Covid-19 Quarantine

[Pretentious Hipster]

Apparently Quebec didn't get the amount as promised. Their strategy is to just give people the first dose because they think double the amount having 50% instead of the usual amount with 90% is more effective. Strange take, but part of me can see why.

[PeacefulAnarchy]

It's amazing to ma how badly things continue to be handled.

[Pretentious Hipster]

Yea canceling appointments for people's first dose here, and then setting a few days to reschedule people's second dose seems like the biggest shit show.

If you wanna hear bad though. My mother works at a group home for disabled people. First I have to make the point that in a home she fortunately didn't work at, there was an outbreak and one of the disabled people died from covid. She got a message from the boss that the employees are not getting the vaccine until they are giving them out to the entire public because they are technically not front-line workers, and that the disabled people are isolated. By that logic I shouldn't get the vaccine either because the seniors are isolated, but somehow I am first in line. It gives the huge implication that they really don't care about disabled people.

[xianjiro]

yeah, I think we're going to hear more about single dosing in the weeks to come - the old "somethin's better'n nuthin" logic

In this case that kind of true, but I can't say I've decided which side I'm on yet. I see both sides of the argument and it's clear with such a short testing period with Op Warp Speed, we haven't tested most permeations on the vaccines. An email list I follow has a few members who want head-to-head testing to find out which is more effective, especially once we have five or more approved (and clearly the Chinese and Russian vaxx aren't even in the running best I can tell).

What do you want to bet that in lower GDP countries single dosing is the norm? I forget, but countries like Indonesia and Egypt aren't ordering near enough doses to cover more than 10 - 25% of their population. While I understand they don't want to buy into the Moderna and Pfizer get-richer-even-quicker scheme, they aren't buying enough doses to cover their populations from the Chinese or Russians (and mostly Chinese from what I've seen - don't know that Russians have the manufacturing capacity to do much more than share doses with their closest allies like Belarus)

[xianjiro]

It's amazing to ma how badly things continue to be handled.

sorry your ma's so amazed.

[PeacefulAnarchy]

It's amazing to ma how badly things continue to be handled.

sorry your ma's so amazed.

LOL, to be fair she's quite amazed too.

[xianjiro]

It's amazing to ma how badly things continue to be handled.

sorry your ma's so amazed.

LOL, to be fair she's quite amazed too.

well honestly, I can't say I'm surprised. How long's it been since countries have been faced with an emergency of this size? It's like after Queen Victoria died: no one could remember how to set up an investiture so they had to hit the archives if I'm remembering correctly.

Of course the issues in the states are different and it provides some comfort that this isn't just a US problem (getting jabs into arms). It's one of the reasons I like our forum - people from a few different countries share their experiences and that's information I wouldn't get otherwise (since I'm not a tweethead).

The one thing that kind of pisses me off though is my state (and many others) knew that they would have to figure this out for some time. I've seen nothing from the feds other than "our plan is to leave it to the states". Did they really believe this wasn't going to be how it worked? If not, then they've been caught with their skirts and pants down.

I'm just waiting for "we've decided to make it available to everyone FCFS"

[PeacefulAnarchy]

I'm not surprised it's being handled badly, I'm just surprised at the level of bad handling.

basically this:

The one thing that kind of pisses me off though is my state (and many others) knew that they would have to figure this out for some time. I've seen nothing from the feds other than "our plan is to leave it to the states". Did they really believe this wasn't going to be how it worked? If not, then they've been caught with their skirts and pants down.

Not doing full lockdowns, opening things up before they should, not enforcing rules, etc. That's all disappointing but generally not surprising, it's a priorities thing and "human lives" are not the number one priority of any government no matter its political stripes. Vaccine rollout, on the other hand, would not cost any more to do right. It wouldn't take more time or require more laws, it just requires someone competent being put in charge and developing rules over the many months they've had to do so. And they didn't, even while everything else they did was reliant both implicitly and explicitly on the vaccine coming.

[xianjiro]

for anyone wondering why teachers are pushing back about reopening schools, here's a great op ed that explains their concerns

https://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/2021 ... hools.html

[Pretentious Hipster]

79% of employees at my place got vaccinated. That means we win a larger gift certificate. I'm happy that the numbers were high and was scared after hearing how many employees didn't want it in the kitchen.

[weirdboy]

Is that some kind of anti-vax sentiment, or is it more along the lines of they do not believe experimental medicine being rushed through trial during a pandemic can be trusted to work as expected without long term side effects?

[Pretentious Hipster]

Is that some kind of anti-vax sentiment, or is it more along the lines of they do not believe experimental medicine being rushed through trial during a pandemic can be trusted to work as expected without long term side effects?

The minority there are anti-vaxxers. One of them even questions the virus because of the politicians here going on international vacations. 21% is a smallish number at least so I'm not panicking too much.

[Armoreska]

Some old folks in Norway have now died from vaccine.

[Coryn]

Source ?

[PeacefulAnarchy]

Source ?

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... rise-to-29

Interesting how the headline changed. It's not clear what role the vaccine is playing, but the article seems to suggest the issue isn't so much age as it is pre-existing contitions weakening the immune system. So on the one hand it doesn't necessarily mean the vaccine is generally unsafe, but it does mean that public health policy around it will have to be more robust.

[Ebbywebby]

Stats say about 1 in 16 people in my city either have or have had it. With no end in sight. Never dreamed the ratio would go that low.

[OldAle1]

1 in 16? You're doing well. We're at about 1 in 12 for the county, 1 in 10 for my city. And still absolutely none of the employees of this apartment complex wears a mask. Ever.

[Ebbywebby]

I feel newly liberated, OldAle. I'm off to lick some doorknobs now.

[kongs_speech]

I don't know what the numbers where I live are, but probably close to 1 in 5. The fuck do you expect when nobody can make these dumbass hillbillies wear masks?

[blocho]

Sorry if I sound a bit like a scold below -- I just feel like the media especially keeps reporting the "numbers" without recognizing that the official statistics in this case are usually misleading.

Please remember that the official numbers are always going to be inaccurate because they only reflect positive tests, not actual infections. If you want a good estimate of how many people have been infected, take the death count (or preferably, an estimate of the death count based on excess mortality figures) and divided by .004, then divided that initial number again by .008 (the two outer bounds of estimates for mortality rate) -- the two resulting numbers provide a decent range for the true number of infections.

For example, I see the total death count in Orange County is 2,277. Using the procedure I suggested above yields a range of 285,000-570,000 infections. Of course, that estimate is a little too low because it relies on the death count and not an excess mortality figure. Also, it doesn't factor in all the people currently infected who will eventually die. Still, it means that at least 9% of Orange County has been infected, while the true number is likely closer to 20%.

[Pretentious Hipster]

Just came back from my second. What a relief... Yea, I know I can still get it, but if I continue using my mask and social distance the odds of me getting it are so low. I might go shopping when the lockdown ends.

[xianjiro]

Your plan sounds good - my understanding is you need to wait at least a week before "letting your guard down" after the second shot - say, sitting in a car with another other person who had their second shot at least a week ago for a long car ride without masks - but we still don't know if people who've had the vaccine can get sick (we expect about 5% of the population to get sick even after being vaccinated with the Pfizer and Moderna vacinnes, but the hope is anyone who gets sick, doesn't get so sick they need to go to hospital). Also, we don't have enough information if people who are fully vaccinated are still capable of spreading the virus.

Hang in there!

[joachimt]

It's weird to hear about people getting vaccinated already. Estimation here is that I can get a shot in about six months....... Maybe they'll give priority to teachers at some point, but it's not in the schedule at the moment.

[Pretentious Hipster]

Just a heads up that there are side effects at the second one. Didn't sleep because of cold spells even if it feels like I haven't slept for days.

[kongs_speech]

I guess it's post-COVID fatigue that is still kicking my ass. I live with CFS anyway, but it's been brutal recently.

[AdamH]

It's weird to hear about people getting vaccinated already. Estimation here is that I can get a shot in about six months....... Maybe they'll give priority to teachers at some point, but it's not in the schedule at the moment.

I had heard that many parts of Europe are far behind. There have already been around 3.5 million people in the UK given the first dose. They are targetting all over-18s by June and everyone else by September.

I work in a school although no sign yet of school staff being given any priority (very few children in school right now anyway because of lockdown). I'm not sure when I'm likely to get vaccinated but by June going by the target above.

[xianjiro]

PH: My understanding is that's not unusual and I've read of some medical providers giving their doctors two days off after getting the second dose. This leads me to expect to see lots of reports of "side effects" or "some Covid" after the second dose. Common, but no guarantee.

As for teachers getting the vaccine, my state has added teachers and people 65 or older to those eligible. Teachers were added to help make it possible to restart some in person learning and the over 65 set per the feds order/suggestion. But here's the fun part, We still don't have enough vaccine to handle the original groups: healthcare workers (and not even all those who deal with patients were even included!) nor those in nursing homes (and again, people in other forms of communal care, including prisoners, were excluded). Now wait, it gets better, we're still well under 50% of doses received being administered! In other words, we've more than doubled those eligible for the vaccine with little increase in doses received from the central stockpile (twice as many competing for the same limited pool). And while we have close to tripled the number of vaccines administered each day, even at that rate, the state won't be immunized until late 2022 or even 2023.

Why doesn't this instill much trust in the system?

[Pretentious Hipster]

PH: My understanding is that's not unusual and I've read of some medical providers giving their doctors two days off after getting the second dose. This leads me to expect to see lots of reports of "side effects" or "some Covid" after the second dose. Common, but no guarantee.

Yea it's the reason why I booked today off and don't work the day after. Our city expects to have everyone vaccinated by the summer but if they already ran out of vaccines and had to cancel/reschedule appointments within 3 weeks then that's not the best sign.

[Armoreska]

useful resource
https://www.endcoronavirus.org/countries

[Coryn]

Seems like the British corona variant is now fully active in Belgium, this seems bad and it's 2 steps back again.

Edit: Who ate a bat on 11th of november in Vanuatu ?

[Armoreska]

Edit: Who ate a bat on 11th of november in Vanuatu ?

A tourist to US returned.

[weirdboy]

Seems like the British corona variant is now fully active in Belgium, this seems bad and it's 2 steps back again.

Also in Japan. They have "strong suspicion" of transmission by people who have not been in direct contact with anyone coming from UK.

[blocho]

As with the original Covid strain, if it's in a major world city, then after two months you can assume it's in every other major world city (that doesn't have very strict entrance quarantine requirements).

[xianjiro]

Actually, I'm not sure, but we might be up to five wild variants on the original virus - Danish (first id'ed last spring but didn't spread much - now there is talk that it's very active in California), English, South African, Brazilian, and possibly a new Californian strain. I'm tired of reading "new strain from ___________ identified in _________" like it's really news. I'd say after the fifth identified case, especially without travel history or known association with travelers, especially when cases are far flung geographically, well, all we can do is assume it's in the wild and spreading freely. Honestly, I don't see this stopping with the rate of infections only increasing. The more cases, the more chances for mutations and so far the mutations are all easier to spread. Natural selection hard at work.

So far doesn't really seem like it's worth worrying about. There's some concern that one of the variants might be more resistant to the vaccines which target the spike protein, but most of this seems to be educated speculation based on facts present, not a lot of detailed research. This is only going to increase and since we can't get everyone on the planet inoculated in a fairly short time span, chances are variants will continue to increase. It's just the way these things go, so as long as it's not more deadly, I just shrug and move on.

I'm way more worried about the uneven roll out of vaccines and governments tinkering with boosters - frankly, there's no reason why someone won't decide "something's better than nothing" and start giving half doses or quarter doses to get it to more people. While we don't know what this will really mean, it's likely to exacerbate problems with variants. No, at this point I'm way more worried about the decision making than I am the actual virus.

[Pretentious Hipster]

Looks like the Tokyo Olympics are still happening this year... quite risky.

[kongs_speech]

Bringing thousands of people from all over the globe together in close proximity during a pandemic. What could go wrong?

[Onderhond]

So the Jewish community helped press for lenience on religious services in Belgium, which they got.
Over the past few months, several big Jewish festivities were discovered and stopped.
Now two Jewish quarters are showing heightened infections and need to be tested.

The reaction from the Jewish Forum:
Maybe they should prioritize us for vaccination.

[Pretentious Hipster]

I think Nathan Fielder is behind this loophole

https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/mobile/ontar ... -1.5276668

[weirdboy]

Looks like the Tokyo Olympics are still happening this year... quite risky.

It is much too early to say that definitively. All you can really say right now is that they have not decided to cancel outright at this point in time.

The same thing happened last year. They will of course continue to have meetings to re-evaluate their decisions as things progress.

[prodigalgodson]

So the Jewish community helped press for lenience on religious services in Belgium, which they got.
Over the past few months, several big Jewish festivities were discovered and stopped.
Now two Jewish quarters are showing heightened infections and need to be tested.

The reaction from the Jewish Forum:
Maybe they should prioritize us for vaccination.

Damn, we're slipping, we're supposed to have the lowest plague-time infection rates precisely because we don't do stupid shit like that. Reminds me of smokers getting prioritized over teachers in New Jersey cuz their suicidal habit puts them more at risk.

As a Jewish smoker, all I can say is...oy vey