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On April 05 2021 11:41 Magic Powers wrote:Show nested quote +On April 05 2021 05:31 xM(Z wrote:On April 04 2021 21:52 Magic Powers wrote:On April 04 2021 19:37 xM(Z wrote: that's consistent with covid being seasonal which is fine by some current data, the argument there being the severity of the symptoms(which is what vaccines suppose to address).
thing is, i was talking about preexisting since the '70s / '80s etc immunity(technically it's not immunity but an adaptation with which ones immune system recognizes covid19 and reacts accordingly). it helps with math on herd immunity data/models. It's not clear yet if herd immunity is a realistic target. I can say with a high degree of certainty that at least globally it's very unrealistic. Israel has a chance at getting there and maybe other countries could follow. The problem with herd immunity is that it's a broad concept, so a number of things can go wrong. It's not a targeted effort against individual infections. If we combine the effort towards herd immunity with a system of not only international but also domestic quarantining plus track and trace, we greatly increase our chances of defeating sars-cov-2 and returning to normal. Combining the broad and the specific. Not only would this be a lot more effective domestically, but it would also allow us to battle the virus globally. And that's hugely important, among other reasons because importing and exporting the virus is what has got us into this mess in the first place. Factors like vaccine hesitancy (I believe Israel has started to offer meals and even alcohol to young people as an added incentive) and mutations are a real pain. There's also the phenomenon where vaccines don't work in entire regions. These are a few of the reasons for introducing specific measures and not just broad ones. sure but you base everything on us starting from zero immunity. what if we already have a 30-40% sort of immunity/resistance/way to deal with covid19?. ('cause even with vaccines, you either repeat them twice(?) a year(i don't think it's sustainable) or you get covid again next season/year). having antibodies is only a part of the picture on having immunity. there's 5 ways(from what i read) for a body to identify/recognize covid19 and attack/kill it. i'm interested here in T cell immune response(to SARS-CoV-2 in this case). FDA approved some tests for it(with other tests pending)but there is (inconclusive)research suggesting people who never had covid19 already have T-cells that can be used/are used if/when infected with covid. those people would count as having herd immunity. As Dangermousecatdog correctly states, individual immunity is not herd immunity. Also, it's unknown at this point how much the vaccines against covid-19 drive down the transmission rate, or even if they do so at all (although it's likely that some of them do). 30-40% of people being immune doesn't necessitate a reduction in the transmission rate within the population. Also, it's especially unclear what exactly that rate does for the most vulnerable people who experience severe cases of covid-19, and those are the people we mostly need to worry about as it pertains to herd immunity. There are different types of immunity, and the one we can effectively utilize (besides living a healthy life) to get to herd immunity is achieved by vaccines, which we use to achieve artificially acquired active immunity in individuals. All the other types of immunity can be part of a mathematical model, but we can't meaningfully effect them, and it's also difficult to estimate their prevalence. As things stand right now it makes the most sense to vaccinate as many people as possible. You are right in saying that covid-19 is likely to return yearly or seasonally even with mass vaccination, which is one of the reasons why I'm against betting everything on vaccines. Despite all the amazing strides that the vaccine industry keeps making, we should look to add other methods to fight a more complete battle against this virus (and honestly all viruses). I sound like a broken record in this regard, but my bets are on the Taiwanese model. And in regards to that, I'm finally starting to see why exactly other countries haven't copied that model (it's petty politics by China and thus also the UN, which effects participation in the WHO. Link below). Taiwan is barred from joining the WHO despite having continuously offered their help to the global community. They desperately want to help everyone but they're not allowed to effectively communicate their insights on this pandemic. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-52088167 i don't care about herd immunity at a global level; it does nothing for anyone but statistics. localized population level immunity is meaningful because it immediately affects people lives by ways of lifting restrictions, businesses get to reopen, tourism restarts etc.
Herd immunity (also called herd effect, community immunity, or population immunity) is a form of indirect protection from infectious disease that can occur with some diseases when a sufficient percentage of a population has become immune to an infection, whether through vaccination or previous infections .. . 30-40% of a population is not herd immunity, no one said that, but it's better than 0.
https://hms.harvard.edu/news/immune-memory-after-covid-19 ...Now, a report from a new study led by Harvard Medical School investigators at the Ragon Institute, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital suggests that the mere presence of antibodies may not be sufficient to determine whether a person has built long-lasting protection following infection.
Instead, the research indicates, what matters most may be whether an individual has developed robust levels of antibodies against specific parts of the virus. ... “This study indicates that it’s not simply the presence or absence of antibodies that matter; rather, the amount and type of antibodies that may play a defining role in the development of a protective immune response,” said study senior investigator Galit Alter, professor of medicine at HMS and core member of the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard.
Notably, the study found, individuals who had built antibodies targeting the receptor-binding domain (RBD) of the virus above a certain threshold had the hallmarks of protective immunity. sure, overall, all the research is ongoing/in early stages/not yet peer-reviewed etc., but i think putting all our money in the vaccine basket is just stupid.
(about the Taiwan part - i don't know, it looks they know where they are internationally(a part of China) and try to stir shit up when they can. i don't agree with the attitude of the international community but it is what it is. also, i don't see how not being a part of WHO, forbids them from sharing what they know about covid with the world ...)
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On April 06 2021 00:33 JimmiC wrote: Texas did lift the mask mandate and other things, also most businesses in the major cities have not lifted their mask mandates. The other thing is that Texas has one of the lowest amount of active cases of Covid in the US, they also consistently have the second most deaths in the US on the daily from Covid, something does not add up.
I ended up catching it and testing positive on the 3rd. I've had a fever on and off for 2 days, chills aches and tired have been the worst, no bathroom or stomach stuff, and a little chest tightness but no breathing things. One strange symptom I have is my skin hurts to the touch like a sunburn, if it gets worse that would really suck! I'll be isolating until the 14th (unless I still have symptoms), and will get a call if it is a variant. Since my wife never got the call and I got it from her I got lucky on that. Overall I feel lucky if this was the worst of it, but it is a pretty damn shitty experience.
Edit: And I should say it is a Texas thing, not a republican thing. Florida has a 7 day moving average of 68 deaths per day, Texas is at 80. Florida has 5x Texas active cases.....
I hope you recover soon, and well. Take care of yourself.
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Hope you make a full recovery, JimmiC 👊👊
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Well, that's not good news Jimmi, hopefully it's mild from here out.
In BC:
south african is having a fairly hard time spreading, at an R value of just about 1. In comparison, UK is spreading at a pretty high rate, and Brazil is out of control.
Variants are approximately 25% of BC's cases now (for a period of time we were able to sequence every potential variant in the cases we had, but now we're running out of capacity again). We're still doing surveillance sequencing, but the data from the last couple weeks is scary. The mild measures we had did an OK job of stopping regular covid and even SA, but both UK and Brazil are far more transmissible.
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TLADT24917 Posts
Can anyone here who works in the immunology field (think we have like 2 here at least?) give me a good idea of how long it'd be before you see long-term effects of the covid vaccine? I believe I read it's 6 weeks somewhere, but if anyone can give a more detailed answer than that, that would be great. Thanks!
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Not an immunologist, but both Pfizer and Moderna phase 3 trial participants are being monitored for two years after injection. It's why we have the recent announcements that protection from those vaccines lasts at least 6 months. Presumably that's long enough to catch the majority of problems with the vaccine.
Looking at it, Canada's decision to delay second doses to 3+ months (4 in BC) is looking better and better. We get good protection for more people rather than great protection for half. My grandma just got the vaccine this weekend, and a bunch of older people around my parents age have gotten it. It's definitely nice seeing the end trickle in, even if we're in the middle of the final big wave right now.
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The annoying part will be when we're finally out of this mess and the covidiots start to brag how they stopped the lockdowns while they actually were undermining the efforts of the sane people the whole time. T__T
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Northern Ireland20509 Posts
On April 07 2021 08:42 maybenexttime wrote: The annoying part will be when we're finally out of this mess and the covidiots start to brag how they stopped the lockdowns while they actually were undermining the efforts of the sane people the whole time. T__T Eugh, don’t remind me. Don’t think I’ll be able to actually stomach listening to that crap without just taking myself elsewhere.
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Canada's most populous province has a very low vaccination rate and is now under total shutdown. Stay-At-Home order in place in less than 24 hours. https://www.rcinet.ca/en/2021/04/07/more-restrictions-are-announced-as-covid-refuses-to-let-up/
the last few weeks I've been in the Greater Toronto Area.. the shopping malls have been packed. each store restricts access and there are giant line ups outside of each store.
On April 07 2021 08:42 maybenexttime wrote: The annoying part will be when we're finally out of this mess and the covidiots start to brag how they stopped the lockdowns while they actually were undermining the efforts of the sane people the whole time. T__T its good to have a portion people pressing the government whenever they take away individual rights.
groups like this highlight some brutal contradictions in government policy.... here is a bus during the height of the pandemic... this is a common event in Toronto.
i mean c'mon.. who's kidding who?
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On April 08 2021 00:28 JimmyJRaynor wrote:Canada's most populous province has a very low vaccination rate and is now under total shutdown. Stay-At-Home order in place in less than 24 hours. https://www.rcinet.ca/en/2021/04/07/more-restrictions-are-announced-as-covid-refuses-to-let-up/the last few weeks I've been in the Greater Toronto Area.. the shopping malls have been packed. each store restricts access and there are giant line ups outside of each store. Show nested quote +On April 07 2021 08:42 maybenexttime wrote: The annoying part will be when we're finally out of this mess and the covidiots start to brag how they stopped the lockdowns while they actually were undermining the efforts of the sane people the whole time. T__T its good to have a portion people pressing the government whenever they take away individual rights. groups like this highlight some brutal contradictions in government policy.... here is a bus during the height of the pandemic... this is a common event in Toronto. i mean c'mon.. who's kidding who? Can you explain the contradictions in public policy that you are showing with the photo?
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It's kinda the same anywhere with public transit though. In Vancouver IIRC they tried reduced capacity for a while but it really didn't help all that much so instead it was run with windows open. You gotta compromise somewhere. There's just no ability to scale public transit to 4x the capacity so everyone can social distance.
Ideally everyone who could work from home does so to reduce crowding, but for a lot of businesses that didn't happen.
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Additionally, outright cutting public transit tends to put more burdens on those already in some of the worst spots in terms of being able to weather the pandemic.
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People don't seem to understand that governments are not stupid, at least not all of them, and not all the people involved. They know that things like public transit are bad for the pandemic. They also know that they are a requirement for a large city to move people around especially all the essential workers. You can not have anything open in a city like Toronto and shut down city transit.
It is like all the people who keep complaining about them shutting down salons, gyms and so on when most of the spread is happening in peoples homes. The issue is that people are breaking the in home rule, and the government can't enforce it. So they can do the others, which even though they are less effective, it is more effective than nothing. Also, when more stuff is shut down people have done a better job of not breaking the other rules since it feels more serious to them.
The bottom line is the only strategy that works is the keep covid at 0 or close, any tight rope walking strategy just ends up being delaying the future lockdown when the spread reaches the upper limits of what is safe.
My Covid report is I'm still breathing fine, I have started to get really stuffed up which is making me feel worse, but maybe a sign I'm moving past it. Super tired, head ache, cold, weak and with a bad memory. My skin still hurts, even like the top of my head, this is such a strange virus in so many ways, so many symptoms and can hit people completely different.
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From a large study, second dose is definitely significantly worse than the first dose for side effects, and moderna is slightly worse than pfizer. Speculations is that it's due to the dosage differences. Still far better to get the second dose if you're able to though, because it makes you essentially immune to regular covid and drastically cuts effectiveness of other strains.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2778441#jit210021t1
Something interesting to note in BC. We've had the south african strain introduced here multiple times in the last couple months, but it's died out every time. It's just not as transmissible as compared to Brazil/UK variants, and it gets outcompeted in combination with our deeper contact tracing policy for cases related to identified variants. Brazil and UK on the other hand are well on their way to dominance over regular covid here, with nearly half of all cases falling into those buckets.
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On April 08 2021 01:38 Lmui wrote: From a large study, very informative. thx for posting.
On April 08 2021 01:09 JimmiC wrote:Show nested quote +On April 08 2021 00:28 JimmyJRaynor wrote:Canada's most populous province has a very low vaccination rate and is now under total shutdown. Stay-At-Home order in place in less than 24 hours. https://www.rcinet.ca/en/2021/04/07/more-restrictions-are-announced-as-covid-refuses-to-let-up/the last few weeks I've been in the Greater Toronto Area.. the shopping malls have been packed. each store restricts access and there are giant line ups outside of each store. On April 07 2021 08:42 maybenexttime wrote: The annoying part will be when we're finally out of this mess and the covidiots start to brag how they stopped the lockdowns while they actually were undermining the efforts of the sane people the whole time. T__T its good to have a portion people pressing the government whenever they take away individual rights. groups like this highlight some brutal contradictions in government policy.... here is a bus during the height of the pandemic... this is a common event in Toronto. i mean c'mon.. who's kidding who? Can you explain the contradictions in public policy that you are showing with the photo?
Permitting the TTC to lower service levels while telling people to social distance.
Mississauga Transit just lowered service levels on their #1 line that goes across Dundas street. And damn, they did an incredible job of hiding it. Service went from every 20 minutes to every 24 minutes during the evening hours.
If the city, province and country are mandating social distancing then why are major transit systems in the #1 and #6 city in Canada not being given increased funding and being mandated to keep their service levels the same or higher?
I suspect the same thing is happening in Montreal, Vancouver and Calgary. However, I'm too lazy to research it.
and hey man, I'm fine. I left Canada and I'm not part of the working poor as I was 15 years ago. Its all good for me.
However, the lower middle class and working poor in Canada's most populous areas are getting crushed by this pandemic. Canada used to not be like this man. Used to be the working poor and lower middle class had a solid shot at a better life. In 1981 a TTC ride was $0.50. In 2020 its $3.20. Factoring inflation in a 1981 TTC ride would be ~$1.25.
So we got cut backs in service during a pandemic where social distancing is required .... for triple the price. These people are getting fucking crushed man.
Like no one could see this coming... Here is an article from April 2020... https://nowtoronto.com/news/coronavirus-ttc-layoffs-service-cuts
In a press release, local president Carlos Santos said that “Service cuts will lead to overcrowding, which increases the risk for spreading the coronavirus to those who are most vulnerable in our city. The only way to reverse these cuts is immediate emergency funding from government.”
c'mon man.. who is kidding who here? this is a joke.
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Yesterday (reported today) had highest deathtoll in Poland since begining of the pandemy. This was of course predictable, a combination of more deadly UK strain and people ignoring precuations/gov orders. I guess this will continue despite lockdown as we had easter recently which is traditionally in Poland very family oriented holiday.
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For all the "run its course" people. Lets look at Brazil. Here is a country that Federally has that strategy. Now in the states the Governors are trying to make rules to stop the spread, so they are not even close to completely letting it run its course. they are now at over 4k in deaths most days. They don't have enough ICU beds for people in car accidents, heart attacks and so on. Hospital staff are making choices on who gets ICU and who gets to die. Young people with no preconditions are dying.
"In one shift I did in February in the ICU, out of 10 patients I was taking care of, all of them were on mechanical ventilation — six of those patients were less than 35 years of age," Vieceli said in an interview with CBC News on Skype during a break in her shift.
"We are obviously a threat to ourselves because the virus is out of control, and we break records every single day. But we are also a threat to global public health because we are pretty much a factory of variants," he said in an interview with CBC News.
"It's a problem for you, because if we are producing new variants, some of them will go on, and we will infect the world's population," he said
And their wise leader, the "Trump of the South" Bolsonaro
"Enough fussing and whining. How much longer will the crying go on?" Bolsonaro told a crowd at an event. "How much longer will you stay at home and close everything? No one can stand it anymore."
Bolsonaro continues to pitch, despite a lack of studies showing its effectiveness, treatments such as hydroxychloroquine. Politically, he recently overhauled his cabinet, replacing six ministers, though not the health minister, who was already replaced last month. That gave Bolsonaro his fourth health minister since the pandemic began.
scary shit
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Brazil is coming to a head imo. Either he gets absolutely wrecked for amplifying the pandemic, or he manages to sieze power, nothing in between.
He has the same cards to play as Trump, and his country has even weaker institutions. The next year will be scary.
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yeah things are gonna get ugly. I also read and hear alot of horror stories from neighbouring Hungary in my neck of the woods, a lot of them work in and around Vienna.
such crisis lay bare the inadequacies of these donkey leaders.
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The numbers in Texas are still declining, even though they lifted all restrictions. There are a number of explanations for this: -~10% of the population (!) has tested positive, and the real number of infected is probably much higher. -~20% of the population is fully vaccinated. -People have not stopped being careful even if they are not forced tom -Summer is coming.
As the story of Texas is unfolding, can it be used as a blueprint for others when it is safe to reopen? Are other too careful and doing the wrong things? I also think we tend to overvalue political intervention.
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