Mega-Thread: Coronavirus Pandemic

[Stelio Kontos]

So with the rioting/protests in Netherlands, Tunisia, Lebanon, and Israel, and other places experiencing growing unrest the last few months, will even more painful lockdowns have worse repercussions than the virus they're trying to stop? Read that some mayor in the Netherlands said the country's on the way to civil war the way things are going with the unrest.

[MCMLXXXII]

So with the rioting/protests in Netherlands, Tunisia, Lebanon, and Israel, and other places experiencing growing unrest the last few months, will even more painful lockdowns have worse repercussions than the virus they're trying to stop? Read that some mayor in the Netherlands said the country's on the way to civil war the way things are going with the unrest.

That mayor already retracted that statement. It seems the rioting is already easing down. Most of them were youngsters just looking for a reason to riot and loot. They are shitting their pants now that football hooligans said that they would join the police bitchslapping those youngsters.

[Vash The Stampede]

Why should I be less pessimistic? The clusterfuck people displayed give me very little reason to trust people to get their shit together

The amount of stupidity displayed by people during this pandemic gives me no less reason to be pessimistic. What I fear is that people who receive the vaccine will let down their guard and avoid using a mask and other precautions we did during the pandemic. If we're not careful a new mutation could make the virus evade the vaccine and this process starts all over again, and we don't need people going out and spreading it while they think they're immune.

[Zantos]

Now people are talkking about these businesses in Italy that are apparently all deciding to just ignore orders to shut down and are going to do as they please. Saying that "what is the government protecting us from? Joy? Family? Fun?"

It makes me want to scream at all of them and be like "what? You want to die? Because this is how you manage to do it, by ignoring a pandemic". Ugh. This world is screwed. All its literally going to take is 1 lethal virus and we will all be dead. No question about it.

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The amount of stupidity displayed by people during this pandemic gives me no less reason to be pessimistic. What I fear is that people who receive the vaccine will let down their guard and avoid using a mask and other precautions we did during the pandemic. If we're not careful a new mutation could make the virus evade the vaccine and this process starts all over again, and we don't need people going out and spreading it while they think they're immune.

Lets be real here, most people equate vaccine = immune. They will absolutely drop their guard and ignore everything, including scientists telling them that they could still carry the virus to others. Just look at face masks. They were not meant to be the only thing someone does. Yet here we are, most people using a mask and acting like its enough. All while ignoring literally everything telling them that its not enough on its own and that you have to still social distance and practice good hygiene.

In short: they will absolutely drop their guard. We cannot handle a pandemic. History, and now, has repeatedly taught us that.

[Forogil]

Currently, some 150 million+ flu vaccine shots are administered in the US, and that's just the US. If Pfizer/BioNTech are interested in profit, that's where they'll make it. But in order for them to make that profit, they have to come in cheaper per dose than the alternative.

They (Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna and CureVac) will sell on being better (as mRNA vaccines have considerably higher efficacy) not cheaper; similarly as quadrivalent flu shots ones replaced trivalent - because even if more expensive they were deemed cost-effective, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27987647/

But we will see.

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Lets be real here, most people equate vaccine = immune. They will absolutely drop their guard and ignore everything, including scientists telling them that they could still carry the virus to others.

Which is perfectly normal, as vaccinated persons being less infectious is a major goal of mass-vaccinations.
In particular the early vaccination of nursing home staff (etc) is to a large extent driven by this.

However, it doesn't happen immediately but starting two weeks after 1st shot, and then even more one week after 2nd shot.
They might still be a bit infectious after that.

I don't know why there is this increase in telling people they might be infectious after getting vaccinated: is it the small remaining risk that is worrying, is it that people don't understand they need to wait one week after 2nd shot, or is the worry that otherwise some party-dudes will cut the line to get vaccinated first to skip all precautions?
(I believe the latter is one of the reasons WHO is currently not pushing for vaccine-passports - but disguised as "low current availability of vaccines".)

[Granyala]

Now people are talkking about these businesses in Italy that are apparently all deciding to just ignore orders to shut down and are going to do as they please. Saying that "what is the government protecting us from? Joy? Family? Fun?"

It depends. I can understand people going "screw this!" if the decision is between starving/losing your home etc and a ~1% chance to die yourself.
At some point people just have to take the risk and as mean as it sounds: some 80+yr old gramps dying so a young family can put food on the table sounds like a reasonable trade-off. This is a real problem in 3rd world countries and yelling "muh pandemic you idiots!111" is not going to change that.

You need to realize that not everyone is as sheltered as e.g.: we are in Germany, where it isn't that big of a deal if you lose your job because the state takes care of you. No idea how it is for Italy specifically.

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I don't know why there is this increase in telling people they might be infectious after getting vaccinated

Very simple: in most countries only a handful of people are vaccinated up to today. So even if the risk of transmission is lower, most folks are still susceptible to the virus and most importantly, the caseloads are still very high. In Germany they are high enough to warrant an extension of the lockdown.
Hence: vaccinated folks cannot drop the masks and regulations just yet.

[Forogil]

Very simple: in most countries only a handful of people are vaccinated up to today. So even if the risk of transmission is lower, most folks are still susceptible to the virus and most importantly, the caseloads are still very high. In Germany they are high enough to warrant an extension of the lockdown.

Those are good reasons to continue with the precautions (including solidarity - would be a bit annoying to see vaccinated 80-year olds partying on the streets), but what I see as new are statements saying that we don't know whether people can be infectious after getting vaccinated.

Like CDC saying "We also don’t yet know whether getting a COVID-19 vaccine will prevent you from spreading the virus that causes COVID-19 to other people, even if you don’t get sick yourself."

In one sense it is technically true (as we haven't checked it yet), but it's also deliberately not telling the whole picture - as we based on other vaccines expect vaccinated persons to be at least significantly less infectious. And CDC is also saying "Vaccinating healthcare personnel helps prevent patients from getting COVID-19".

[Easo]

I can bet that some people will stop caring just straight after the first shot, even.

Right now EU is having a spat with vaccine manufacturers and especially Astra Zeneca is doing something strange. Will see how it plays out and who is really guilty. I doubt EU signed a non-binding agreement with Zeneca as they claim EU did.
P.S.
Meantime in my country (Latvia) corruption investigation services have started searching answers to why exactly we ordered less Pfizer vaccines than other Baltic states and bet more on Moderna.
The previous health minister was forced to resign half a month ago, but it was done during her time. Supposedly because we dont have enough cold storage but even then, we had enough of it for bigger initial deliveries and thus more people vaccinated.

[the game]

So China is now rolling out anal swabbing to test for covid. Because it's more accurate. Can't wait for Fauci to get off on that.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...524_story.html

SEOUL — Months-long lockdowns. Entire city populations herded through the streets for mandatory testing. The people of China could be forgiven for thinking they had seen it all during the coronavirus pandemic.

But now they face a new indignity: the addition of anal swabs — yes, you read that right — to the testing regimen for those in quarantine.

Chinese state media outlets introduced the new protocol in recent days, prompting widespread discussion and some outrage. Some Chinese doctors say the science is there. Recovering patients, they say, have continued to test positive through samples from the lower digestive tract days after nasal and throat swabs came back negative.

Yet for many, it seemed a step too far in government intrusions after a year and counting of a dignity-eroding pandemic.

“Everyone involved will be so embarrassed,” one user in Guangdong province said on Weibo, a Chinese social media platform, on Wednesday. In a Weibo poll, 80 percent of respondents said they “could not accept” the invasive method.

Even Chinese doctors in support of the new tests said the method’s inconvenience meant it only made sense to use in select groups, such as at quarantine centers.

“If we add anal swab testing, it can raise our rate of identifying infected patients,” Li Tongzeng, an infectious-disease specialist at Beijing You’an Hospital, said on state-run broadcaster CCTV on Sunday. “But of course considering that collecting anal swabs is not as convenient as throat swabs, at the moment only key groups such as those in quarantine receive both.”

A year after Wuhan coronavirus lockdown, trauma runs deep in China’s ‘Hero City’

The crackdown comes just over a year after the virus began spreading rapidly in the country. Chinese officials are worried about the approach of Lunar New Year next month, often called the world’s largest annual migration. Some 3 billion trips are made over the holiday during a non-pandemic year, which means even a single silent coronavirus case could rapidly leapfrog across the nation.

China is seeking to vaccinate 50 million people before the holiday, but that’s less than 4 percent of its population, far too low a rate to prevent mass transmission.

Officials have tightened restrictions in recent weeks, with tens of millions of people returned to lockdown in areas with isolated outbreaks. As before, travelers arriving from overseas go straight into two weeks of hotel quarantine — but now a third week of home quarantine has been added, and a fourth week of daily reports to health officials.

[DarkAmbient]

It makes me want to scream at all of them and be like "what? You want to die? Because this is how you manage to do it, by ignoring a pandemic". Ugh. This world is screwed. All its literally going to take is 1 lethal virus and we will all be dead. No question about it..

We're a remarkably resilient and creative species though. And I actually think it's practically impossible for a virus to make the human race extinct. Something that can kill the vast majority of hosts isn't going to spread very far, and even with an unusually long incubation time we can still react to minimise the damage.

If anything's going to wipe us out, it'll be a supervolcano, asteroid, or climate change.

[PhaelixWW]

Those are good reasons to continue with the precautions (including solidarity - would be a bit annoying to see vaccinated 80-year olds partying on the streets), but what I see as new are statements saying that we don't know whether people can be infectious after getting vaccinated.

Like CDC saying "We also don’t yet know whether getting a COVID-19 vaccine will prevent you from spreading the virus that causes COVID-19 to other people, even if you don’t get sick yourself."

In one sense it is technically true (as we haven't checked it yet), but it's also deliberately not telling the whole picture - as we based on other vaccines expect vaccinated persons to be at least significantly less infectious. And CDC is also saying "Vaccinating healthcare personnel helps prevent patients from getting COVID-19".

Except that that also ignores the fact that the vaccine isn't 100% effective. If it's 90% effective, for example, then 10% the vaccinated people can still contract COVID and pass it on normally, while 90% of the people might be limited carriers. Then couple that with people relaxing too soon. They'd realistically have to wait for week after the second shot, but human nature is that people will start to relax even just after the first shot, where the effectiveness is nowhere near 90%.

Even if it were just the 90% being limited carriers, that's something to avoid, but when you add in the other 10%...

...you start worrying about everyone relaxing all at once, because as we've seen, relaxing the safety rules increases the transmissibility by quite a lot.

Easier and safer just to tell everyone the simple truth: you should continue to exercise good personal safety measures even after vaccination, period.

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So China is now rolling out anal swabbing to test for covid. Because it's more accurate. Can't wait for Fauci to get off on that.

Weird, I thought it was Trump and his cultists who were obsessed with China's asses?

[Forogil]

Except that that also ignores the fact that the vaccine isn't 100% effective. If it's 90% effective, for example, then 10% the vaccinated people can still contract COVID and pass it on normally, while 90% of the people might be limited carriers. Then couple that with people relaxing too soon. They'd realistically have to wait for week after the second shot, but human nature is that people will start to relax even just after the first shot, where the effectiveness is nowhere near 90%.

Even if it were just the 90% being limited carriers, that's something to avoid, but when you add in the other 10%...

...you start worrying about everyone relaxing all at once, because as we've seen, relaxing the safety rules increases the transmissibility by quite a lot.

Easier and safer just to tell everyone the simple truth: you should continue to exercise good personal safety measures even after vaccination, period.

Yes, that is the truth - but what I don't like is when CDC misleads by saying that we don't know if you can spread the infection after getting vaccinated - even if that is done for good reasons.

[PhaelixWW]

Yes, that is the truth - but what I don't like is when CDC misleads by saying that we don't know if you can spread the infection after getting vaccinated - even if that is done for good reasons.

That's a fair criticism, I suppose.

But while their statement might be misleading (with some reason), it's not untrue.

SARS-CoV-2 is still primarily a URI. The nature of URIs is that they can be tougher for antibodies to fight because a) it takes longer for the body to "sense" the virus, as it's only replicating on the fringes of the body's immune system, and b) therefore the antibodies aren't always produced with enough urgency to instantly block the virus.

LiveScience: Why do we develop lifelong immunity to some diseases, but not others?

The common cold, and other viruses that don’t typically get past our upper respiratory tract, reinfect us not necessarily because they mutate rapidly, but because our body doesn't usually produce many antibodies against these pathogens in the first place, said Mark Slifka, an immunologist at the Oregon National Primate Research Center. "Our bodies are not worried about the upper respiratory tract," he said. That's what we're seeing with mild cases of COVID-19. The virus sticks to the upper respiratory tract, where the body does not treat it like a threat. In a 2020 preprint study (meaning it hasn't been peer reviewed yet) published in the database MedRxiv, 10 out of 175 patients who had mild symptoms recovered from COVID-19 without developing detectable antibodies.

That all being said, the vaccine by its very nature should produce a much stronger immune response and longer-lasting protection, so it might be enough to prevent even a light URI from progressing far enough to allow the infection of others. But by the same nature of URIs, it might not.

[Forogil]

I can bet that some people will stop caring just straight after the first shot, even.

Right now EU is having a spat with vaccine manufacturers and especially Astra Zeneca is doing something strange. Will see how it plays out and who is really guilty.

Yes, there seems to be several disagreements with vaccine manufacturers.

Astra-Zeneca is falling really short of their targets, and there are lots of rumors circulating regarding meeting with EU (the vaccine might be approved on Friday in the EU), and there are also rumors of really low efficacy for the elderly.
To me it more seems that they are having teething problem with building new factories - but there could be more.
https://www.msn.com/en-xl/money/tops...ow/ar-BB1d99dl

And then Pfizer (don't know how involved BioNTech is with this) have authorized getting 6 doses (instead of 5) from the vials, after some found that it was possible.
Sounds good at first.
But then Pfizer say they were selling vaccine doses not vaccine quantity, so if the vial contains 20% more their shipment now contain 20% more doses!
And then people realize that there are not enough of the syringes needed for 6 doses...
https://www.barrons.com/news/five-or...ls-01611758706

[PhaelixWW]

And then Pfizer (don't know how involved BioNTech is with this) have authorized getting 6 doses (instead of 5) from the vials, after some found that it was possible.
Sounds good at first.
But then Pfizer say they were selling vaccine doses not vaccine quantity, so if the vial contains 20% more their shipment now contain 20% more doses!
And then people realize that there are not enough of the syringes needed for 6 doses...
https://www.barrons.com/news/five-or...ls-01611758706

The US is taking a novel approach to this...

Squeezing all six doses out of the Pfizer vials requires the use of special syringes that are in short supply. As a result, the sixth dose is often discarded, trapped in the small dead space in regular syringes, where the syringe’s stopper cannot reach it to plunge into a human arm.

President Biden highlighted the urgent need to produce more of the specialty syringes — called low dead space syringes, because they are more efficient — in his pandemic response plan unveiled this week. His administration said it plans to use the Defense Production Act to procure more of the specialty syringes.

The Biden administration and Pfizer finalized a deal Friday that will allow the government to track which shipments are accompanied by low dead space syringes and which are not, according to an individual close to the negotiations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the details.

Vials accompanied by regular syringes will be counted as five doses against Pfizer’s contract for 200 million shots, and those accompanied by special syringes will count as six shots toward contract fulfillment.

The arrangement will allow Pfizer to avoid a controversy in the United States that flared in Europe last week, when press reports said Pfizer would be paid for six vaccine doses per vial even though medical providers lacked the equipment required to use all six.

[Corvus]

Australia is planning on starting vaccinating next month - yeah, we haven't started here. The approval process has been a bit more cautious, watching what has been happening elsewhere. Basically we could do this as it is largely under control here - i think it has been a week since the last case of community transmission. If it was as bad as elsewhere then I'm sure the process would have been sped up.

They are hoping to have everyone done by October too - well, except for the raging freedums/anti-vaxxers who keep screaming conspiracy without explaining what the conspiracy is.

[Poopymonster]

So China is now rolling out anal swabbing to test for covid. Because it's more accurate. Can't wait for Fauci to get off on that.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...524_story.html

I can see the Japanese using this one. Dr. Kancho will see you now.

[Puupi]

So China is now rolling out anal swabbing to test for covid. Because it's more accurate. Can't wait for Fauci to get off on that.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...524_story.html

I would much rather have an anal swab than a nasal swab. An anal swab is completely harmless and painless operation.

[Puupi]

Drive-up anal swabbing?

The nasal swab wasn’t that bad lol

I would have zero issues with it. Though I understand why many people would find it terrifying etc. even when there's no need to.

[Elegiac]

Drive-up anal swabbing?

The nasal swab wasn’t that bad lol

This is literally just Grindr.