Mega-Thread: Coronavirus Pandemic

[Ayirasi]

♫ Somebody once told me corona's gonna own me. We ain't the sharpest tools in the shed. ♫

[PACOX]

So I guess I have to ask, what the fuck are they doing in Florida?

Not a gahdamn thing.

[Nellise]

The biggest difference between NY and SF is on how they respond to the pandemic.

San Francisco is the wealthiest large city in the US. It has 10% poverty rate compared to 20% in NYC (89,000 people versus 1.6 million people). NYC has another 22% living near poverty on top of that. We know this is affecting lower income people disproportionately. You can't really fairly compare the two cities.

[Edge-]

San Francisco is the wealthiest large city in the US. It has 10% poverty rate compared to 20% in NYC (89,000 people versus 1.6 million people). We know this is affecting lower income people disproportionately. You can't really fairly compare the two cities.

Not 1:1, but in terms of how the cities prepared for and first started handling it, you can.

https://www.syracuse.com/coronavirus...e-january.html

Compare this timeline to the one @Rasulis laid out for SF and you see that SF's earlier and more aggressive measures absolutely played a factor in its huge success at combating the spread of the virus.

Yes, SF has some advantages in being an overall wealthier city in terms of residents, but that ignores the huge numbers of people from neighboring cities and counties who commute into the city every day and are not exactly part of the upper class.

Mind you, while SF was absolutely crushing it in their response Trump was out there calling the city a "slum" and threatening to send in the feds to "clean it up" - https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trum...-puppy-1495011

[TigTone]

Can someone post a list of possible consequences of releasing not fully tested vaccine for mass use.

[unfilteredJW]

Florida has nearly 6,000 more cases today. They are averaging 25,000 cases per million people. 21.5 million people in Florida. Meanwhile in Canada, we are averaging 3,800 cases per million people with a population of 35 million.

So I guess I have to ask, what the fuck are they doing in Florida?

Tourist season and making service industry workers essential combined with no mask ordinances.

Not to mention south Florida is called Gods Waiting Room due to the massive amount of elderly.

DeSantis being a cultist of the bull god as well.

[Forogil]

The first confirmed case in the Bay Area was in February. No confirmed cases in NY yet at that time.

The biggest difference between NY and SF is on how they respond to the pandemic. SF started way early.

December 31 - Colfax, director of SF Dept. of Public Health briefed the mayor that the City should start preparing for Covid-19.

January 21 - Emergency preparedness plans were activated simultaneously at three major San Francisco institutions: the teaching hospital at UCSF Medical Center, SF General, and Department of Public Health. The two hospitals canceled elective surgeries and cleared entire floors to create surge wards filled with intensive-care beds. The health department streamlined command and control to focus the entire department on corona virus.

January 27 - Mayor Breed activated the city government's own Emergency Operations Center, preparing to coordinate a response across departments, plan outreach efforts, and commandeer city property and resources.

February 25 - With only 53 confirmed cases in the US, 10 in California, and still not a single one confirmed in SF, Breed declared a local state of emergency. Gutsy move by her.

February 26 - 28 - Twitter’s Jack Dorsey told all of his employees to work from home. By the end of that week, Lyft, Uber, Google, FB, Apple and every single businesses that could do so had done the same. Collectively taking out 100,000 workers out of circulation.

March 6 - Supervisor of the SF District which includes Chinatown issued stay-at-home order for his District with the approval of the mayor. Which probably partially account for this "looking at SF itself the number of cases also varies significantly on a small scale, with Nob Hill reporting almost twice the rate of cases as nearby Chinatown." Also, residents of Chinatown were wearing masks since January and February. Well ahead of the City's ordinance requiring face coverings in late May.

March 13 - The city's health officer joined a conference call with six other Bay Area health officers. By California law, they have the authority to issue legally binding health orders. By the evening, they issued the stay-at-home order. Breed did the same an hour later.


There are several other factors involved. To name a few,

SF was the epicenter of the AID pandemic that took the life of thousands of its residence. There were a lot of institutional knowledge on how to deal with a pandemic built into the system.

Young and healthy population with low instances of obesity and diabetic.

Highly educated population that immediately recognized the need for mask and social distancing. Not a lot of outrage.

Ok, that detailed description makes a lot more sense (except for the Dec. 31 date - I haven't seen that in other sources and it seems odd since the disease wasn't named and the first death was reported around January 12th) than the simplified table suggesting that if NY would just have to followed SF in face coverings almost everyone would be saved in NY, when in reality there are a number of other factors at play - some of which the cities have no control over.

Basically people want simple solution that preferably require minimal work - hydroxychloroquine, face masks, vaccine, etc (not denying that some of them can be effective; but not 100% effective), not to be told to also work from home, prepare ICUs by stopping elective surgery, physically distance, stay at home, etc.

[Easo]

Not gonna buy into Russia's claim. There always is a chance that the vaccine they made is THE one, but... no mass tests? That is like begging to find out which groups of people will have complications.

Putin announced his daughter has taken the vaccine.

That's more significant then some might realize. In Eastern Europe, especially for families like Putin's, to put your children on health on the line is fairly extraordinary.

Wait and see is my point of view.

First and most obvious thing - you really believe that?
Second - who the fuck tests it on their own children? He should have taken it instead, especially as he is more or less in the risk group.
We already know they tried to hide the real count of doctor's deaths plus the lack of PPE's. Makes one wonder what else they are hiding.

[Gaidax]

Not gonna buy into Russia's claim. There always is a chance that the vaccine they made is THE one, but... no mass tests? That is like begging to find out which groups of people will have complications.

Everything Russia claims should be, as usual, taken with a massive grain of salt.

They certainly have the capacity, the people and the knowledge to develop a vaccine - no doubt there, but whether this thing is real, effective or was just some slapdash work with cut corners just for the sake of sticking it to the West... nobody knows really.

My guesstimate is that it is real, but likely not tested properly so who knows how effective it is and what strings are attached there.

[Forogil]

Can someone post a list of possible consequences of releasing not fully tested vaccine for mass use.

Depends on the vaccine: it may contain a viable virus and you get the disease (unlikely in this case - but happened for Polio), bad manufacturing so some patients are just poisoned and die (Russian-made injections does not inspire confidence), the immune system getting messed up leading to a number of issues (immune thrombocytopenic purpura, Guillain-Barre, nacrolepsy, ...), or just plain not working - so the disease spread while people think they are immune, allergies, etc.

In addition to the headache and pain associated with a working vaccine (and some of the issues above also happen with working vaccines).
All issues also have the consequence of reducing vaccination for working vaccines increasing outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases like measles.

Oh, and regarding the Russian vaccine. It seems it's sort of like two similar vaccines (different for the two shots) - which would increase the likelihood that it produces an immune-response and/or an adverse effect.

[Rasulis]

(except for the Dec. 31 date - I haven't seen that in other sources and it seems odd since the disease wasn't named and the first death was reported around January 12th)

Grant Colfax did his residency at UCSF during the height of AIDs epidemic and was Obama's director of national AIDS policy. One of the best pandemic expert in the world. Probably a bit overqualified for his position. The day he went to brief the mayor was the day China first release their first public message about the disease (although they called it a pneumonia outbreak) and the U.S. CDC said it first learned of a “cluster of 27 cases of pneumonia” of unexplained origin in Wuhan, China, on December 31, 2019.

In most cities in the US, his early warning probably would have been ignored as fearmongering. Except in SF. Where most of the high-ranking health officials were once fighting in the trenches during the AIDs epidemic.

[Acidbaron]

Putin announced his daughter has taken the vaccine.

That's more significant then some might realize. In Eastern Europe, especially for families like Putin's, to put your children on health on the line is fairly extraordinary.

Wait and see is my point of view.

Yes, let us take a know liar on his word. It is actually a breach of protocol to use your own family as test subjects, what should say enough about this.

You are free to use it blindly, your funeral or your kids not mine. History has plenty of cases of how wrong this can go.

The russian people will once more become the victim to boost Putin's fragile ego as his popularity taken a dive in handling this crisis, this is all optics nothing more.

[Forogil]

Grant Colfax did his residency at UCSF during the height of AIDs epidemic and was Obama's director of national AIDS policy. One of the best pandemic expert in the world. Probably a bit overqualified for his position. The day he went to brief the mayor was the day China first release their first public message about the disease (although they called it a pneumonia outbreak) and the U.S. CDC said it first learned of a “cluster of 27 cases of pneumonia” of unexplained origin in Wuhan, China, on December 31, 2019.

Do you have any source confirming that? I find it doubtful that he went to the major on New Years Eve to report a cluster of pneumonia in China that hadn't killed anyone - and that they should start preparing for it.

[PhaelixWW]

Depends on the vaccine: it may contain a viable virus and you get the disease (unlikely in this case - but happened for Polio)

It's important to point out that the only reason this happened with polio is because the OPV is much cheaper than the IPV; the IPV has been available for longer, though. Had there been sufficient money/will, there never would have been a live-attenuated virus vaccine ever used for polio.

[Rasulis]

Do you have any source confirming that? I find it doubtful that he went to the major on New Years Eve to report a cluster of pneumonia in China that hadn't killed anyone - and that they should start preparing for it.

San Francisco Was Uniquely Prepared for Covid-19

ON DECEMBER 31 last year, Chinese health officials released their first official report of a mysterious pneumonia outbreak in the city of Wuhan. Within a day, a Reuters article about that outbreak appeared in one of the many professional daily newsfeeds to which Diane Havlir subscribes.

The Wuhan outbreak also caught the attention of Grant Colfax, who had done his medical residency at UCSF and served as President Obama's director of national AIDS policy before taking his current job as director of the San Francisco Department of Public Health. “As I was watching the data,” Colfax told me, “there was an increasing consensus that once it got here it would move quickly, and also a foreboding sense that there was not a coordinated federal response. We were going to need to react locally and regionally and create systems without sufficient operational support from the federal side.”

Deciding it was time to tell the mayor, Colfax walked out of his office in San Francisco's Civic Center Plaza, crossed Grove Street, ascended the broad marble steps of City Hall, and made his way up to the second floor. There, he briefed Mayor London Breed, a pragmatic San Francisco native who grew up in low-income housing near City Hall. Breed confesses that she was initially skeptical in the face of Colfax's alarm.

“I was getting a little tired of hearing every day that this thing is going to be big,” says Breed. “I was like, ‘We don't have any cases!’ I don't think I really understood until they explained, ‘Here's the number of hospital beds we have and ICUs and ventilators, and if we do nothing, people are going to die, like a lot of people.’”

There was no date about when he came to her office. So you are right, he probably came to her office in early January 2020.

[Ihavewaffles]

Everything Russia claims should be, as usual, taken with a massive grain of salt.

They certainly have the capacity, the people and the knowledge to develop a vaccine - no doubt there, but whether this thing is real, effective or was just some slapdash work with cut corners just for the sake of sticking it to the West... nobody knows really.

My guesstimate is that it is real, but likely not tested properly so who knows how effective it is and what strings are attached there.

Dude, you need five years, FIVE YEARS, to test it properly on people for long-term effects.
Now, you really want to watch the world economy going to shit until 2025? Be my guest n sink your country, but others won't follow.

This vaccine has been in development for years for the other corona bullshit China was responsible for years ago (SARS is one form of coronavirus). Russia is a neighbor to China, this is why this concern was going on and why they could make it work for covid-19 too/instead (I'm not an expert on this matter)
There have been variations on SARS n such, and Covid-19 the latest put more funding n effort to get the vaccine done.

While most of the world got off lightly from SARS (dunno why Canada was hit harder than most), many were spooked


I think this dude takes a very neutral approach, would be best if the world put their efforts together instead of bickering...

[Gaidax]

Well I mean, of course it will be explored.

Our Minister of Health straight said they have scheduled the talks in regards with Russian counterparts and if we will get convinced it's a serious product, then there will be negotiations for order."

Nobody is taking such things as is.

[cubby]

Well I mean, of course it will be explored.

Our Minister of Health straight said they have scheduled the talks in regards with Russian counterparts and if we will get convinced it's a serious product, then there will be negotiations for order."

Nobody is taking such things as is.

There is just no way Russia beat Europe to a vaccine for COVID-19. I wouldn't take aspirin produced by Russian at this point....

[Masark]

It's important to point out that the only reason this happened with polio is because the OPV is much cheaper than the IPV; the IPV has been available for longer, though. Had there been sufficient money/will, there never would have been a live-attenuated virus vaccine ever used for polio.

Not the only reason. There was also issues with the manufacture of IPV.

Also, I believe the OPV produces a stronger immunity, making it more suitable for initial vaccination campaigns in endemic areas.

[Forogil]

Not the only reason. There was also issues with the manufacture of IPV.

And there were also incidents 20 years before that, which some say delayed the vaccines by about 20 years.