"Daily COVID-19 SITREP In Your Area"

[SCBrian]

I find the FT's charts here to be pretty useful for both absolute numbers and international comparisons.
https://ig.ft.com/coronavirus-chart/?ar ... ues=deaths

The FT also have charts for US states, and (to my eyes, at least) the traces for the Dakotas are horrifying, although they have inproved recently.

The Dakotas are some of the least populated states (1.5m ppl combined) so 100 deaths is going to show as a heck of a spike there as opposed to say California (39.5m) where 100 deaths isn't even statistically significant.

[RoneKiln]

This thread's been quiet for a while, has everyone died of 'rona or something?

Nothing much new in the PNW of the US. Like you said, Christmas is mostly being handled through Amazon.

In my part of the world, or perhaps just in my internet bubble, there was an extreme flip in how the media discussed the vaccine within days of our election. It went from condemnation of the current administration in trying to fast track the vaccine and screaming that was dangerous, to screaming we should issue it to everyone immediately and there's no possibility of it being dangerous.

The 180 flip is freaking a lot of people out. I'm suddenly hearing a ton of otherwise pro-vaccine people saying they don't want to take it.

This sudden freakout has brought up a lot of discussion amongst my company and our clients on how to deal with vaccinations and access into important industrial infrastructure sites. I don't know how serious these talks may be or if anyone is figuring out policies yet. A lot of key sites share a pool of specialized skill labor, and these sites have limitations in how long they can function without people in that labor pool going into different sites and risking spread of disease. There's enough redundancy to whether a bad flu season, but nobody is sure how badly COVID could mess things up with how contagious it is.

And my industry, we have a lot of old people and people that don't take the best care of themselves. Not many young people are drawn to heavy industrial engineering, construction, or maintenance anymore. Nor are many of the older men involved really into eating lots of vegetables or going to yoga. Not that I think that is all there is to health, but I hope the idea makes sense.

So nothing much has changed except my coworkers are suddenly all wondering how the heck we respect one another's personal health choices without risking vital infrastructure our society depends on to function. This didn't seem an issue a month ago. Only the occasional antivaxxer was in any way pushing back on COVID vaccines back then. Now suddenly people are wondering why there's suddenly so much effort to convince us when nobody really needed any convincing.

It's like a parent making a huge deal about how visiting the doctor won't hurt to a toddler that had never had any reason to suspect it might hurt. That toddler gets suspicious and freaks out.

[williaty]

It's like a parent making a huge deal about how visiting the doctor won't hurt to a toddler that had never had any reason to suspect it might hurt. That toddler gets suspicious and freaks out.

You're lucky if most of your contacts seemed to think vaccination was a good idea. Around here, polling dropped to 34% of people being willing to take the vaccine at one point, though that number has been rising steadily since the results from Pfizer and then Moderna were announced. The full court press you're confused by is an attempt to band-aid the places in the country where there was a strong sentiment against it.

[sheddi]

It's like a parent making a huge deal about how visiting the doctor won't hurt to a toddler that had never had any reason to suspect it might hurt. That toddler gets suspicious and freaks out.

You're lucky if most of your contacts seemed to think vaccination was a good idea. Around here, polling dropped to 34% of people being willing to take the vaccine at one point, though that number has been rising steadily since the results from Pfizer and then Moderna were announced.

Wow. Recent polling here has 76% for, 8% against (others are "don't know"s), with some variation within social groups. Article here:
https://www.rsph.org.uk/about-us/news/n ... ccine.html

New polling commissioned by the Royal Society for Public Health has revealed that three in four (76%) of the UK public would take a COVID-19 vaccine if advised to do so by their GP or health professional, with just 8% stating they would be very unlikely to do so*. The findings reiterate just how much trust the public has in NHS professionals, showing that most people are more than happy to get a vaccine providing they are getting the right information from the right source.

Did I mention that England has got it's own mutant strain of COVID that seems to spread faster (although if's no more dangerous once you've caught it)?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... england-uk

The chief medical officer for England, Chris Whitty, said the new variant discovered in the south-east could be up to 70% more transmissible and could increase the R value by 0.4 or more. Given the data so far, it does not appear to raise the risk of severe illness or the mortality rate.

Naturally our near neighbours aren't particularly impressed and they've been closing borders, which is only compounding the supply line snarl-ups of the Great 2016 PolitiWhoops:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/202 ... vid-strain

European countries have banned flights and ferries carrying passengers from the UK in a desperate attempt to suppress the spread of a new variant of the coronavirus that has plunged southern England into a tier 4 lockdown.

In the most dramatic development, France announced it was suspending passenger and human-handled freight transport from the UK for 48 hours from 11pm GMT. The Road Haulage Association warned the move would have a “devastating effect” on supply chains already disrupted by Brexit stockpiling and pandemic restrictions.

The travel bans came as the latest figures showed the new variant of Covid-19 is causing an alarming jump in infections, particularly in London and south-east England, with cases in the UK rising by 35,928 on Sunday morning — the fourth time in a week that the figure has exceeded 30,000 on any given day.

All in all it's shaping up to be an "interesting" festive season on this side of the pond.

[lurkshere]

All in all it's shaping up to be an "interesting" festive season on this side of the pond.

And there is bugger all on the telly.

[tony d tiger]

Political comment deleted.

As long as mortality remains low, I don't much care if others wear a mask or get a shot (or two!)
1) Mask/Don't Mask has become such a hot button issue for some folks - I'll focus on sanitation and distancing. As far as I'm concerned, it's a compliance issue more than health related.
2) Vaccination can't be much worse than anything DoD put us thru - as it becomes available I'll get in line.


YMMV

[Vicarious_Lee]

Political comment deleted.

As long as mortality remains low, I don't much care if others wear a mask or get a shot (or two!)
1) Mask/Don't Mask has become such a hot button issue for some folks - I'll focus on sanitation and distancing. As far as I'm concerned, it's a compliance issue more than health related.
2) Vaccination can't be much worse than anything DoD put us thru - as it becomes available I'll get in line.


YMMV

Here at my VA hospital, they thawed a bunch of Pfizer vaccines and were giving them to people by appointment only until they realized that more than half the people that made appointments couldn't be arsed to show up. So there's a huge line of first come, first serve volunteers willing to take the vaccine that's already thawed.

Looks like the side-effect profile is minimal, effectiveness is still pending as far as I'm concerned.

Masks, distancing, and hygiene work awesome at controlling the spread, as well as individual business protocols and procedures. Any naysayers can check how this is the weakest flu season ever because of it.

I've had some family members get COVID and they did fine with it, so my bloodline is apparently not too vulnerable. Meaning I'm gonna hang back and let people more concerned or more at risk of serious illness get the vaccine first. I will absolutely definitely get the vaccine before visiting my very healthy but 91-year-old grandma again though.

I don't come around much because I tend to get banned for commenting my experience and opinion in medical threads, but has anyone remarked that the insane success of Operation Warp Speed, producing a new vaccine in like 9 months, means this might be the last real global viral pandemic humanity faces? I mean if this works this is game-changer next level kind of stuff...

[williaty]

I don't come around much because I tend to get banned for commenting my experience and opinion in medical threads, but has anyone remarked that the insane success of Operation Warp Speed, producing a new vaccine in like 9 months, means this might be the last real global viral pandemic humanity faces? I mean if this works this is game-changer next level kind of stuff...

I hope you're right about future pandemics lasting no longer than this one. Fingers crossed.

However, Warp Speed didn't have anything to do with this success. Pfizer wasn't part of OWS. Moderna's success as well as Oxford/AstraZenica was the result of them having funding for rapid vaccine research after SARS-1/MERS-1. This rapid vaccine response didn't come out of nowhere. It's the result of hard work funded during the brief moment when the prior administration took pandemic preparedness seriously. More than that, it's the result of 3 decades of work on developing an HIV vaccine. All OWS did was to make sure that, when the scientists were ready to speak to a bureaucrat, someone picked up the phone on the first ring rather than 6 months later and to have a customer ready to pre-pay for production (not development). This is, effectively, the normal speed of science when there's a limitless bucket of money for the final phases of vaccine testing and the governmental will to sign off on approvals in a timely fashion.

[RoneKiln]

I don't come around much because I tend to get banned for commenting my experience and opinion in medical threads, but has anyone remarked that the insane success of Operation Warp Speed, producing a new vaccine in like 9 months, means this might be the last real global viral pandemic humanity faces? I mean if this works this is game-changer next level kind of stuff...

I hope you're right about future pandemics lasting no longer than this one. Fingers crossed.

However, Warp Speed didn't have anything to do with this success. Pfizer wasn't part of OWS. Moderna's success as well as Oxford/AstraZenica was the result of them having funding for rapid vaccine research after SARS-1/MERS-1. This rapid vaccine response didn't come out of nowhere. It's the result of hard work funded during the brief moment when the prior administration took pandemic preparedness seriously. More than that, it's the result of 3 decades of work on developing an HIV vaccine. All OWS did was to make sure that, when the scientists were ready to speak to a bureaucrat, someone picked up the phone on the first ring rather than 6 months later and to have a customer ready to pre-pay for production (not development). This is, effectively, the normal speed of science when there's a limitless bucket of money for the final phases of vaccine testing and the governmental will to sign off on approvals in a timely fashion.

You're about half right. Pfizer didn't take money from Operation Warp Speed. OWS still set up the ability for the testing to be massively accelerated. It was more than money. It changed how testing is done, significantly changing the timeline for scientific research. This was not the normal speed of science in the US no matter how much money is available. All that testing is done by government mandated timelines. Pfizer also spent their money based on the guarantee the US government would pay them for 300 million doses of the vaccine if they succeeded. That's huge, even if it was different from how other participants in OWS handled money.

As Vicarious Lee said, this is a very different way to develop medications than anything the US has done before.

There are still questions about all these vaccines, including the pfizer one, that normally would have to be answered before it could go to market. OWS is allowing us to skip that and find out in a trial by fire. This is why there is still a need to wear a mask and maintain social distancing after being vaccinated. Cause while we know these vaccines protect most people from getting sick, we still have little evidence whether we can still be carriers and contagious. This could lead to vaccinated people still being very dangerous to people that are not vaccinated.

Imagine if all the healthcare workers get vaccinated, and all become the equivalent of Typhoid Mary while continuing to work with an unvaccinated public. This is why "normal science" of this sort typically takes 2 and a half years no matter how much money you throw at it, and why OWS took so much fire from so many leading politicians and health care specialists. Without OWS warp speed accelerating the timeline, and without the current administration commiting to distribute the vaccine for pfizer if it succeeded, we would not have that vaccine rolling out right now.

While I currently think OWS is a win for all of us, I am open to the possibility it could become a horrific mistake as well.

[RoneKiln]

I realized I might be wrong saying the US has never developed medication this way before. I know we invested a fortune and allowed a ton of shortcuts in developing medications for malaria during WWII. Some of the early preventative medications were rumored to have some rough side effects that made it difficult to get US troops to take it.

[Ever]

Have also wondered how others here were.

The large apartment building I live in has had two covid deaths and several additional cases. I don't leave my apartment. (one death and two cases have been on my floor)

There's much that troubles me here. Back in the day in this thread I projected 200,000 deaths here by January. I way underestimated. Also have concerns about Christmas gatherings.

Am glad to hear from posters again.

btw.. thanks to posters in this thread who gave me leads on dehydrated eggs.

[Ever]

Wow. Recent polling here has 76% for, 8% against (others are "don't know"s), with some variation within social groups. Article here:
https://www.rsph.org.uk/about-us/news/n ... ccine.html

New polling commissioned by the Royal Society for Public Health has revealed that three in four (76%) of the UK public would take a COVID-19 vaccine if advised to do so by their GP or health professional, with just 8% stating they would be very unlikely to do so*. The findings reiterate just how much trust the public has in NHS professionals, showing that most people are more than happy to get a vaccine providing they are getting the right information from the right source.

Did I mention that England has got it's own mutant strain of COVID that seems to spread faster (although if's no more dangerous once you've caught it)?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... england-uk

The chief medical officer for England, Chris Whitty, said the new variant discovered in the south-east could be up to 70% more transmissible and could increase the R value by 0.4 or more. Given the data so far, it does not appear to raise the risk of severe illness or the mortality rate.

Naturally our near neighbours aren't particularly impressed and they've been closing borders, which is only compounding the supply line snarl-ups of the Great 2016 PolitiWhoops:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/202 ... vid-strain

European countries have banned flights and ferries carrying passengers from the UK in a desperate attempt to suppress the spread of a new variant of the coronavirus that has plunged southern England into a tier 4 lockdown.

In the most dramatic development, France announced it was suspending passenger and human-handled freight transport from the UK for 48 hours from 11pm GMT. The Road Haulage Association warned the move would have a “devastating effect” on supply chains already disrupted by Brexit stockpiling and pandemic restrictions.

The travel bans came as the latest figures showed the new variant of Covid-19 is causing an alarming jump in infections, particularly in London and south-east England, with cases in the UK rising by 35,928 on Sunday morning — the fourth time in a week that the figure has exceeded 30,000 on any given day.

All in all it's shaping up to be an "interesting" festive season on this side of the pond.

I've also been following your news. Did notice the current data estimates more numbers in spread of the new strain but necessarily deadlier. Good news. Though 70% faster spread could also mean a significant increase in death even if it's not deadlier. And hospitalizations. Therefore more strain on hospitals.

If by 'interesting' you refer to the curse 'May you live in interesting times', yeah. It's looking cursed 'interesting' on this side of the pond too.

"Christmas, coming soon to a hospital near you."

[MPMalloy]

Have also wondered how others here were.

The large apartment building I live in has had two covid deaths and several additional cases. I don't leave my apartment. (one death and two cases have been on my floor)

There's much that troubles me here. Back in the day in this thread I projected 200,000 deaths here by January. I way underestimated. Also have concerns about Christmas gatherings.

Am glad to hear from posters again.

btw.. thanks to posters in this thread who gave me leads on dehydrated eggs.

It's good to hear your ok.

[Ever]

Have also wondered how others here were.

The large apartment building I live in has had two covid deaths and several additional cases. I don't leave my apartment. (one death and two cases have been on my floor)

There's much that troubles me here. Back in the day in this thread I projected 200,000 deaths here by January. I way underestimated. Also have concerns about Christmas gatherings.

Am glad to hear from posters again.

btw.. thanks to posters in this thread who gave me leads on dehydrated eggs.

It's good to hear your ok.

And you, too.

[CG]

I've also been following your news. Did notice the current data estimates more numbers in spread of the new strain but necessarily deadlier. Good news. Though 70% faster spread could also mean a significant increase in death even if it's not deadlier. And hospitalizations. Therefore more strain on hospitals.

If by 'interesting' you refer to the curse 'May you live in interesting times', yeah. It's looking cursed 'interesting' on this side of the pond too.

"Christmas, coming soon to a hospital near you."

Whenever someone in our household says something is interesting, we ask if they're talking regular interesting or the Firefly definition of interesting.

Wash: This is gonna get pretty interesting.

Captain Mal: Define "interesting".

Wash: Oh, God, oh, god, we're all gonna die.

[raptor2]

However, Warp Speed didn't have anything to do with this success. Pfizer wasn't part of OWS. Moderna's success as well as Oxford/AstraZenica was the result of them having funding for rapid vaccine research after SARS-1/MERS-1. This rapid vaccine response didn't come out of nowhere. It's the result of hard work funded during the brief moment when the prior administration took pandemic preparedness seriously. More than that, it's the result of 3 decades of work on developing an HIV vaccine. All OWS did was to make sure that, when the scientists were ready to speak to a bureaucrat, someone picked up the phone on the first ring rather than 6 months later and to have a customer ready to pre-pay for production (not development). This is, effectively, the normal speed of science when there's a limitless bucket of money for the final phases of vaccine testing and the governmental will to sign off on approvals in a timely fashion.

The current MSM is repeating a similar (but not identical) false narrative for usual reasons that cannot be discussed here.

https://checkyourfact.com/2020/11/19/fa ... arp-speed/

Moderna and Pfizer are both involved to some extent in Operation Warp Speed, according to spokespeople from the respective companies. Moderna received funding through Operation Warp Speed to help develop and test the vaccine the company jointly developed with scientists from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, while Pfizer participates as a supplier of a potential COVID-19 vaccine.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... washington

The truth is that Pfizer didn’t receive any funding from Operation Warp Speed for the development, clinical trial and manufacturing of the vaccine. Rather, its partner, BioNTech SE, has received money -- from the German government.
BioNTech is credited for contributing the messenger RNA technology, which prompts the body to make a key protein from the virus, creating an immune response. The biotechnology company already had a history of working with Pfizer on influenza vaccines, and in March they clinched a deal to co-develop a shot to prevent against Covid-19 at research sites both in the U.S. and Germany. The two companies began human testing of the vaccine in April, before the existence of Operation Warp Speed was revealed publicly.

Berlin gave the German company $445 million in an agreement in September to help accelerate the vaccine by building out manufacturing and development capacity in its home market.

What the U.S. did, meanwhile, was commit to buying hundreds of millions of vaccines in advance to ensure Americans were among the first in line if it clinches an emergency-use authorization or approval from the FDA. The Trump administration agreed in July to pay almost $2 billion for 100 million doses, with an option to acquire as many as 500 million more, once that clearance comes.

As part of that agreement, the U.S. gets to decide who gets the vaccine first, and will work with the company on logistical support. While most vaccine front-runners that have been tapped by Warp Speed will distribute their doses through a government partnership with McKesson Corp., Pfizer is handling its own delivery of its products. The company has designed reusable containers that can keep the doses at ultracold temperatures, and is organizing trucks and flights to move them.

Operation Warp Speed is credited with speeding along several other vaccine programs, including one from Moderna Inc.that uses similar technology to Pfizer’s and could produce trial data later this month. The Trump administration’s rapid-vaccine operation, led by the Health and Human Services Department, the Defense Department, and other agencies, could well prove to be the reason many Americans get a vaccine in 2021, even if it’s not made by Pfizer.

[Ever]

Hi, @raptor2. Good to see you.

How's it going in your neck of the woods?

[williaty]

The current MSM is repeating a similar (but not identical) false narrative for usual reasons that cannot be discussed here.

Hang on, your objections don't actually disagree with anything I said.

1) Pfizer didn't receive OWS money for development or testing. Their partner received money but not from OWS. All OWS did for Pfizer was commit to buying it before they knew it worked.

2) Moderna's ability to actually develop a vaccine candidate in less than 48 hours was due to funding from the US government a decade ago not from OWS. They would not have been in position to use the OWS money to produce and test the vaccine without the decade-ago grant to get the foundation laid.

You can't credit OWS for the success of either company in that context. None of what you think contradicted what I said actually contradicted anything I said.

[tony d tiger]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=w7bMxP-q2jM I hear this is good for some symptoms...

[raptor2]

The current MSM is repeating a similar (but not identical) false narrative for usual reasons that cannot be discussed here.

Hang on, your objections don't actually disagree with anything I said.

1) Pfizer didn't receive OWS money for development or testing. Their partner received money but not from OWS. All OWS did for Pfizer was commit to buying it before they knew it worked.

2) Moderna's ability to actually develop a vaccine candidate in less than 48 hours was due to funding from the US government a decade ago not from OWS. They would not have been in position to use the OWS money to produce and test the vaccine without the decade-ago grant to get the foundation laid.

You can't credit OWS for the success of either company in that context. None of what you think contradicted what I said actually contradicted anything I said.

Yes actually it does...You brought in a false political narrative which these article contradicts.
Re-read your post and the articles and then IF you want to discuss the false political narrative further, PM me.
Note if you wish to discuss the false political narrative further please be sure to cite your sources in the PM.

[Ever]

Christmas Feast in 2020 single livimg quarentine:

foods cooked, refridgerated, and waiting to be feasted on at will (and all thru the weekend)
° sage chicken
° mashed potatoes & mushroom gravy
° bacon & scrambled eggs with jalapeno & tomato topping
° sausage gravy (I will make biscuits for the sausage gravy)
° green beans with mushrooms
° stuffing
° carrots with raisins & pears
° cranberries with walnuts & raisins
° yams
° broccoli
° peas salad with tuna, Mac and Cheese
° dill tuna pate for crackers
° 'some kind of' bread product I made with dried fruit and nuts
° tea, coffee, & hot chocolate

Not all that shabby for pandemic preps canned and freezer fare.
Lots, flavorful, filling, hot single servings with microwave.
(cramberries & tuna pate served chilled)

[CG]

*snip*

° 'some kind of' bread product I made with dried fruit and nuts

Fruitcake. You're allowed to call it fruitcake.

[NT2C]

*snip*

° 'some kind of' bread product I made with dried fruit and nuts

Fruitcake. You're allowed to call it fruitcake.

Someone call me?

[Ever]