COVID-19 (f/k/a "the Coronavirus")

[pacearrow02]

"Prove a negative"

He's erring on the side of caution, obviously.  It is a terrible question.  You can't just pull studies out of thin air, and there is no definitive data that vaccinated people can't asymptomatically spread the virus.

Once we KNOW that vaccinated people can't spread, then it will be fine to travel as usual if vaccinated.

Use your brain.

The vaccines have been getting studied for almost a year now....me thinks we know the answer.

[The Hippie Satan of Hyperbole]

The vaccines have been getting studied for almost a year now....me thinks we know the answer.

What?  The Phase 3 trials didn’t conclude until November.

[pacearrow02]

What?  The Phase 3 trials didn’t conclude until November.

Sure they were concluded in November but began in July.  Seems like plenty of time to have figured out by now if once vaccinated can an individual asymptotically pass it along.

[Hards Alumni]

The vaccines have been getting studied for almost a year now....me thinks we know the answer.

Oh, okay, then present your evidence.  Unless you can, then don't make that claim.

I want the country opened up and back to normal as much as anyone.  I just want to be smart about it, and not blow it now that we are slow close to having our lives back.

[The Hippie Satan of Hyperbole]

Sure they were concluded in November but began in July.  Seems like plenty of time to have figured out by now if once vaccinated can an individual asymptotically pass it along.

Lol. I’m sure you know what you are talking about. 🙄🙄🙄

[Frenns Liquor Depot]

It was an opportunity missed in the trial.  They didn't study whether or not people shedded the virus - just efficacy and safety.  By the way this is global - not a US thing.

This has been discussed on medical twitter anyway.

The best information that is informing the CDC now is Israel from what I have read.  It is giving them confidence to release what they did earlier this week.

[Warriors4ever]

Exactly right, I have a friend who has been following the Israel data closely.

[TSmith34, Inc.]

Sure they were concluded in November but began in July.  Seems like plenty of time to have figured out by now if once vaccinated can an individual asymptotically pass it along.

Troll: This guy isn't following the science!

Hards: There is no science on this yet.

Troll: Who needs science? We should have figured this out!

[pacearrow02]

Lol. I’m sure you know what you are talking about. 🙄🙄🙄

Haha you’re absolutely right, I have no idea what I’m talking about but in the context of that interview it seems like I know as much as Fauci.  I’m just at my wits end with that guy, obviously he doesn’t grind everyone’s gears the same but for me his opinion carries about as much weight as anyone else.  Except for Don, he says jump and I say how high your majesty?

[GooooMarquette]

"Prove a negative"

He's erring on the side of caution, obviously.  It is a terrible question.  You can't just pull studies out of thin air, and there is no definitive data that vaccinated people can't asymptomatically spread the virus.

Once we KNOW that vaccinated people can't spread, then it will be fine to travel as usual if vaccinated.

Use your brain.

Yep. It is virtually impossible to prove that something can’t happen, so the most prudent course is to be cautious while data slowly comes out.

[MU82]

From the NYT, some good news on COVID-19 variants:

One or more of the variants could create terrible problems — by being highly contagious, by reinfecting people who already had Covid or by causing even more severe symptoms. A British study released yesterday, for instance, found that the B.1.1.7 variant increases the risk of death in unvaccinated people.

Nevertheless, the overall evidence on the variants has been more encouraging so far than many people expected. The vaccines are virtually eliminating hospitalizations and death in people who contract a variant. Reinfection does not seem to be widespread. And even if the variants are more contagious, they have not caused the kind of surges that seemed possible a couple of weeks ago.

In Florida, where B.1.1.7 has spread widely, “there’s no sign of any increase in cases,” Dr. Eric Topol of Scripps Research wrote. In South Africa, where the B.1.351 variant was first detected, cases are nonetheless plunging.

[MU82]

Unlike the previous president -- who shuttered the office responsible for pandemic preparedness and ignored the "pandemic playbook" that had been left for his administration -- the current president is borderline obsessed with making sure America isn't devastated by the next pandemic ...

From McClatchey News:

In a White House consumed by the coronavirus pandemic, one of the president’s less visible advisers is driven by the fear that the next outbreak could be even worse.

Dr. Beth Cameron had been preparing for an event of this magnitude for decades. As a senior national security official on biodefense in the Obama administration, she took part in the government’s response to the Ebola crisis, and in reaction to that scare wrote a “pandemic playbook” that she left for the Trump administration in 2017.

But the National Security Council office on pandemic preparedness that she helped to lead was shuttered, and when the worst pandemic in a century struck last year, her playbook was ignored.

Now she is back in the role – rebuilding her old office from scratch, reimagined, and providing Oval Office briefings to a new president who has vowed not only to end the current pandemic but to prevent the next one.

“We have a no-fail mission of monitoring and standing up a response to emerging biological threats,” Cameron, head of the National Security Council Directorate on Global Health Security and Biodefense, told McClatchy. “He is leaning forward on every aspect of our work.”

Within his first days in office, President Joe Biden reestablished Cameron’s team and signed an executive order calling for the creation of a national center for epidemic forecasting and outbreak analytics – a nerve center that would help the government track and project the course of viruses moving through populations.

Cameron’s NSC team is looking outward, coordinating with foreign governments and alliances to prepare for the next emergency that, like COVID-19, may come from overseas. The proposed national center – which has funding in the American Rescue Plan signed into law by Biden – would look inward, improving the country’s data collection, early warning systems and state and local reporting on public health threats.

Together, those two offices mark the beginning of an overhaul to the country’s biodefense infrastructure – an effort that experts say is long overdue.

The proposed national center could become home base for the myriad small offices across the government keeping track of mathematical infectious disease models and, in theory, streamline local health care data.

Scientists inside and outside of government who warned that a disastrous global pandemic was inevitable have been asking for a central office like this for years.

“One major challenge with the COVID-19 pandemic, and with previous biological threats, has been accessing real-time data and integrating data streams across the U.S. government and national healthcare systems,” Cameron said in an email.

“We urgently need a National Center for Epidemic Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics to modernize the U.S. disease warning system in order to scale action to prevent, detect, respond to, and recover,” she said.

Some of the leading experts on infectious diseases say the coronavirus outbreak in the United States could have been far less devastating from the start.

Evidence collected over the past year indicates that the coronavirus known as SARS-CoV-2 showed up a few times on the West Coast in late 2019, but didn’t take off. The first cases identified in the Seattle area in January 2020, scientists say, were largely contained.

But a single biotech conference in Boston led to hundreds of thousands of infections within those critical early weeks, possibly allowing the virus to take hold.

“There’s definitely a scenario with a coordinated federal response where we had caught the East Coast introductions in time, and have what would’ve amounted to a completely different future with COVID-19,” said Dr. Sam Scarpino, director of the Emergent Epidemics Lab at Northeastern University.

“One thing that’s generally true about epidemics, and we’ve seen this play out with COVID, is that you either stop it or you don’t,” he said. “There’s very little room for middle ground.”

The coronavirus pandemic showed that epidemic forecasting – the ability to identify a new virus quickly, map its trajectory, and potentially stop it – is crucial to national security.

Those forecasts are most critical at the very start of a pandemic, when decision-makers – from local mayors to the president – are relying on them to gauge the threat.

[tower912]

To borrow from and paraphrase St. Buzz, always keep sciencing.

[GooooMarquette]

Italy imposes lockdown measures as cases spike across Europe.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/15/world/italy-covid-lockdown.html

A year after Italy became the first European country to impose a national lockdown to contain the spread of the coronavirus, the nation has fallen eerily quiet once again, with new restrictions imposed on Monday in an effort to stop a third wave of infections that is threatening to wash over Europe and overwhelm its halting mass inoculation program.

As he explained the measures on Friday, Prime Minister Mario Draghi warned that Italy was facing a “new wave of contagion,” driven by more infectious variants of the coronavirus.

Just as before, Italy was not alone.

“We have clear signs: The third wave in Germany has already begun,” Lothar Wieler, head of the Robert Koch Institute for Infectious Diseases, said during a news conference on Friday. Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary predicted that this week would be the most difficult since the start of the pandemic in terms of allocating hospital beds and breathing machines, as well as mobilizing nurses and doctors. Hospitalizations in France are at their highest levels since November, prompting the authorities to consider a third national lockdown.

—————

The fight is not over yet. And this could dramatically impact the US if the current spread leads to vaccine-resistant strains.

[Frenns Liquor Depot]

I’m thankful that we aren’t banking on AZ. Between the early botched trials and the reactionary changes to to safety or efficacy concerns it has been a disaster for that vaccine and Europe too. 

Still have faith in the FDA and another example they seem to be doing their job regardless of the politics of the day.

[GooooMarquette]

I’m thankful that we aren’t banking on AZ. Between the early botched trials and the reactionary changes to to safety or efficacy concerns it has been a disaster for that vaccine and Europe too. 

Still have faith in the FDA and another example they seem to be doing their job regardless of the politics of the day.

Totally agree. Kudos to FDA for working quickly but thoroughly during a very difficult period.

[GooooMarquette]

UK variant carries a 55% higher risk of death than the original Covid virus.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/victoriaforster/2021/03/15/uk-coronavirus-variant-significantly-more-deadly-says-new-study/?sh=7ca2e1396a1e

Scientists had suspected that B.1.1.7 might be more deadly, as well as more transmissible following spectacularly high numbers of Covid-19 deaths in the U.K. during the second wave this winter, which saw the U.K’s worst daily death total in January claim over 1,800 lives. But, the new study published in the journal Nature, led by researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine all but confirms that this correlation is genuine.

The study looked at viral genetics data from almost 5,000 people in the U.K. who died from Covid-19, with two-thirds of those being confirmed to have the B.1.1.7 variant. It found that people who were infected with B.1.1.7 had a 55% higher risk of dying within 28 days of being tested positive for Covid-19.


—————

Keep wearing your mask, and get the vaccine as soon as you can.

[rocky_warrior]

Yikes.  Stay diligent.  Glad ~70% of > 65 have already received at least once vaccine dose.  Hopefully will keep the coming months at a manageable # of hospitalizations (and I hope to not be one...)

[rocket surgeon]

finally some cooler heads are starting to prevail with regards to the lockdowns-do they really work and/or are they worth the risk to socio-economic, physical and mental health impacts.  compare california to florida, the dakotas to similar size areas.  there is little to no difference in the numbers.  the science is finally putting together some data and it's essentially telling them the risk-reward is not worth the sacrafices.  there are some more studies even questioning the masks efficacy,

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/who-official-urges-world-leaders-to-stop-using-lockdowns-as-primary-virus-control-method/ar-BB19TBUo

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-failed-experiment-of-covid-lockdowns-11599000890


the sad thing is, these results have been known for quite some time, yet there are some states yet today working under very strict lockdown orders.  are they not getting the memo's?  if this is known and the lockdowns are continuing, it really makes me wonder what their true agendas are...well, not wonder, but it's really sad what some of these so called "experts" are doing to real lives and the long term affects

[Frenns Liquor Depot]

I thought this was a more comprehensive review as trying to lower mobility is just one factor to consider.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/03/how-the-west-lost-covid-19.html

[jesmu84]

finally some cooler heads are starting to prevail with regards to the lockdowns-do they really work and/or are they worth the risk to socio-economic, physical and mental health impacts.  compare california to florida, the dakotas to similar size areas.  there is little to no difference in the numbers.  the science is finally putting together some data and it's essentially telling them the risk-reward is not worth the sacrafices.  there are some more studies even questioning the masks efficacy,

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/who-official-urges-world-leaders-to-stop-using-lockdowns-as-primary-virus-control-method/ar-BB19TBUo

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-failed-experiment-of-covid-lockdowns-11599000890


the sad thing is, these results have been known for quite some time, yet there are some states yet today working under very strict lockdown orders.  are they not getting the memo's?  if this is known and the lockdowns are continuing, it really makes me wonder what their true agendas are...well, not wonder, but it's really sad what some of these so called "experts" are doing to real lives and the long term affects

How's the hydroxy lately?

[The Hippie Satan of Hyperbole]

finally some cooler heads are starting to prevail with regards to the lockdowns-do they really work and/or are they worth the risk to socio-economic, physical and mental health impacts.  compare california to florida, the dakotas to similar size areas.  there is little to no difference in the numbers.  the science is finally putting together some data and it's essentially telling them the risk-reward is not worth the sacrafices.  there are some more studies even questioning the masks efficacy,

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/who-official-urges-world-leaders-to-stop-using-lockdowns-as-primary-virus-control-method/ar-BB19TBUo

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-failed-experiment-of-covid-lockdowns-11599000890


the sad thing is, these results have been known for quite some time, yet there are some states yet today working under very strict lockdown orders.  are they not getting the memo's?  if this is known and the lockdowns are continuing, it really makes me wonder what their true agendas are...well, not wonder, but it's really sad what some of these so called "experts" are doing to real lives and the long term affects

I was reading something yesterday that said our puritanical, zero-tolerance approach toward this has been problematic.  Not only for the reasons you mention here, but because it has caused people to tune people out and take riskier behavior.

For instance, and they are doing this now, but the news reports showing people at the beach.  But a beach is probably one of the safest places you can be.  People are usually spread out, and there is usually a breeze dissipating any air. 

The better idea would be to teach people how to lessen the harm understanding that people are going to engage in risky behavior. 

They liked it to the abstinence method of sex education in the 1980s, which likely caused more teen pregnancy and more abortions because kids didn't have access to birth control or didn't know how to have the conversation with their parent or another trusted adult.

[MU Fan in Connecticut]

I was reading something yesterday that said our puritanical, zero-tolerance approach toward this has been problematic.  Not only for the reasons you mention here, but because it has caused people to tune people out and take riskier behavior.

For instance, and they are doing this now, but the news reports showing people at the beach.  But a beach is probably one of the safest places you can be.  People are usually spread out, and there is usually a breeze dissipating any air. 

The better idea would be to teach people how to lessen the harm understanding that people are going to engage in risky behavior. 

They liked it to the abstinence method of sex education in the 1980s, which likely caused more teen pregnancy and more abortions because kids didn't have access to birth control or didn't know how to have the conversation with their parent or another trusted adult.

Fluff,
The Onion is reading the same articles as you.  One of today's headline's was "Florida leaving syringes on the beach to increase vaccination rates".

[Hards Alumni]

finally some cooler heads are starting to prevail with regards to the lockdowns-do they really work and/or are they worth the risk to socio-economic, physical and mental health impacts.  compare california to florida, the dakotas to similar size areas.  there is little to no difference in the numbers.  the science is finally putting together some data and it's essentially telling them the risk-reward is not worth the sacrafices.  there are some more studies even questioning the masks efficacy,

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/who-official-urges-world-leaders-to-stop-using-lockdowns-as-primary-virus-control-method/ar-BB19TBUo

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-failed-experiment-of-covid-lockdowns-11599000890


the sad thing is, these results have been known for quite some time, yet there are some states yet today working under very strict lockdown orders.  are they not getting the memo's?  if this is known and the lockdowns are continuing, it really makes me wonder what their true agendas are...well, not wonder, but it's really sad what some of these so called "experts" are doing to real lives and the long term affects

My man, I don't know where to start with you.  Lockdowns worked.  Look no further than Southeast Asia.  Look no further than Spain or Italy.  It was only when the lockdown measures are removed that the virus crept up again.

The articles you linked... the first is from October (5 months ago) and is written by Andrew Mark Miller.  Check out his background a second, and then try to take the guy seriously.  He writes some of the most biased articles for the most biased rag in DC.  Furthermore, he quoted a guy from the WHO... and we ALL KNOW how you feel about the WHO based on your posting history... but now they matter?  Examine why you feel this way now.  Furthermore, that gentleman says his comment was taken out of context.  He goes on to explain that lockdowns shouldn't have been the PRIMARY measure for tackling the virus.  He never said that they don't work.

The second article is from September (6 months ago)  and is an opinion piece authored by a big bank guy who idolizes John Galt.  He also was among the deadest wrong about the financial collapse in 2008.

And you see neither of these articles as problematic?  Seriously?

[TSmith34, Inc.]

My man, I don't know where to start with you.  Lockdowns worked.  Look no further than Southeast Asia.  Look no further than Spain or Italy.  It was only when the lockdown measures are removed that the virus crept up again.

The articles you linked... the first is from October (5 months ago) and is written by Andrew Mark Miller.  Check out his background a second, and then try to take the guy seriously.  He writes some of the most biased articles for the most biased rag in DC.  Furthermore, he quoted a guy from the WHO... and we ALL KNOW how you feel about the WHO based on your posting history... but now they matter?  Examine why you feel this way now.  Furthermore, that gentleman says his comment was taken out of context.  He goes on to explain that lockdowns shouldn't have been the PRIMARY measure for tackling the virus.  He never said that they don't work.

The second article is from September (6 months ago)  and is an opinion piece authored by a big bank guy who idolizes John Galt.  He also was among the deadest wrong about the financial collapse in 2008.

And you see neither of these articles as problematic?  Seriously?

Oh, you and your facts.