been importing vaccines and it seems the mRNA aren't approved, and since China hasn't authorized the BioNTech vaccine for Fosun it seems odd that they would make the same vaccine for Pfizer, or that Moderna would make theirs there.

But we don't have to guess, since you need approval for both the vaccine and the production facility, and we can just look at Covax's list:
https://extranet.who.int/pqweb/sites..._11Nov2021.pdf
and see that Pfizer, Johnsson&Johnsson and Moderna haven't added any sites outside of the US and EU, whereas AstraZeneca and others added sites elsewhere.

Or simply put Pfizer built a facility making 25 million doses a week in the US, of course they are going to export (or allow someone to donate) the surplus: https://news.yahoo.com/pfizer-begins...043954654.html

- - - Updated - - -

I want to know what today would look like if the entire world had basically just shut down for four weeks at the start of 2020 and we just called those four weeks a mulligan for everyone monetarily.

It almost certainly wouldn't have worked everywhere (look at how India did in the spring of 2020), and even if it did the virus would have infected some animals and spread back, and thus we would have seen the same scenario as now - except that people would have been even more angry at the lockdowns.

[Deathknightish]

I hate how media uses fear for clicks. Dunni about other countries but here in Sweden they've really hit the drums.

"Worst one yet!", mistranslating the British health minister who said it was the most significant yet.

Fact is we don't know much about the new variant other than it seems more resistant to the vaccines. We don't know if it's more dangerous or not.
Actually, we have theories. There was some South African doctor who said the symptoms looks to be milder where most young men who got it simply got tired.

Delta was more contagious, but less deadly, than alpha and beta. Nothing to say that it's not the same case here. We just have to wait and see, but media has to put everyone in a panic.

[szechuan]

We don't know if it's more dangerous or not.

Fact is, the Media is being responsible and warning others of the Omicron variant.

[Draco-Onis]

Fact is, the Media is being responsible and warning others of the Omicron variant.

I disagree there is definitely sensationalism going on in the media when it comes to COVID, we don't have much data on this new variant but people are declaring defcon5. They are essentially desensitizing the public by being so gun ho about this variant, when the next one comes along and if it is more dangerous people are going to be more prone to ignore it.

[Deathknightish]

Fact is, the Media is being responsible and warning others of the Omicron variant.

The way Swedish media reports about it is essentially in spirit of "THE NEW GIGASUPERDUPERDEATH ONE THOUSAND OMNICRON IS HERE! VACCINES DON'T WORK AND WE ARE ALL GONNA GET SICK! LOOK WHAT THE UK MINISTER SAID EVEN THOUGH WE INTENTIONSLLY TRANSLATED HIS QUOTE WRONG TO MAKE IT SEEM MORE DEADLY!".

That's not bring responsible imo. That's needless fearmongering before we know more about it. I already hear family who are scared shitless for no reason.

[Svifnymr]

I disagree there is definitely sensationalism going on in the media when it comes to COVID, we don't have much data on this new variant but people are declaring defcon5. They are essentially desensitizing the public by being so gun ho about this variant, when the next one comes along and if it is more dangerous people are going to be more prone to ignore it.

There is a cycle with hurricanes like that too. The news will overhype and then nothing happens, then the next one that does come people will just ignore it. Of course, many people lack the ability to actually reason for themselves, so if they don't overhype something then folks will just ignore it anyway. The News gets it's views with over sensationalized titles and inaccurate summaries, but people are also incapable of reading the actual facts themselves. With hurricanes of course, it's easy to check the info since the National Hurricane Center is the source for most of the information anyway, with something more political it's just screwed.

[Forogil]

The way Swedish media reports about it is essentially in spirit of "THE NEW GIGASUPERDUPERDEATH ONE THOUSAND OMNICRON IS HERE! VACCINES DON'T WORK AND WE ARE ALL GONNA GET SICK! LOOK WHAT THE UK MINISTER SAID EVEN THOUGH WE INTENTIONSLLY TRANSLATED HIS QUOTE WRONG TO MAKE IT SEEM MORE DEADLY!".

That's not bring responsible imo. That's needless fearmongering before we know more about it. I already hear family who are scared shitless for no reason.

Well, the media isn't doing this in isolation.

They know that vague fear sells (it might be 500% more transmissible, it might evade vaccines) although so does vague hope (reports from S.A. indicate that the disease is mild), so part of the problem is that we the viewers/readers/listeners are eager for those stories.

[PhaelixWW]

There was some South African doctor who said the symptoms looks to be milder where most young men who got it simply got tired.

...which is actually more of a reaction than what that particular demographic typically feels in a COVID infection.

Delta was more contagious, but less deadly, than alpha and beta.

Where are you getting this idea that delta was less deadly than alpha or beta?

[Easo]

I hate how media uses fear for clicks. Dunni about other countries but here in Sweden they've really hit the drums.

"Worst one yet!", mistranslating the British health minister who said it was the most significant yet.

Fact is we don't know much about the new variant other than it seems more resistant to the vaccines. We don't know if it's more dangerous or not.
Actually, we have theories. There was some South African doctor who said the symptoms looks to be milder where most young men who got it simply got tired.

Delta was more contagious, but less deadly, than alpha and beta. Nothing to say that it's not the same case here. We just have to wait and see, but media has to put everyone in a panic.

Emm, I am almost sure Delta has been way more deadly than Alpha.

[PhaelixWW]

Emm, I am almost sure Delta has been way more deadly than Alpha.

Because it is.

People who are infected with the highly contagious Delta variant are twice as likely to be hospitalized as those who are infected with the Alpha variant, according to a large new British study.

[Forogil]

Emm, I am almost sure Delta has been way more deadly than Alpha.

There have been conflicting reports about Delta.

Some reported that it was more deadly, others said it wasn't the case https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019...a-variant.html - and some even that it was less deadly. One of problems is that most Delta cases happened later, when we had better treatment and the most at risk were assumedly vaccinated (so if you look at the elderly you are comparing vaccinated with unvaccinated and if you look at the unvaccinated they are younger, ...) so it's hard to get a fair comparison.

[PhaelixWW]

Some reported that it was more deadly, others said it wasn't the case https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019...a-variant.html - and some even that it was less deadly.

That link doesn't support the statement you attached to it.

Some data suggest the Delta variant might cause more severe illness than previous variants in unvaccinated people. In two different studies from Canada and Scotland, patients infected with the Delta variant were more likely to be hospitalized than patients infected with Alpha or the original virus that causes COVID-19. Even so, the vast majority of hospitalization and death caused by COVID-19 are in unvaccinated people.

The closest it comes to saying that is just saying that it may not be significantly more deadly to the vaccinated.

[Forogil]

That link doesn't support the statement you attached to it.

Ah, yes, my bad - I meant it to indicate that it is still unclear, not the latter statement.

[Logwyn]

If everyone would have adhered to mask mandates over the last ~20 months... maybe we wouldn't be seeing these variants pop up.

Could have stayed on lockdown another couple of months and this might all be behind us... but had to get those hair & nails done and go bowling!!!! (First things that opened back up in my state)