EPTCoronavirus and You - Page 348
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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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Magic Powers
Austria4478 Posts
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LegalLord
United States13779 Posts
On February 08 2021 21:58 warding wrote: I'm not sure why the world isn't talking about directing 50M Pfizer vaccines to South Africa immediately to try to nuke the new variant into the ground. This seems to me to be the kind of thing the WHO and COVAX and those types of people should be doing. Maybe that variant has already spread enough that containing it in South Africa would be pointless. The good news is that cases in South Africa have plummeted from a peak of 20k in early January to an average of 3k today. South Africa strain has spread far enough that it'd be useless, yes. Last I heard it has already hit 32 countries. Also, to be honest I found it difficult to confirm that Pfizer really does work well against the variant. Certainly I've seen it claimed, yes, but it looks like AstraZeneca is the only one that had been deployed far and wide enough to get these kinds of numbers. The mechanism by which AstraZeneca fails to deliver would certainly be of interest to understanding what doesn't work, but the South Africa strain seemed to worry just about everyone. | ||
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Slydie
1935 Posts
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TheTenthDoc
United States9561 Posts
Maybe that "we'll have too many vaccines by April in the US unless we reduce hesitancy" guy isn't totally off base. | ||
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Nevuk
United States16280 Posts
(It's 100 mil pfizer and 100 mil moderna), getting to 600 million total by July's end. Is that gonna be enough with these new strains? https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/biden-tours-maryland-lab-developed-covid-19-vaccine-75835695 brief summary from Forbes: Biden announced the extra dose orders during a visit to the National Institutes of Health Thursday afternoon (the Biden administration said it was negotiating to buy more Pfizer and Moderna doses two weeks ago). This latest order means the United States will buy a total of 600 million Pfizer and Moderna vaccine doses, split evenly between the two companies, which is enough to immunize 300 million people because both drugs require two shots. These doses will be delivered by the end of July, Biden said, adding that Pfizer and Moderna also promised to deliver a previous order of 200 million doses by late May — one month earlier than initially expected. https://www.forbes.com/sites/joewalsh/2021/02/11/biden-buys-enough-covid-vaccine-doses-to-immunize-almost-every-american---but-not-right-away/?sh=794498875d68 | ||
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Slydie
1935 Posts
-Many areas, like Murcia, Extremadura, Valencia and Navarra were hit very hard by the 3rd wave, but not much in the 1st and 2nd ones. -Others, like Cataluña and Madrid were hit harder by the 2nd wave, but the numbers for the 1st wave are insecure because of less testing. Was the 3rd wave softer there because of higher degrees of immunity in the population? -A couple of areas had similar "bumps" for the 2nd and 3rd waves. -The numbers of cases stayed low very long following the harsh lockdown, but begun climbing everywhere as summer holiday approached and domestic travelrestrictions were lifted. -Even in Spain having an economy built on tourism, being an island has been a great advantage fighting this pandemic. The nationwide acumulated 14day number is still around 500, which is high, but with numbers are similar to the ones in the start of the 3rd wave and going down fast. Now it remains to be seen if smart lifting of restrictions and vaccines can help so that a 4th wave does not hit. https://www.mscbs.gob.es/profesionales/saludPublica/ccayes/alertasActual/nCov/documentos/Actualizacion_311_COVID-19.pdf (Page 10) | ||
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Magic Powers
Austria4478 Posts
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-56084466 I don't know of any existing research supporting curfews as a valid measure against covid-19 or other viral epidemics. My own view is that curfews make no logical sense so we need empirical data to support the measure. In other news, in Austria the restaurants remain closed until March (contrary to what was promised). Many fear that by then a fourth lockdown will be in place. We are supposedly going to have free testing for all people by Easter. This will be a crucial step towards a solution (outside of vaccination). Unfortunately we're several weeks away from that. Also, I've long wished we'd build a web of support and communication to help people self-quarantine, otherwise the effect of testing will not be fully utilized. So far I haven't seen any efforts made toward that by our politicians. | ||
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Harris1st
Germany7189 Posts
The main reason this is a valid measure is you don't do anything anymore. Get up, work, buy groceries, sleep. That is your day. No time to meet even a single person | ||
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Emnjay808
United States10665 Posts
On February 17 2021 17:22 Harris1st wrote: We had a curvew since before christmas. 8 pm till 5 am you were not allowed to leave your house with few exceptions. The main reason this is a valid measure is you don't do anything anymore. Get up, work, buy groceries, sleep. That is your day. No time to meet even a single person Curious how those measures would be enforced if anyone broke curfew. Hawaii had a curfew for non-essentials for a few months(?) and all that was issued were fines for those who broke it. And its not like we had law enforcement patrolling the streets either. It was more along the lines of, if you get pulled over for speeding or any traffic infraction and cannot provide documentation that youre an essential worker--then they would tack on curfew fines on you as well. | ||
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Slydie
1935 Posts
On February 17 2021 17:22 Harris1st wrote: We had a curvew since before christmas. 8 pm till 5 am you were not allowed to leave your house with few exceptions. The main reason this is a valid measure is you don't do anything anymore. Get up, work, buy groceries, sleep. That is your day. No time to meet even a single person In Spain, at least you can go outside from 7 to 22, which is surviveable, it is mainly in place to stop the youngsters from having latenight parties. It is very sad for me to see how just about every country does measures which doubtful effects and cause much more harm than good. Both governments and health authoroties seem to get tunnel-vision on the covid numbers, forgetting that the main target should always be not overloading the hostpitals, not striving to get the numbers to 0. On top of mental health issues and problems due to lack of exercise, the measures can have some pretty dramatic side effects like increased domestic violence, also against children. This can't be over soon enough. https://www.unicef.org/media/68711/file/COVID-19-Protecting-children-from-violence-abuse-and-neglect | ||
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Silvanel
Poland4751 Posts
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Magic Powers
Austria4478 Posts
On February 17 2021 18:31 Silvanel wrote: What? Lockdown has been show to be very effective in reducing new cases time and time again over the previous year in various countries. There is no doubt this is reducing the spread. If the price is too high is another discussion entirely. But there should be any doubts abouth whether this works or not. It does. No one was arguing that lockdown doesn't reduce the spread, the discussion was about curfews. There's no scientific basis for curfews against covid-19, at least not that I'm aware of. It also doesn't make logical sense, because there are various unintended effects. If we put 100 apples into 100 baskets, we have a ratio of 1:1. If we remove 50 baskets, the ratio becomes 2:1. To apply this on curfews: a smaller timeframe would naturally decrease social distancing unless total movement is reduced (by symmetric means) or total contact is reduced (by asymmetric means). Since there's no empiric data supporting curfews, while there is also news about rioting as a result of curfews, I think the burden of proof is - without any doubt - in the hands of the politicians. So far I haven't seen any proof. | ||
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Gorsameth
Netherlands22343 Posts
But I can justify it more as a means of enforcing the rest of the lockdown rules illegal parties are/were very much a thing and unless the police manages to catch them in the act and somehow they don't all scatter and get away its hard to actually punish them. A curfew means the police can pick them up and fine them before or after they get to the party, or hopefully stop the party from happening in the first place. ps. Also worth noting that the main point of the judge was that the curfew was passed as an emergency measure meant for sudden critical disasters, and the fact it was discussed for weeks as a possible measure means it was not a sudden emergency. The issue was not necessarily the usefulness of the curfew itself. | ||
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Slydie
1935 Posts
On February 17 2021 18:31 Silvanel wrote: What? Lockdown has been shown to be very effective in reducing new cases time and time again over the previous year in various countries. There is no doubt this is reducing the spread. If the price is too high is another discussion entirely. But there should be any doubts abouth whether this works or not. It does. A lockdown is not one thing, they are all different from another, and different measures can have different impacts depending on local factors. Not allowing people to go outside and closing schools are the 2 measures I am most critical about. It should be noted that Spain has reversed the massive 3rd wave without closing all non-essential stores, so that might not be needed either. | ||
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Harris1st
Germany7189 Posts
On February 17 2021 17:33 Emnjay808 wrote: Curious how those measures would be enforced if anyone broke curfew. Hawaii had a curfew for non-essentials for a few months(?) and all that was issued were fines for those who broke it. And its not like we had law enforcement patrolling the streets either. It was more along the lines of, if you get pulled over for speeding or any traffic infraction and cannot provide documentation that youre an essential worker--then they would tack on curfew fines on you as well. Police and peer pressure are the main enforcement of that rule. Streets were dead quiet come 8 pm. Funny thing is, curfew was released a week ago and streets are still empty. Keep in mind that we also have/ had very strict distancing rules on top of the curfew (can't meet more than 1 person at a time). Numbers in Germany are way down now, so I guess it helped. Only exception is our eastern border where I guess high numbers from czech republic, poland, slovakia etc ... transfer over | ||
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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Lmui
Canada6223 Posts
Israel is just starting to see a little bit of movement downwards, whereas UK has been cratering in both cases and deaths. Vaccines likely won't be the driver of drops in cases it seems, behaviour will be until vaccine prevalence is very high (probably around 50% first dosed, combined with light measures like social distancing/masks). I'm still hoping summer can be saved this year in Canada. Looks like USA will be largely done their initial campaign in April-May, and supply of vaccines from the USA can start being distributed elsewhere (north, preferably). With the end in sight, my company put out a poll for how we forsee the future of work, and it was ~45% mixed home/work, 40% permanent WFH, 15% daily office. It'll be a change for sure in how we operate. | ||
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DarkPlasmaBall
United States45853 Posts
I’m not gonna lie though… I’m feeling equal parts relief and guilt, given my apparent good luck. I’m sure many, many other people have also signed up all over the place, and checked for updates every day, and I’m sure a significant percentage of them are older or have more health concerns than I do. My registration was a completely standard, phase 1b, teacher-with-no-medical-issues. I called a few centers yesterday, asking if it was hypothetically possible for a person who currently has a covid vaccine appointment to give their position to someone else who might need it more, and each time I was met with a resounding “no”. The reasons I was given had to do with potential fraud and the vetting process; it would have taken too much time to verify that the person giving away their appointment wasn’t an impostor trying to steal an appointment, and the system had already verified the original appointee but it would take too much extra time to verify a new appointee (and potentially waste resources if the appointee wasn’t even eligible). So… I got vaccinated. | ||
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Slydie
1935 Posts
You can call masks and distancing "light" measures compared to curfues, but they both set us very far from what we considered normal life a year ago, and large industries will still struggle. | ||
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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