Printable View
So after the UK variant is already in at least 8 states, and variants from South Africa, Japan, and other places are racing around the globe, the CDC is going to start requiring covid tests for international air travellers. Yep, these same tests in the news lately for high false negative rates. They've finally decided the barn door should be shut, but it's stuck due the demands of the jet set, so they've got it partially ajar now. Good luck with that.
Troll
JP: That is so sad about the gorillas.
DH got his second vaccine shot today. So far, so good.
I am reading The Splendid and the Vile and what a contrast to today. I just finished a chapter on the bombing of Coventry.
Today you may have to do a virtual farewell to a loved one. Then a bomb could kill a loved one instantly, no farewell, and the body might be so mangled it cannot be identified and claimed.
Now the government provides financial assistance including SNAP so people can eat more. Then food was rationed.
Then people wanted to go to dangerous zones to volunteer and help. Now we are told to quarantine and hide from danger.
Then the leader, Churchill, was seen as uncultured and bombastic by his critics rather like Trump, but he put the country first. Trump puts himself first.
I am sure there are other parallels I am missing, but the main takeaway I get is how lucky Americans are they have not had a war on their soil within the memory of anyone living, and how silly the media are with their breathless reporting of covid as if it were the greatest disaster ever, and of the divides in this country portending some sort of civil war. We are a long way from war, as anyone who lived through a home soil war would know.
Tell overwhelmed health care workers that COVID is not a disaster. I dare you.
It's not the greatest disaster ever, as I wrote.
In many parts of the world the economic side effects are much more dire than the health impact. Then again, we are talking countries with lower life expectancies and lower average ages, so they are less vulnerable.
When some people are in the middle of something and it grabs all their attention they lose perspective. Most reporters fall in this category.
The bombing of Coventry resulted in several mass burials of bodies that could not be identified, hundreds at a time. 2294 buildings were destroyed and another 45,704 were damaged. Our Capitol building has some broken glass but still stands. We will get through covid and the mobs and everything else. Life in America is still so good we are the immigration beacon of the world (not New Zealand).
Yeah. Smile when you say that.Quote:
Originally Posted by JaneV2.0
30,000 died in London during the entirety of the German bombing campaign. We've had about that many deaths in the USA from COVID so far in the first 11 days of January this year.
So, troll the heck off.
So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. ....
For those too young to remember:Quote:
Originally Posted by bae
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlyUeUz1awU
Indeed. At this point it looks like we're on track to lose more people in the US to covid than the military lost during all of WWII.Quote:
Originally Posted by bae
Covid deaths per 100,000 on January 11th in the US = 55 Source: New York Times
Deaths per 100,000 from other disasters - scroll down to see the chart:
https://ourworldindata.org/genocides
Scroll further down and you will see the impact on life expectancy of a couple of events. Cambodia fell below 20 and Rwanda below 30 years of age. Neither disaster dominated the news the way covid does.
Here is an article on reduction of US life expectancy due to covid:
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1....12.20148387v3
What a difference!
I saw a reporter out with the lottery story since jackpots are high. He asked a woman what she would do if she won and she said buy her own tropical island where she could go and not have to wear a mask :)
Seems like just staying home would be a lot cheaper.Quote:
Originally Posted by Yppej
Simple frugal living for the win! :)Quote:
Originally Posted by jp1
Actually, the NYT reports to say that doubling down on mask wearing may have benefits.
In terms of the efficacy of our general run-of-the-mill mask-wearing practices, here's what one paragraph says:
The arguments for masking span several fields of science, including epidemiology and physics. A bevy of observational studies have suggested that widespread mask-wearing can curb infections and deaths on an impressive scale, in settings as small as hair salons and at the level of entire countries. One study, which tracked state policies mandating face coverings in public, found that known Covid cases waxed and waned in near-lockstep with mask-wearing rules. Another, which followed coronavirus infections among health care workers in Boston, noted a drastic drop in the number of positive test results after masks became a universal fixture among staff. And a study in Beijing found that face masks were 79 percent effective at blocking transmission from infected people to their close contacts.
An article in the local news said that cases of the common cold and seasonal flu were down significantly due to the extra measures for Covid. I suppose that's almost a given.
Our public health department in the middle of a coronavirus surge (although the surge *may* be improving a little) is now is telling us it's Very Very Important to wear masks when talking a walk. You tell me how much sense that makes? (IMO very little given what we know about outdoor transmission). But they are public health right, so this is now one of their emphasis - wear a mask when talking a walk or people will keep dying from this thing!
Their other piece of advice for people from the public health department is to wear masks inside their homes if they leave their homes and live with other vulnerable people. From a disease spread perspective this actually *might* make some sense (but enough hours spent in close contact may negate some of the mask benefits). But from a practical perspective noone is going to do it almost. Besides that noone can do it when they sleep. Ok then just keep bedroom doors closed, yea sure if you have multiple rooms, but that isn't going to solve the 20 people living in a 1 bedroom type situation with people are sleeping in the living room couch and floor, people sleeping on the kitchen floor etc..
I don't think I will ever agree that the loss of money is more dire than the loss of a life.Quote:
Originally Posted by Yppej
Misinformation and lies about the coronavirus have been and continue to be spread by a vast number of internet sites.
An up-to-date list of such sites in the US and abroad is maintained by by the Coronavirus Misinformation Tracking Center. (link below)
I dug into only a couple of sites that caught my eye... and I would say it was "eye-opening" to see the range and amount of resources devoted to spreading misinformation about the virus on the internet.
http://www.newsguardtech.com/coronav...racking-center
early on in the pandemic, Senator Rand Paul recovered from Coronavirus in his family home’s basement while keeping away from the rest of his family members. If they all or any came down with it, I didn’t hear about that. He said they threw him food down there periodically.Quote:
Originally Posted by ApatheticNoMore
But that isnt the same as staying away for months and months on end from household members. The short stint is less onerous.
APN, I don’t have much respect for the directive to wear a mask when you’re outside in nature either. I live in a city and see many walkers out and about. Honestly, it seems that at least half are wearing a mask. This is good! But am I awful for not wearing a mask? I go out daily on a 1 mile walk. I don't know...
I should, however, wear a mask around my neck when going to the community garden in the next few months because that’s easy enough to pull up onto my face if I run into someone. I use only the masks that go around the back of my head. I buy some with elastic ear pieces but they don’t stay on my head so I add elastic to them so that it fits around my head.
Yes, and then people pick up the misinformation and spread it as truth. Useful idiots, as the Soviets say.
I think public health department here is at the point of just: throwing things against the wall and seeing what sticks, or running stuff up the flagpole and see who salutes. People are likely getting it from jobs but they won't shut down non-essential businesses. My bfs workplace is at a case a week now and they aren't even getting it from each other but out in the community. There is no reason he can't do his job from home but will they let him? Nope. People are getting it from crowded living conditions but that's intractable poverty and there are not and have never been isolation hotels or other setups to isolate when sick here. Meanwhile swap meets are open and crowded and indoors but that is where a lot of poor people shop. People are getting it from social gatherings but they can't police them. And so it's doubling down on super unlikely sources of transmission like people taking walks without masks or it's unlikely to be practiced suggestions like wear a mask in your house at all times.
OWS Operation Warp Speed briefing 1/12/2021 said 38 million doses have been made available to states "without a hitch". I guess it was not worth mentioning the 57 doses intentionally ruined by a "bad actor" pharmacist formerly employed by the Aurora Hospital in Grafton WI.
OWS said the supply was larger than the population in Group 1A. So eligibility for vaccination should expand to all people 65 and older, plus all people 16-65 with a co-morbidity. The federal government now plans to release the entire supply, rather than holding back supply for the Second Dose. The assumption is that the pharmaceutical manufacturers will continue production and will be able to supply the Second Dose in time when it is needed.
OWS observed that some states (notably West Virginia) administer vaccines without delays and confusion, while other states are more opaque and impose more restrictions. OWS response is to base future allocations of vaccines to states "on the pace of administration", the promptness of the state's reporting on vaccination, as well as the size of the state's >65 population. So, in effect after 2 weeks, states which do not get the lead out of their trousers are warned that their allocation may be cut.
A Milwaukee pharmacist was arrested and accused of "tampering with and causing the destruction" of more than 550 doses of the Moderna vaccine against the coronavirus last week, Grafton, Wis., police confirmed.Dec 31, 2020.Quote:
Originally Posted by dado potato
Saw in today's paper that he was suspended from his job but no legal action has been taken against him.
my city’s public health department put out a very carefully worded statement about park playgrounds in summertime. They did not say playgrounds are open. They made noise about playgrounds not being monitored and everyone is urged to take precautions and etc. Since no one was honoring the yellow tape around playgrounds anyway, what point is it to continue to play the game?Quote:
Originally Posted by ApatheticNoMore
Tiny tots must not be denied
Based on the news I have seen from Milwaukee (Grafton being a suburb of MKE) Steven Brandenburg has been fired from his job, and his pharmacist license has been suspended. I understand that he was held in jail overnight before being released on a signature bond, agreeing to appear in court to face charges. I believe that today (Tuesday) the prosecutor will decide exactly what to charge him with. I may have described his offense incorrectly. I believe there were 57 vials involved, and each vial contained 10 doses of vaccine.Quote:
Originally Posted by frugal-one
I later read that he had been persuaded by misinformation websites that the vaccine "could hurt people by changing their DNA".
Pharmacists have a high level of microbiology training. It is weird when one of them escapes that mindset. But then, there are plenty of M.D. outliers, we hear about them all the time running fringe treatment programs.Quote:
Originally Posted by dado potato
And sometimes, as in the case of Ignaz Semmelweis or Frances Oldham Kelsey, those outliers are vindicated.
And other times they are just ignorant outliers:Quote:
Originally Posted by JaneV2.0
https://apnews.com/article/salem-cor...12baba065f98dc
Certainly, but that doesn't negate the fact that we need "outliers" to progress.
I think of the Australian doctor, Barry Marshall, who discovered that helicobacter was a cause of peptic ulcers, and how long it took for him to convince the medical establishment. And Dr. Timothey Noakes (South Africa) and Dr. Gary Fettke (Australia) have both had to fight organized resistance to their ideas. Dr. Noakes won a court case, and Dr. Fettkes was later exonerated of "nutritional malpractice." None of these people are whack jobs, but principled professionals who wouldn't shut up and go away.
"Mask of shame."Quote:
Originally Posted by jp1
Words fail me.
The UK strain has just been detected in IL for the first time. Someone in the Chicago area who traveled to the UK.
I wrote the other day about the escape mutant. Its name is E484K. Here is another reference to it since I know some people do not trust CNN:
https://www.infectioncontroltoday.co...cine-resistant
It’s not that we don’t trust cnn. You, on the other hand...Quote:
Originally Posted by Yppej
I thought the border was closed, but I saw on the news Canadians are making their way to Florida to get vaccinated ahead of US citizens. Here is a link from Bloomberg News for those who do not believe CNN:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...to-u-s-for-jab
ETA you think since the vaccines come from the Feds Trump would stop this since he is always talking about America first.
Trump checked out of COVID oversight nearly from the beginning; he isn't even pretending to care these days.Quote:
Originally Posted by Yppej
Today's Atlantic has a good description of how viruses mutate:
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/a...riants/617694/
Many more people have died of covid than in the Capitol, so why if masks stop covid are they being ordered removed in airports? So TSA can get a better look at people's faces on flights to Washington.
Because of course the government will not stop people from flying around despite new variants including one that is an escape variant.
I saw in today's local news that 75% of people nationwide are wearing masks and in Massachusetts over 80% yet we continue to break records in the US for infections.
Not everyone has to get vaccinated to get to herd immunity. 75% would do it.
So obviously if 75% or more of people are wearing masks and covid continues to spike masks don't work.