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Cheeseweasel

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atomheartbevo

atomheartbevo 89449

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Let's post some news.

Tokyo Olympics still going on.  Foreign fans not allowed.

https://apnews.com/article/world-war-ii-tokyo-coronavirus-pandemic-2020-tokyo-olympics-japan-bec3d048e9b962e5a577eca120cc664b

Quote

Despite the mixed messages coming from top officials, not to mention the steadfast opposition of the vast majority of Japanese citizens, these Olympics will take place this summer.

Quote

Forget about the athletes hanging around to absorb the culture and cuisine of the hosts once their competitions are over. They’re being told to arrive late and get out of town as soon as possible. (Of course, Ryan Lochte probably wishes he had followed that advice in Rio.)

Quote

Toshihiro Nikai, the No. 2 person in the ruling political party, was asked during an interview if cancellation was still an option.

“Of course,” he replied, adding that if the Tokyo Games piled on to the misery already wreaked by COVID-19 “there would be no meaning to having the Olympics.”

Quote

But the swiftness with which Nikai backtracked and a bunch of other powerful officials jumped in to say his comments were off the mark only solidified the reality that these games are going forward — no matter what happens in the next three months.

“There are a variety of concerns but as the Tokyo 2020 organizing committee we are not thinking about canceling the games,” said Seiko Hashimoto, who heads up the Tokyo organizing committee.

Quote

Everyone from the athletes and coaches to officials and the media will be on virtual lockdown during their time in Japan, restricted largely to the stadiums and arenas where the events are held and the rooms where they will lay their heads at night.

They should change the logo's sun to the covid-19 spikey ball (the official scientific name).

800.jpeg

 

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atomheartbevo

atomheartbevo 89449

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More news: I mentioned in one of the other threads that a friend's in-laws in India were having relatives go down left and right, complete with one of them making a video call with the corpse of a parent in the background, because she couldn't get the corpse out of her house and properly cremated.  She did finally get it cremated.  She made a post on Facebook claiming that a bunch of corpses are being dumped in the Ganges, but she's pretty emotionally distraught, so I doubt they'd do that - the Ganges is A Holy River.

Some South Korean friends who are doing graduate work at UT are shocked/pissed/embarassed at how many vaccines we have available now, meanwhile their parents and other older relatives back in SK are having a hard time getting vaccinated. 

Friends in Japan are saying that the elderly just started getting their vaccines at the end of last month, and they (healthy, in their 30s) won't be able to get them until July or August.  But there was a recent approval or two for one of our vaccines (I think Pfizer) that may speed that up a bit.

I just assumed that some of the Asian countries were on the ball with the vaccine stuff, but apparently, unlike electronics manufacturing, production facilities are not all over the place.

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InkaUtexas

InkaUtexas 25521

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Spoke with a partner in Kenya this morning. He and his wife were given round 1 of AZ to be then told they have no idea when #2 is going to be available. Guess the idea is getting at least 1 is better than the full regimen. He is supposed to head into Somalia for a project and really wanted to be covered before he went in. Asked him about the government COVID count in Kenya and he just laughed. "This is Africa, people just die all the time and no one really asks why." 

Shit ain't equal everywhere, that's for sure. 

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Storm the Field

Storm the Field 5273

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I'll play. I miss having a DT thread to discuss pandemic trends and developments without getting expliclitly political.

First, love seeing that the 7-day average for cases in the US is now down to 22,139. That's 50K lower than at the peak of the "4th wave" just 6 weeks ago and 225K lower than the absolute worst that things were back in early January. I think we could possibly get down to 10K or less by the middle of June.

On a different note, I've brought up before that I have some pretty serious misgivings about the way the pacific ocean countries are handling covid moving forward. Oceania and SE Asia have extremely low vax numbers and seem to be relying on travel bans, strict quarantines and sporadic lockdowns when needed. I just don't think that's economically viable in the long run.

 

 

 

Edited by Storm the Field
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BabaYaga

BabaYaga 15212

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5 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

She made a post on Facebook claiming that a bunch of corpses are being dumped in the Ganges, but she's pretty emotionally distraught, so I doubt they'd do that - the Ganges is A Holy River.

Thought that was going on for decades now?  Bodies in the Ganges?  More now I guess?

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WBT

WBT 20422

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17 minutes ago, InkaUtexas said:

Spoke with a partner in Kenya this morning. He and his wife were given round 1 of AZ to be then told they have no idea when #2 is going to be available. Guess the idea is getting at least 1 is better than the full regimen. He is supposed to head into Somalia for a project and really wanted to be covered before he went in. Asked him about the government COVID count in Kenya and he just laughed. "This is Africa, people just die all the time and no one really asks why." 

Shit ain't equal everywhere, that's for sure. 

The Economist had an article last week that attempted to estimate actual covid deaths based on excess mortality.  They estimated the covid death toll was 1.07x the official count in the U.S., 1.17x the official count across the rich OECD countries, but 14x in sub-Saharan Africa.  Not equal everywhere indeed.

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gyroprotagonist

gyroprotagonist 2591

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20 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

More news: I mentioned in one of the other threads that a friend's in-laws in India were having relatives go down left and right, complete with one of them making a video call with the corpse of a parent in the background, because she couldn't get the corpse out of her house and properly cremated.  She did finally get it cremated.  She made a post on Facebook claiming that a bunch of corpses are being dumped in the Ganges, but she's pretty emotionally distraught, so I doubt they'd do that - the Ganges is A Holy River.

Some South Korean friends who are doing graduate work at UT are shocked/pissed/embarassed at how many vaccines we have available now, meanwhile their parents and other older relatives back in SK are having a hard time getting vaccinated. 

Friends in Japan are saying that the elderly just started getting their vaccines at the end of last month, and they (healthy, in their 30s) won't be able to get them until July or August.  But there was a recent approval or two for one of our vaccines (I think Pfizer) that may speed that up a bit.

I just assumed that some of the Asian countries were on the ball with the vaccine stuff, but apparently, unlike electronics manufacturing, production facilities are not all over the place.

the US is so far out in front on the vaccines compared to the rest of the world.  not going to get into a should we have re-opened or not, but the vaxs work and are slaying the chances of any nth waves happening no matter our behavior.  they are making gov's from all states look good no matter their stance and finally forcing the CDC to relax their stances.  yay us.

Hearing same thing from Indian colleagues i work with.  my director has lost something like a dozen extended family members (all old-ish) that live in India.  

 

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BabaYaga

BabaYaga 15212

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3 minutes ago, WBT said:

The Economist had an article last week that attempted to estimate actual covid deaths based on excess mortality.  They estimated the covid death toll was 1.07x the official count in the U.S., 1.17x the official count across the rich OECD countries, but 14x in sub-Saharan Africa.  Not equal everywhere indeed.

If you're into MMA and the UFC, read up on the nightmare's Francis Ngannou endured just getting out of Africa.  It's insane.  

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WBT

WBT 20422

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On a more positive note, a colleague in the Netherlands has his first shot next week.  The EU started out well behind the US and the UK but hopefully they are in the process of catching up.  It will be awhile for the poorer countries unfortunately.

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  • hayden_horn changed the title to Covid-19 News (No Politics, please)
hayden_horn

hayden_horn 11360

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also, full disclosure, i vacillated between moving the political posts to the cloak room formerly DT covid thread or editing them. i chose to edit them to remove the political content. once again, talk about the politics in the cloak room. some of those posts had decent content, but it was political in nature.

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workswithseed

workswithseed 2037

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54 minutes ago, WBT said:

On a more positive note, a colleague in the Netherlands has his first shot next week.  The EU started out well behind the US and the UK but hopefully they are in the process of catching up.  It will be awhile for the poorer countries unfortunately.

UK probably pretty happy to get out of the Union.

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Storm the Field

Storm the Field 5273

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56 minutes ago, WBT said:

On a more positive note, a colleague in the Netherlands has his first shot next week.  The EU started out well behind the US and the UK but hopefully they are in the process of catching up.  It will be awhile for the poorer countries unfortunately.

Vast majority of the EU is between 22-28% vax coverage as of today, with a few outliers (Hungary at 42%, Bulgaria at 9%). They're about 8 weeks behind the US, but are already seeing case levels drop.

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InkaUtexas

InkaUtexas 25521

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7 minutes ago, Cheeseweasel said:

I remember when Shaggy Surly had a sense of humor

I remember when a thread I started was NOT part of the CR. If I wanted to start it there I would have. Fuck, now my Surly legacy is having a CR Thread with over 1.5M views. 

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Cheeseweasel

Cheeseweasel 26437

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With Biden's support, the COVID lab-leak theory goes mainstream

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/with-biden-e2-80-99s-support-the-covid-lab-leak-theory-goes-mainstream/ar-AAKpD55

 

WASHINGTON — For months, the notion that the coronavirus came from a Chinese laboratory studying infectious disease was dismissed as a conspiracy theory, a means for President Donald Trump and his supporters to deflect questions about his handling of the pandemic.

That changed this week, with the Biden administration coming to question the origins of the virus, even as the pandemic recedes across the United States. This shift doesn’t reflect new evidence suggesting the virus did escape from a Chinese laboratory; rather, the shift acknowledges that simply not enough is known about how the virus first infected humans to rule out that possibility.

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hayden_horn

hayden_horn 11360

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19 minutes ago, Cheeseweasel said:

I remember when Shaggy Surly had a sense of humor

oh i got a sense of humor. i even smiled at the thread title when you posted the link in cr. then reports started coming in and i had to come in and edit a ton of posts.

problem is the title was an open invitation to political hot takes, and this board can't seem to help it.

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phdhorn

phdhorn 6224

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So what's the deal with a few recent studies I've seen that say if you wait longer than 1 month between shots on the Pfizer (specifically ~ 3-4 months), there's a good chance it'll be more effective against variants and/or increase your immunity?  And likewise, could some people get the first shot then simply "skip" the second and wait for the booster (or is the booster exactly = to each of the first two shots?).

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01299-y

Edit:  might go in one of the other threads, but I figure we're essentially post-Covid at least for now and in the U.S.  Whatever...

Edited by phdhorn
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Wulaw Horn

Wulaw Horn 18981

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Posted (edited)
56 minutes ago, Storm the Field said:

Vast majority of the EU is between 22-28% vax coverage as of today, with a few outliers (Hungary at 42%, Bulgaria at 9%). They're about 8 weeks behind the US, but are already seeing case levels drop.

I never bought the need for 70% for herd immunity. That always seemed like a worst case scenario.  
between asymptomatic people, T-cell immunity and people saying 40-70% I always figured we’d get there sooner than anyone thought/predicted. Great news. 

Edited by Wulaw Horn
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Dahobbs

Dahobbs 17447

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3 minutes ago, Wulaw Horn said:

In never bought the need for 70% for herd immunity. That always seemed like a west case scenario.  
between asymptomatic people, T-cell immunity and people saying 40-70% I always figured we’d get there sooner than anyone thought/predicted. Great news. 

It's a math problem. The percentage of the population needed for herd immunity is based on R0 of the disease. 

https://plus.maths.org/content/maths-minute-r0-and-herd-immunity

Quote

 

What does all this have to do with herd immunity? The general idea behind herd immunity is that in a population where many people are immune a disease can't take hold and grow into an epidemic, thereby protecting people who aren't immune. The population (perhaps unfortunately called a herd ) protects vulnerable individuals.

So how many people in a population need to be immune to have herd immunity? Imagine a disease has a basic reproduction number $R_0$, which is greater than 1 so an epidemic threatens. As we have seen, if the effective reproduction number $R$ is less than 1, then the disease will eventually fizzle out. So to achieve herd immunity we need to somehow get the effective reproduction number $R$ to under 1. Since $R=sR_0$, where $s$ is the proportion of the population that is susceptible, we need

  \[ sR_0<1. \]    

Rearranging, this gives

  \[ s<1/R_0. \]    

In other words, we need to get the proportion of susceptible people in the population to under $1/R_0.$ How many people need to be immune to achieve this? If the proportion of susceptible people is $s$, then the proportion of people who are not susceptible, in other words immune, is $1-s$. Now

  \[ s<1/R_0 \]    

means

  \[ 1-s>1-1/R_0. \]    

So, to achieve herd immunity we need to make sure that at least a proportion of $1-1/R_0$ of the population is immune. For an $R_0$ of 2.5, the higher end of the estimates for COVID-19, this means that we need to get at least a proportion of $1-1/2.5=0.6$ of the population immune. This translates to at least 60%

 

 

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hayden_horn

hayden_horn 11360

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7 minutes ago, Wulaw Horn said:

I never bought the need for 70% for herd immunity. That always seemed like a worst case scenario.  
between asymptomatic people, T-cell immunity and people saying 40-70% I always figured we’d get there sooner than anyone thought/predicted. Great news. 

i tend to agree with this. also, i reckon there are plenty of people that have antibodies racing around because they've already had it. 

i haven't seen any data on this front. my back of the envelope garbage math had me always figuring that 50% was the magic number, because there are some folks out there that have had covid, either symptomatically or not, and recovered. i always figured that would be about 30% of people, with some crossover vaccinated. but even if half of those folks are unvaxxed, then you're at 65% and the math starts to look pretty good, especially considering the science that says that us vaccinated folks cannot spread covid.

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Wulaw Horn

Wulaw Horn 18981

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20 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

It's a math problem. The percentage of the population needed for herd immunity is based on R0 of the disease. 

https://plus.maths.org/content/maths-minute-r0-and-herd-immunity

 

Sure, but we can’t know who all is immune was always the point. That’s why everyone said 40-70 and that was ignored and then everyone ran with 70. More people likely had immunity to this thing than was known- which explains why the cases are plummeting around 20-25%

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Bevo

Bevo 13527

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23 minutes ago, Wulaw Horn said:

Sure, but we can’t know who all is immune was always the point. That’s why everyone said 40-70 and that was ignored and then everyone ran with 70. More people likely had immunity to this thing than was known- which explains why the cases are plummeting around 20-25%

It was a math problem but it became extremely complex. R0 was already complex for several reasons, but let me define it first as well as state the reason that it is importance.

R0 is the average number of secondary infections produced by an infectious case in a population where everyone is susceptible and it is used to measure the transmission potential of a communicable disease. When R0 is >1, it means that each individual affected by a transmittable disease is expected to infect a number of subjects that increase exponentially with the increase of the R0 value and the disease is expected to spread through the susceptible population. Conversely, when R0 is <1 each case transmits the disease to one or less than one individual and the disease is expected to die out in the population. There was a lack of studies and what was available showed a range from 1.5 to 6.68 with the calculated mean and the median of R0 estimated by the 12 studies of 3.28 and 2.79, respectively. This R0 led to calculating the herd immunity at 70%.

Unfortunately, R0 is not an intrinsic variable of the infectious agent but instead is calculated based on the duration of contagiousness; the likelihood of infection per contact between; and the contact rate, along with economical, social and environmental factors. People wearing masks change the number, limiting travel changes the number, stay at home orders change the number, and social distancing changes the number. Further, R0 is a number used at the beginning of a pandemic. Later on an effective R is calculated. Maybe superspreaders get the disease first and maybe the most susceptible get the disease first. So as the disease progresses, the possibility of passing it from one individual to another changes because for example superspreaders and irresponsible people have already done their damage and recovered. And with the peaks and valleys of the disease that we experienced in 2020, the chance of spreading the disease to a susceptible person decreased. So anyway, sometime before vaccination, it is highly unlikely that 70% of the population needed to get vaccinated to lower R below 1.

 

 

 

Edited by Bevo
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Dahobbs

Dahobbs 17447

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Posted (edited)
28 minutes ago, Wulaw Horn said:

Sure, but we can’t know who all is immune was always the point. That’s why everyone said 40-70 and that was ignored and then everyone ran with 70. More people likely had immunity to this thing than was known- which explains why the cases are plummeting around 20-25%

The number of people that need immunity is based on the math. That's all I'm saying. How they get that immunity is a different question. I agree we likely don't need 70% of the population vaccinated to reach herd immunity. But, given that we don't know the actual percentage infected or how natural infection immunity differs from vaccination, from a public health communication perspective our goal should still be 70% vaccinated. I also think it is dangerous to assume that the current drop in cases is a result of herd immunity as opposed to a combination of all our efforts to combat the spread of the virus. If people gain a false sense of confidence, we could see another rise in cases as the effective R rises above 1. I think cautious optimism is warranted.  

Edit - yes see post above mine. If our behaviors return to their pre-covid state, our current immunity rate may no longer be sufficient to stay below an R of 1.  I'm not saying that is the case, I'm just saying it is variable we have to consider in our approach. 

Edited by Dahobbs
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clapclapclap

clapclapclap 9000

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Posted (edited)
3 hours ago, InkaUtexas said:

Spoke with a partner in Kenya this morning. He and his wife were given round 1 of AZ to be then told they have no idea when #2 is going to be available. Guess the idea is getting at least 1 is better than the full regimen. He is supposed to head into Somalia for a project and really wanted to be covered before he went in. Asked him about the government COVID count in Kenya and he just laughed. "This is Africa, people just die all the time and no one really asks why." 

Shit ain't equal everywhere, that's for sure. 

I read that they now think the AstrosZenica vaccine might be more effective if the second dose is delayed until 12 weeks after the first.

Edit:

https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/10-weeks-or-12-expert-says-slight-difference-in-astrazeneca-dosing-interval-likely-negligible-1.5443881

A recent study out of the United Kingdom found that lengthening AstraZeneca's dosing interval to 12 weeks or more was more effective against COVID-19 than administering the doses six weeks apart.

 

Thailand and Spain going to 16-week gap, to try and get more citizens an initial dose faster:

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/thailand-extend-dose-gap-astrazeneca-vaccine-16-weeks-2021-05-24/

Edited by clapclapclap
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Deej

Deej 76568

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2 minutes ago, clapclapclap said:

I read that they now think the AstrosZenica vaccine might be more effective if the second dose is delayed until 12 weeks after the first.

They probably cheated to get to that number. 

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Deej

Deej 76568

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3 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

More news: I mentioned in one of the other threads that a friend's in-laws in India were having relatives go down left and right, complete with one of them making a video call with the corpse of a parent in the background, because she couldn't get the corpse out of her house and properly cremated.  She did finally get it cremated.  She made a post on Facebook claiming that a bunch of corpses are being dumped in the Ganges, but she's pretty emotionally distraught, so I doubt they'd do that - the Ganges is A Holy River.

Some South Korean friends who are doing graduate work at UT are shocked/pissed/embarassed at how many vaccines we have available now, meanwhile their parents and other older relatives back in SK are having a hard time getting vaccinated. 

Friends in Japan are saying that the elderly just started getting their vaccines at the end of last month, and they (healthy, in their 30s) won't be able to get them until July or August.  But there was a recent approval or two for one of our vaccines (I think Pfizer) that may speed that up a bit.

I just assumed that some of the Asian countries were on the ball with the vaccine stuff, but apparently, unlike electronics manufacturing, production facilities are not all over the place.

I understood that in Japan, only doctors, and nurses under a doctor's direct supervision, could administer vaccines. That seems like it would slow the process down. 

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hayden_horn

hayden_horn 11360

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9 minutes ago, Deej said:

I understood that in Japan, only doctors, and nurses under a doctor's direct supervision, could administer vaccines. That seems like it would slow the process down. 

in japan, at least when i was there, they didn't have traditional pharmacies like we do. you get the fucking meds from the doctor. 

which makes way too much sense.

but it also means that they probably lack the number of pharmacists to administer the shot. we have pharmacists on every corner. there, for meds, you go to the doc. 

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ChickenSandwich

ChickenSandwich 9798

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2 hours ago, Cheeseweasel said:

With Biden's support, the COVID lab-leak theory goes mainstream

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/with-biden-e2-80-99s-support-the-covid-lab-leak-theory-goes-mainstream/ar-AAKpD55

 

WASHINGTON — For months, the notion that the coronavirus came from a Chinese laboratory studying infectious disease was dismissed as a conspiracy theory, a means for President Donald Trump and his supporters to deflect questions about his handling of the pandemic.

That changed this week, with the Biden administration coming to question the origins of the virus, even as the pandemic recedes across the United States. This shift doesn’t reflect new evidence suggesting the virus did escape from a Chinese laboratory; rather, the shift acknowledges that simply not enough is known about how the virus first infected humans to rule out that possibility.

Anyone have the link to the video breaking down the theory using employees social media and when they vanished?  Was over a year ago and censored from YouTube so can’t find it. 

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JimmyJames

JimmyJames 12271

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Posted
6 hours ago, mdmost said:

I was kinda hoping this was going to be a Cheeseweasel Covid gif thread. 

It still could be!

It shouldn’t be hard to have a non political COVID thread but given the number of what appears to be deleted posts it may be off to a rocky start. 

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