Coronavirus

[lady_*nix]

https://www.theguardian.com/science/202 ... tudy-shows

Note to self: seriously, don't get this disease if at all possible.

Good to know this is a possibility though, like... autoimmune stuff is hard to deal with, but at least it's a known thing with lots of research already being done (and with a huge number of people already living with similar diseases). So if this turns out to be one the mechanisms for long COVID, that may open up paths for treating it.

[Rommie]

Re: messaging, TBH what I expect to happen is to start seeing messaging hard on Jan 21 on those points, pumpkinpi. It's clear the current administration DNGAF, but the next one has hired a ton of great epidemiologists (I like the joke where if you don't know their name as a layperson, that's good) and it sounds like they're working hard on hitting the ground running as much as possible. Well, one can hope.

I definitely think there's going to be still some confusion about what is good and when, so we'll see. To be clear, until we have the numbers on whether vaccinated people can transmit the virus I am 100% ok wearing a mask etc in things like public transit. But I don't think you're going to be able to stop me from, say, inviting all my vaccinated friends over for a party unless you explain very well why we shouldn't be doing that. I guess as you say, messaging will be key.

Had an annoying wrinkle come up this week in that Harvard officially approved my summer class, and announced all summer classes will be online. TBH at this stage of the game, I don't know if I can be bothered to teach an online class after the horror stories my friends who teach have told, knowing how very close to the end we will be, when it's not actually my job and I can just take on summer students and go to conferences instead. Surely there will be other ways to get teaching experience, IMO! So gonna talk it over with my supervisor on just how to do it, but I think I'm gonna cancel the class. Sucks, but so does this entire pandemic.

[pumpkinpi]

I'm going to put this here so I can come back and reference it during the future fight over vaccines.

TL:DR this is far from over.......if we thought the fight to get people to wear masks and stay home has been hard....


MPR News with Kerri Miller about "Limited COVID-19 vaccine supply raises bioethics, equity questions"
https://www.mprnews.org/episode/2020/12 ... -questions

~20 minutes in A caller skeptical about vaccines said she wants to wait until there is more data about the safety before getting it. A quote: "If we're going to say covid is less risky than the flu and the flu hasn't been mandated...then I really don't think that it should be a requirement....it is in emergency status and as more people get it they will get more data. I want to see that data first. I'm not risking my health and others' health [before we know about long term risk before benefits now.]"

Dr. Greg Poland, director of Vaccine Research Group at Mayo Clinic: "she voiced the opinion that this is less risky than influenza. The facts are contrary to that. This is far riskier than influenza. Second thing is that....the burden is on people who would reject the vacation. Yes you can ask for 5 years, 10 years.....We've had influenza vaccine for 70 years and there are still people who reject it. So data is not the overriding issue here. I think what a wise person does is they look at the risk, they look at the benefit, if they are not expert in the area they have to depend on the expertise of credible people and credible institutions and follow that lead. Otherwise they risk their health, they risk the health of other people. [BURN!] ...It means nothing if people don't' take the vaccine. In fact the estimate is that about 70+ 80+ percent of us are gong to have to take the vaccine before we get this pandemic under control. Otherwise the very people who reject or are hesitant about the vaccine will be those responsible for prolonging the duration of the pandemic, the number of people who get hospitalized, end up with chronic medical problems, die from this. Of course the effect on the economy and the mental effect on our lives. So.. there's a point at which I think, and I understand in the US we are a hyper-individualist "me" society. Other successful societies are more "we" societies. And maybe we should think in that direction."

Arthur Caplan, founding head of the Division of Medical Ethics at NYU School of medicine added:
If you want more liberty, that's another value in addition to being oriented to individualism as Dr. Poland mentioned, we also like freedom and liberty. If you want more freedom to travel, if you want more freedom to get on an airline, if you want more freedom ultimately, I suspect, to go to the gym and to go to an indoor restaurant, you're going to be required to show vaccination. They are not going to take the liability that you go and infect others and then they get sued for not taking enough caution. So I do think we're going to see a lot of mandates that people are going to find difficult to say no to because they are going to want their freedom. It's true a mandate will take away their freedom to chose if they want to be vaccinated or not but I think you're going to gain a heck of a lot more liberty and freedom if you do vaccinate... the toll of this disease is so big in terms of death and economic disaster that we will see the private sector leading and insisting. ...there is risk, but you are probably more likely to die when you drive to work, or if you cycle, or if you decide to go swimming, than if you get this vaccine....so it isn't just 'I want to be sure that the vaccine is as safe as possible' which is reasonable, but everything carries some risk and we behave in many behaviors much riskier than anything that is going to show up from these vaccines. I'm pretty sure given the data so far. So risk is relative and you have to not just understand what's a risk but what's a relative risk to other things you're going. The last part we're so individualistic, so egocentric. There are people out there who can't take this vaccine....it isn't just for you it's to protect your neighbor. That has to be kept in mind too if you want to get out there to resume normal activity, helping those who can't vaccinate for medical reasons.

[lady_*nix]

The scarcity side is the one I'm more worried about TBH. There are still so many forces chomping at the bit to turn this into an exercise in eugenics, and a staggering lack of concern about it from the political center. It's given me some hope that many of the first people to get the vaccine in the US are Black, but we need to keep up that energy - it can't just stop at frontline healthcare workers, we need to prioritize vaccinating the poor and marginalized, including those in prison. And that's not just the more ethical move, that's the best way to slow the spread. But I don't trust conservatives to actually want to slow the spread, and I don't trust liberals to give enough fucks.

Fuck antivaxxers regardless though. Srsly.

[lady_*nix]

https://www.themarysue.com/trump-is-mes ... -roll-out/

Because of course he is.

Merry fucking Christmas.

[SciFiFisher]

There is a very heart breaking story in the Washington Post today about a small town in North Dakota. While their friends are dying all around them they were fighting with the city council about a mask mandate. Their own medical professionals were begging them to wear a mask and they still would not. The story ended with the City Council passing a mask ordnance that was basically an empty gesture.

[lady_*nix]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... oronavirus

The Pfizer and Moderna shots are nearly all going to healthcare workers and residents of long-term care homes, based on the advice of the advisory committee on immunisation practices. There will not be enough shots for the general population until spring – at best.

“When it comes to the vaccine timeline,” Murthy told NBC’s Meet the Press, “we all want the vaccine to be delivered as quickly, as fairly as possible. And you can be sure that every day and night, myself and others on the Biden team are working toward that end. But we also want to be realistic, you know, about the timeline.

“If everything goes well, then we may see a circumstance where by late spring, you know, people who are in lower-risk categories can get this vaccine. But that would really require everything to go exactly on schedule. I think it’s more realistic to assume that it may be closer to mid-summer or early fall when this vaccine makes its way to the general population. So we want to be optimistic, but we want to be cautious as well.”

Meanwhile the rich fascist pigs who twiddled their thumbs at the beginning of the pandemic get even higher prio than health workers; and there are also several stories of hospital management getting early access while leaving frontline health workers out in the cold, and of clinics getting calls from the wealthy offering massive bribes for early vaccination. The mendacity of rich people's behavior right now is absolutely horrifying, and completely predictable - and it's also horrifying and completely predictable how our government doesn't give a fuck.

Any sensible state would make it worth a life sentence to try and bribe clinics for a vaccine. Y'all millionaire fucks aren't better than us just because you have a boat and a second home, shut the fuck up and get back in line.

[Rommie]

Learned today my mom thinks Fauci is “crazy” and this virus was created in a Chinese lab and released as a bio weapon. My dad then tried to talk her out of it in the more “sensible” voice of... the Chinese didn’t create it but did release it from a lab? Not sure about the details because I told them if they really think that to stop reading so many conspiracy theories, which of course wasn’t the way to go forward but I mean it was pretty friggin’ ridiculous and I guess I was kind of mad by then.

People are so weird.

[SciFiFisher]

There are at least 5 additional vaccines at stage three being developed in the U.S., Australia, and the U.K. There are actually more than that but these are the ones being developed in those countries. Pfiser has one that has just been approved. This in addition to the Moderna one. https://www.raps.org/news-and-articles/ ... ne-tracker

My hope is that given the demand we will have at least 5 approved highly effective vaccines available in the U.S.,Canada, UK, and Australia by January.

[lady_*nix]

So there's now a new and more infections variant spreading rapidly in England. Thanks a lot anti-maskers.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... -in-the-uk

Supposedly the existing vaccines should still (mostly) work against it, but... I'm pessimistic, because (as with recent politics) so much of this pandemic has consisted of news media saying "That can't possibly happen!" followed by the thing happening.

[lady_*nix]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... -across-uk

This is why you don't just let a pandemic run its course.

Edit: when this is over, if there is an "over", Boris Johnson and Donald Trump need to face prison time specifically for their handling of the pandemic. Likewise everyone who advised them to pursue herd immunity without a vaccine. There need to be consequences for this level of malfeasance and stupidity.

There probably won't be. But there need to be.

[lady_*nix]

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/cu ... d_nn_tw_ma

"Operation Warp Speed at a crawl: Adequately vaccinating Americans will take 10 years at current pace"

I'm pretty convinced at this point that the Powers That Be just want millions of people in this country to die.

[SciFiFisher]

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/current-rate-it-ll-be-10-years-americans-adequately-vaccinated-n1252486?cid=sm_npd_nn_tw_ma

"Operation Warp Speed at a crawl: Adequately vaccinating Americans will take 10 years at current pace"

I'm pretty convinced at this point that the Powers That Be just want millions of people in this country to die.

I don't know how closely you are tracking the news and all the crazy shiznai that keeps coming out of this administration but...
It appears that in April or May they deliberately decided that the way to deal with covid was to achieve herd immunity by encouraging everyone to become exposed and just get it over with. It's slightly more complicated than that but this is the gist of it.
Someone in this administration appears to have decided that as many as four million dead was a small price to pay to save the economy. With any luck we won't see quite that many but the estimates for a best case scenario at this point are about one to one and half million deaths by the time we achieve herd immunity through vaccinations and "letting nature run it's course".

If the reports are true we not only need people to serve jail time I sincerely believe that we need to see someone executed for one of the worst mass murders this country has ever seen. It won't happen but it should. And when I say someone I really mean plural someone. Starting with Donnie Dorko and working our way down to the last medical adviser who just recently left.

The reality is that if they had acted decisively very early in the game there would have been no need to choose between saving the economy and jobs or preventing deaths. We could have done all three.

[lady_*nix]

@Fisher

Yeah, I heard about that. Kind of at a loss for words at this point. Any faith or hope I once had for this country has been demolished.

Edit: the thing I was getting at though, is that IMO it isn't just the Trump administration and the Republicans. Like those are obviously the worst and most concentrated genocidal zeal, but everyone with any political or financial power is complicit. Even with Trump being impossible to remove, there were so, so many ways this level of disaster could have been averted. And the centrist Dems' "healing" and "unity" shit is, like, completely unforgivable in the face of this level of crimes against humanity. The interests that demanded hundreds of thousands, even millions, die to keep the money flowing don't just need to be rebuked; they need to be crushed without mercy, or they'll just keep committing the same crimes over and over again.

And now we're in for a huge wave of newly disabled people in a country that already wants to let the disabled die... IDK, man, the outlook is really bleak. Especially since, with the US now being the plague cesspit of the world, most of us can't even flee anywhere for the foreseeable future. I'm really worried about what comes after Biden, and honestly? I'm almost as worried about Biden cutting a deal with the eugenicists, and letting even more disabled folks (including COVID survivors) die in the name of the economy. He seems like the kind of guy who'd do that, for "healing" and "unity" and "compromise" and whatever.

I am so fucking tired. And so fucking furious.

[Rommie]

So crazy stuff from my parents in Florida. Apparently the governor there has decided he is not going to distinguish between anyone over 65 in Florida in terms of need- re-election's less than two years away folks!- so each county is just a free for all in terms of how to do this. In Lee County, just north of my parents, a friend's parents sent pictures of what can only be described as a super-spreading event with over a thousand people in line, not all masked, hoping to get the vaccine that day (many didn't). In Collier, where my folks are, at least they've partnered with Eventbrite, so all I have to deal with is my dad complaining that the sites all keep getting sold out immediately. (He asked my husband if he could write a script to automatically check when new things open up, F kindly told my dad Eventbrite must have something like that and it's probably illegal, but I can't blame him for asking.) Luckily this morning there is now a "wait list" he could get on, so hopefully that will happen soon.

Yeah, I guess it's good at least that my dad is frustrated safely at home instead of in line? If by "safely" I mean "had a new years gathering of only three other couples, but it's outdoors so apparently it's ok then." Lord, if they get it so close to the end I'm going to be so angry!

[SciFiFisher]

Yeah, I keep thinking about how much longer it will be before enough people get vaccinated to start really stopping the spread of COVID. And getting it just before one can get vaccinated is like being in a war zone with only days left before you rotate home only to get wounded or killed just before your ticket gets punched.

[Ikyoto]

Interesting to see this thread as live chronicling of history

[Rommie]

Hello, Ikyoto!

That thought has occurred to me about this thread more than once. I'm sure we sound hella naive in the first page or two about what was in store for us all.

[Rommie]

My parents are scheduled for the vaccine!

Next Tuesday. They have to drive ~2.5 hours for it, and again for the booster a few weeks later, but who cares right? (We did warn them to plan to drive straight home after over spending a night when they get the booster, as anecdotally it sounds like a lot of people don't feel well the day after it.)

I'm really happy they are going to be fully immunized by the time the British one takes over as the main variant. It's going to be a real race against that one, almost feels like when you get to the end of a video game and suddenly there's a switch to "hard mode."

I've told F that when the coronavirus numbers start to rise again in a few weeks I am going to stop going to work even if that's low risk, and we are going to switch to grocery delivery/ N95 masks and weird hours for the rare time we need to go somewhere ourselves (there's definitely some foods the grocery delivery people suck at giving you because they're not picking out the produce I would etc, and dang it sometimes you run out of one thing and have to go pick it up). I was reading how in Canada they estimate 1 second to get infected if two maskless people are together for that one, many people say they got it who only went into a store for a few minutes, 6 feet doesn't seem to work any more with it, etc. Hell if I'm going to get it now unless it really can't be helped.

[lady_*nix]

https://www.chop.edu/news/chop-research ... sars-cov-2

"CHOP Researchers Find Elevated Biomarker Related to Blood Vessel Damage in All Children with SARS-CoV-2 Regardless of Disease Severity"

Forcing children to go back to school in person is going to drastically fuck up their health and shorten their lifespans as adults. And govt officials simply do not care. Same story as with everything else about long COVID and chronic afteraffects, govt policies just ignore it being a thing.

Paraphrasing one of my friends who survived COVID, the future is going to be accessible because the US govt consigned vast numbers of people to permanent disability.

(At least, that's the more hopeful outcome. The less hopeful one is even more eugenics politics and a second Holocaust.)

[pumpkinpi]

My parents are scheduled for the vaccine!

Next Tuesday. They have to drive ~2.5 hours for it, and again for the booster a few weeks later, but who cares right? (We did warn them to plan to drive straight home after over spending a night when they get the booster, as anecdotally it sounds like a lot of people don't feel well the day after it.)

Great news. My father gets the first shot on Feb. 25

I'm really happy they are going to be fully immunized by the time the British one takes over as the main variant. It's going to be a real race against that one, almost feels like when you get to the end of a video game and suddenly there's a switch to "hard mode."

I've told F that when the coronavirus numbers start to rise again in a few weeks I am going to stop going to work even if that's low risk, and we are going to switch to grocery delivery/ N95 masks and weird hours for the rare time we need to go somewhere ourselves (there's definitely some foods the grocery delivery people suck at giving you because they're not picking out the produce I would etc, and dang it sometimes you run out of one thing and have to go pick it up). I was reading how in Canada they estimate 1 second to get infected if two maskless people are together for that one, many people say they got it who only went into a store for a few minutes, 6 feet doesn't seem to work any more with it, etc. Hell if I'm going to get it now unless it really can't be helped.

Is this educated speculation on your part, or do you have some good evidence that case numbers will rise? I'm feeling pretty good about things in Minnesota, as cases are continuing to go down, but I want to switch my thinking if it's likely it's going to get worse again before it gets better. I listen to a lot of podcasts (reputable sources) and there hasn't been much consensus that I've heard. But, maybe I'm just hearing what I want to hear. Rooster went back to school today, Buster starts in two weeks, and the museum opens again in 4 weeks. We're looking at a lot more potential exposure.

[pumpkinpi]

Is this educated speculation on your part, or do you have some good evidence that case numbers will rise? I'm feeling pretty good about things in Minnesota, as cases are continuing to go down, but I want to switch my thinking if it's likely it's going to get worse again before it gets better. I listen to a lot of podcasts (reputable sources) and there hasn't been much consensus that I've heard. But, maybe I'm just hearing what I want to hear. Rooster went back to school today, Buster starts in two weeks, and the museum opens again in 4 weeks. We're looking at a lot more potential exposure.

Never mind. Just heard it on The Daily. We'll see what impact this has on the schools and my work in the next few weeks.

[lady_*nix]

Yeah it's going to happen in MA soon too. The numbers look "good" right now so they're going to increase max restaurant capacity again, and open up a bunch of stuff... cue the numbers getting bad two weeks later, the hospitals getting overstuffed again, and thousands more people dying.

"But who pays for the next lockdown Jan?" IDK, but Charlie Baker's net worth is supposedly a cool $20 million, maybe he can start.

Edit: meanwhile IDK if y'all have been following the news on current vaccines vs. new strains, but it doesn't look so great. The vaccines seem to prevent death and severe infection in all cases, but often not provide full immunity for newer strains, which means that herd immunity and eradication of COVID are probably pipe dreams for the foreseeable future. Instead this is likely to become something seasonal like the flu, except with a 5% risk of death and a 10% risk of chronic illness. Fun fun fun.

The thing that really gets to me is that we had so many chances to contain this fucker, and yet it didn't happen because one after another, authoritarians decided it served their interests to let it spread. Most especially in the US, where until this year, neo-Nazi eugenicist fucks have been dictating federal policy around the pandemic. (And where liberals have far too often been playing appeasement games with those neo-Nazi eugenicist fucks.)

[Rommie]

Is this educated speculation on your part, or do you have some good evidence that case numbers will rise? I'm feeling pretty good about things in Minnesota, as cases are continuing to go down, but I want to switch my thinking if it's likely it's going to get worse again before it gets better. I listen to a lot of podcasts (reputable sources) and there hasn't been much consensus that I've heard. But, maybe I'm just hearing what I want to hear. Rooster went back to school today, Buster starts in two weeks, and the museum opens again in 4 weeks. We're looking at a lot more potential exposure.

Never mind. Just heard it on The Daily. We'll see what impact this has on the schools and my work in the next few weeks.

Yeah, I'm obviously no expert and it'd be great to be wrong. But there's a Hungarian saying, "it's better to be afraid than terrified," which I find apt in this pandemic.

[Rommie]

By the way, I don't think it's come up but one of the fascinating indicators in the Boston area is a pilot project to track coronavirus in wastewater- link. There's a lot of question about how much the data is reliable (those random high points are likely due to incorrect data entry, I heard a researcher say on NPR), but it does seem useful at least on an "is the virus increasing in presence in our area" metric, but my general thoughts are if that starts to rise due to variants, we sure will be able to tell around here.

Well, I guess we all read whatever Chinese tea leaves we want for guidance these days.