EPTCoronavirus and You - Page 295
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Any and all updates regarding the COVID-19 will need a source provided. Please do your part in helping us to keep this thread maintainable and under control. It is YOUR responsibility to fully read through the sources that you link, and you MUST provide a brief summary explaining what the source is about. Do not expect other people to do the work for you. Conspiracy theories and fear mongering will absolutely not be tolerated in this thread. Expect harsh mod actions if you try to incite fear needlessly. This is not a politics thread! You are allowed to post information regarding politics if it's related to the coronavirus, but do NOT discuss politics in here. Added a disclaimer on page 662. Many need to post better. | ||
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BlackJack
United States10574 Posts
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SC-Shield
Bulgaria843 Posts
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WombaT
Northern Ireland26794 Posts
On November 24 2020 10:20 BlackJack wrote: Yep, the inconsistences are aplenty. Like the Australian woman that was arrested for trying to organize the protest. I first saw that on Reddit and nearly all of the top comments were along the lines of "Play stupid games win stupid prizes." But if you went on Reddit and tried to argue that people attempting to organize BLM protests should be arrested and their homes raided you would be downvoted to Hades. It's sad how many people don't realize that if you don't have freedom of speech for everyone then you don't have freedom of speech for anyone. I feel we teeter on a weird precipice where ‘Covid shaming’ literally anyone will become a thing, culture dependent. Kind of like the white feather movement in WW1. Purely anecdotal of course but least where I’m standing it seems to have migrated from criticisms of the crazies to criticism of anyone who has any kind of misgiving about prioritisations. And none of it is consistent whatsoever. Makes me the grumpy. | ||
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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JimmyJRaynor
Canada17517 Posts
On November 24 2020 19:32 SC-Shield wrote: The most important advice I can give is not to wait for government to act. I wear a mask even outside (not mandatory) since we have 4k cases daily when we had only 50-80 during Easter. Back then, I didn't care much and I still think it was exaggerated, but now I care more than some people. Also, we're entering a lockdown for some weeks at least which I welcome. it is rather fascinating i hear so little talk about the best practices for keeping one's immune system in tip top shape. one biggie.. i never hear discussed.... keep cortisol levels down to keep your immune system functioning well. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4465119/ Psychological stress has been linked empirically with dysregulation of facets of the human immune system, yet these effects are not the same in every situation or population. Recent research has made strides towards understanding risk factors for immune dysregulation as well as why these risks occur. cortisol is your body's response to extreme danger. | ||
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Lmui
Canada6223 Posts
With an equal, or larger number of people celebrating Thanksgiving in a similar way in the USA, we could see in excess of 250k cases regularly within a week of thanksgiving. | ||
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Nevuk
United States16280 Posts
On November 25 2020 10:03 Lmui wrote: Going by what the Indian holiday Diwali did to Surrey (A heavily indian city in BC), it doubled case numbers with 1/3rd of the population in the city identifying as Indian. Diwali approximately doubled their cases inside of a week. With an equal, or larger number of people celebrating Thanksgiving in a similar way in the USA, we could see in excess of 250k cases regularly within a week of thanksgiving. I'm expecting a million a day, but I'm a pessimist. We've been over 100k/day for 20 days now, and we've hit 200k (technically, 198.5k on the 20th) already. Basically no one is listening to the CDC advice. Last estimate I saw 50 million instead of the 55 million from last year were estimated to be traveling. The most generous estimates should be in the 350-500k/day range in two weeks. Sidenote on my personal thanksgiving experience: I was originally not going to do anything with my family until we all realized today that we had literally not been in contact with any non family members for two weeks due to some random coincidences (wife taking time off work, I work from home, my sister's family has been home for two weeks due to school closures, etc) and I do live close enough to make it without stopping anywhere (which is the only possible exposure risk from us). My only concern is that my sister is a primary care doctor, but she's... very paranoid. Enough so that I'm pretty confident in any advice she gives as to if its safe or not. She's already banned my college-age brother because he's gone out and about recently. (And we may still change our minds. Basically, even if our throat feels sore in a way that we think is due to allergies, then no, not going). | ||
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Fleetfeet
Canada2720 Posts
On November 25 2020 10:03 Lmui wrote: Going by what the Indian holiday Diwali did to Surrey (A heavily indian city in BC), it doubled case numbers with 1/3rd of the population in the city identifying as Indian. Diwali approximately doubled their cases inside of a week. With an equal, or larger number of people celebrating Thanksgiving in a similar way in the USA, we could see in excess of 250k cases regularly within a week of thanksgiving. I was supposed to go visit family (Driving from Alberta to Surrey) just before Diwali, but the messaging that was released two days before we leave indicated that the recommendations were NOONE outside your immediate family unit, no groups or gatherings whatsoever aside from for religious purposes, outdoor adventures (walks and whatever) limited to two people of the same family unit etc etc So, anyways, we didn't go. It sucks, but I'd rather not bring sickness there, or bring it back, and I hope other people make/made the same unfortunate choice. | ||
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SC-Shield
Bulgaria843 Posts
Just 70% and as high as 90% with some tweaks. Not that impressive when compared to Pfizer and Moderna which have 90% or more. It was my top choice because a university is involved not yet another big pharma/corporation, hence more trustworthiness but sadly it's not as competitive so far.... | ||
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RvB
Netherlands6274 Posts
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Sbrubbles
Brazil5776 Posts
On November 25 2020 18:45 SC-Shield wrote: My top hope, the Oxford vacine, doesn't seem as effective as I wanted: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03326-w Just 70% and as high as 90% with some tweaks. Not that impressive when compared to Pfizer and Moderna which have 90% or more. It was my top choice because a university is involved not yet another big pharma/corporation, hence more trustworthiness but sadly it's not as competitive so far.... From what I understand, it's cheaper and doesn't have the storage restrictions of Pfiser and Moderna so it might end up being the best choice depending on circumstances Edit: oops, didn't see post above | ||
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warding
Portugal2395 Posts
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Harris1st
Germany7202 Posts
With 3 different vaccine developer each producing (and hopefully distributing) about 100 million doses a month starting in January we may beat this thing by summer next year  | ||
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WarSame
Canada1950 Posts
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Lmui
Canada6223 Posts
We were hoping for anything above 50% at the start of this, so even 70% is pretty damn good. Any vaccine is better than no vaccine, and if you can take an Oxford today, rather than Pfizer in 3 months and get on with life, it's still a good choice. The difference between 90% and 95% is probably still pretty close to being within error bars. | ||
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Nevuk
United States16280 Posts
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Lmui
Canada6223 Posts
On November 26 2020 04:32 Nevuk wrote: Oxford is actually 62%. 70% was the overall average when combining the two groups (the one with a 1/2 dosage and then full was 90%). Hopefully follow-up studies shows the 90% isn't a fluke. Presumably the dosage schedule will be the half then full dose. That also lets you vaccinate 33% more people with the same amount of vaccine, which would be sweet. | ||
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StalkerTL
212 Posts
On November 23 2020 12:22 Danglars wrote: Authoritarian states are just gonna have an innate advantage in the rare pandemic of this size. They can mass incarcerate people right off the gun and not risk immediate removal. They can literally weld non compliers, or suspected non compliers, into their apartments, and have no court in the land fix that up by the end of the day. If we take clutZ's hypothesis of noncompliance higher in inner cities and lower socioeconomic status, it would mean a government satisfied with sudden mass incarceration of african americans to a degree that would make current complaints about the "same issue" not even close to the same league. He has reason to reach a conclusion that sounds nihilistic. The options are bad. Then again, free societies distrustful of the exercise of authority gain advantages in other ways. Looking at the landscape of states, if I didn't label Texas compared to other Southern/border states, I'd challenge any member of the thread to point out which trendline it was and what was the point at which they should've done something. Blue states that didn't do much of a lockdown did both bad in some cases, and well in others. Red states that didn't do much of a lockdown did both bad in some cases, and well in others. Across a huge variety of mitigation measures adopted, the graphs did not show which states had the highest count of measures enacted by the heights of their curves. The media attention on states like Arizona, Texas, and Florida were and are disproportionate compared to the performance of other states. Nobody here should expect states to shut down air travel or interstate travel. They can, and some have, attempted to implement contact tracing and quarantines backed by fines for out of state travelers. The emphasis on red states was mostly due to the fact the majority of them did fuck all when the blue states were getting ravaged. It would be to their state’s benefit to try to lock borders and prevent travellers from major international entry points (East and West coast states) to protect their economies and populations in the long run until said states can prove that they have the virus under control. Instead red state politicians took shots at New York...until their states started to pile up the dead and sick. I need to make it clear that coronavirus has shown that every US government system is rudderless. Political affiliation matters not, the collective country has utterly failed. All mitigation strategies are pointless when we are allowing the spread to go across every US border. Fines and contact tracing doesn’t do much when the spread is so virulent. Australia has the right idea to lockdown hard when exponential growth is clear because that’s the time you can contact trace. What good is contact tracing going to do in California or Texas where case growth exceeds those of many Asian countries? You can say Australians are authoritarian with their lockdowns and restrictions but at least they can go have the Christmas seasons with their family without a good risk of sending their older parents straight to the ICU come New Years. On November 24 2020 06:46 Belisarius wrote: I'll throw in some Australian perspective from the last page. I realise you’re arguing this point by proxy rather than in earnest, but Australia is much closer to the US than Asia in terms of personal freedoms. We pretend we’re a nation of convicts; it's not like we're into collectivism. Apart from being an island, the thing that has served us well during covid is recognising that we’re stupid and selfish, and resolving to make it as difficult as possible for this to ruin things. In practice, that's meant going hard for short periods rather than soft for long periods, on the basis that the latter is impossible to police. Anecdotally, the mood on the street is very supportive, especially over the last month. People look at Victoria's outcomes with real pride, and know we would instead look like the US if not for lockdowns. Groups like the Pirate Party of Australia, normally all about civil liberty, are on board with restrictions, and even the crazy right-wing nationalists are struggling to meaningfully criticise the situation. We apparently had the largest post-COVID sporting event in the world last week, 50k people in a full stadium and not a single case. I won’t pretend I thought it was a good idea, but even I will admit that it’s a powerful symbol. People see now that by relinquishing freedom for a period of time, we actually earn our freedom back. What Australia has shown is that lockdowns and restrictions only work if you are proactive and actually seek to combat the virus definitively rather than see lockdowns as a means of bringing cases down to a point that hospitals aren’t overrun. Europe and America are far too slow with their measures, governments have no real balls until it’s too late. And even then, like America, don’t bother locking down borders because...? It’s counterproductive, all it does is make people choose to live with the virus. Which shouldn’t be an option governments should choose to make but apparently exponential growth is difficult to comprehend unless it’s tied to stock trading. I followed Victoria’s saga because they’re a Western nation that got hit by the 2nd wave. To the government’s credit, they started a hard lockdown before they reached an excessive amount of exponential growth because presumably the government can read a graph. South Australia took a similar approach by locking everything down at 20 cases because it was looking like the situation was starting to get exponential. The lockdown doesn’t seem to require more than a week (?) because contact tracing has confirmed that someone lied about something and the situation isn’t as extreme as it once seemed. It isn’t even a left or right thing. I think Victoria’s government is left wing while South Australia’s government is right wing. Both did the right thing by acting proactively rather than reactively. Can you imagine Thanksgiving in a state with zero coronavirus cases at all? That’s the state of a Victoria right now for almost a month. Going to a large family gathering in America is like a game of Russian roulette because you have no idea if you contracted the virus by accident or one of your idiot relatives thinks the virus is a hoax and that the elderly people in your family are at no risk of dying. | ||
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Magic Powers
Austria4478 Posts
Switzerland has decided to protect its economy first. https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/11/10/coronavirus-switzerland-is-choosing-austerity-over-life/ Switzerland is less in debt from the first lockdown than Germany, yet: "Still, Maurer claims that a new lockdown would risk sacrificing the economy and public finances on the altar of health." "But keeping businesses open and holding the purse strings tight may not only be bad health policy but also bad economics. As the fear of contagion starts to creep in, the Swiss are reducing their social life anyway, mobility data shows—leaving restaurants open but without clients." I'd like to add that calls for social distancing were made by the government but not enforced. Bed capacity reached by Nov 19th. https://www.euronews.com/2020/11/19/intensive-care-units-in-switzerland-at-capacity-because-of-covid-19-pandemic Austria has twice the bed capacity as Switzerland which explains why Switzerland was considered to be in trouble. https://www.politico.eu/article/charting-europes-capacity-to-deal-with-the-coronavirus-crisis/ Switzerland has almost the same population size as Austria but about twice the population density. When putting side by side the reported infections, this is what it looks like (images taken from https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus): https://gyazo.com/b41cab3e953abbfc4df60c8d334e6f22 https://gyazo.com/6754e0b3e3a8fd38c234e2af2f4f7e0c There's a strong overlap from the beginning to now, with Switzerland having higher spikes during the second wave but a similar 7-day moving average. In both countries the low point was recorded during early June and the fastest increase in mid October. Both countries are currently seeing a similar infection rate and both rates are dropping at a similar speed. The death rates are also very similar, although during the first wave Switzerland had a higher count. The death rates have not dropped yet. Note: I did not account for potential differences in testing and reporting in this analysis. The way I see it, factors like bed capacity and population density are key in deciding the best course of action. It's hard to compare the impact of different policies in different countries without considering such things. In one country a tighter approach might work better and in another country a more lax approach might work just as well. The key lies in constant communication between the populace and the government, whereas sweeping generalizations inevitably end up causing needless harm. Switzerland may've benefitted from a stricter approach due to bed capacity and population density, whereas the hard lockdown in Austria may've been overshooting the target. We can't draw conclusions yet, but it's important to look at the details and point out differences. | ||
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Elroi
Sweden5600 Posts
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