I'm seeing a definite rise in cases just like last week. I can't see it bei g mentioned that's why I've said it twice. (Going by the worldometer site for the uk)??
SARS CoV-2 coronavirus / Covid-19 (No tin foil hat silliness please)
- Thread starter Don't Kill Bill
- Start date
Thread appreciateive of how NZ has taken care of their latest outbreak.
The UK is definitely experiencing a spike in deaths at the moment. Cases seem relatively steady at around the 30k mark daily.
Anyone following Israel recently? Lots of new cases, what's the situation like, aren't they all pretty much vaccinated with two doses so far?
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/israel/
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/israel/
Every rise in cases doesn’t represent a spike. Certainly not one worth mentioning.
If this chap is right, then they have a significant number of unvaxxed over 70s (the group most likely to be hospitalised) and despite their quick start they've not really hit the overall take-up rates we've seen in the UK.
Basically what that means is that they've not reduced their hospitalisation rates as much as they'd hoped, so once case rates rose, hospitalisations rose dramatically. They're trying to fix it by boosting the immunity of the already vaxxed, because there's not much they can do for the unvaxxed except advise them to get the vax or stay at home.
What that basically means is that the UK is "only" experiencing a tenth of the hospitalisations it would have seen pre-vaccine. For Israel is a fifth (so twice as many proportionately as the UK). For the US it's a quarter of the pre-vaccine situation, which is high enough to push their hospitalisations back to pandemic peak levels in some states.
The UK has bad case rate numbers (and isn't vaxxing under 16s) so they don't really expect them to fall. They can live with that as long as the hospitals don't fill up. Which is a "balanced on a knife edge" sort of calculation. If vaccination levels and/or prior infection levels weren't so high in the UK - no way we can cope.
As it is, this is a picture of vaccines working really hard and doing a really good job in the UK:
No one knows for sure what that will look like in the autumn/winter though.
It's not a spike, it's a rise in cases running at about 10% per week, as people start doing more normal mixing etc. There have been spikes in some areas (most dramatic an extra 5k cases from the Boardmasters festival in Cornwall) and Scotland has seen a distinct jump as kids go back to school (and start doing LFTs again).
Basically, across the UK as a whole we're seeing an R rate of about 1.1, but with local spikes visible against a high background rate. The only reason it's currently being ignored in the UK (apart from people being bored) is that the vaccine has stopped hospitals collapsing under the weight of admissions. That can change, hospitalisations are rising - but so is immunity due to vaccination and immunity due to infection. It's a race.
OK maybe not a spike but cases are definitely on the up. Schools open in a week or so and winters around the corner. Can't but help be concerned with it.
Thanks, that's a good explanation there. We are fecked with Covid for good, aren't we?
Hopefully there will be more effective vaccines available soon enough, immunity of just 5-6 after two shots of best available vaccine doesn't give lot confidence, especially with so many anti vaxxers around, it seems like we aren't yet anywhere near close to long term solution.
In my town people just went full free for all mode, ignoring signs on doors of objects, wear masks, dont wear its same shit, nobody says a word to them. Worst part is, went to pharmacy and even mask is required to enter, 2 behind gave me the look like i am the idiot one for having one on.
I read posts like this and fear you’re right. It feels like every bit of good news is suddenly hit with two lots of bad. I try not to spiral into depression with just how bleak the future is.
Start coughing everywhere you’ll soon see panic
I am personally very optimistic about the future due to the vaccines. The anti-vaxxers are a problem, particularly here in USA but otherwise the vaccines have been amazing. They are the long-term solution. If everyone was vaccinated COVID would really be like flu.
I don't think we'll get rid of it. It looks like we'll be able to turn it into something manageable like flu. In time, as our immunity builds, there's a fair chance we'll be thinking of it as another entry in that list of viruses that are dangerous to some people (like flu or RSV) but which the rest of us can cope with.
We'll see better vaccines, maybe some that can help build sterilising immunity (so the vaxxed can't infect other people) - but we could be waiting years for those. Better to assume that we'll find a way to live with it, rather than viewing it we're fecked for the indefinite future.
I'd love to think "live with it" will mean better mitigations - better tests, better sick pay if infected, better ventilation indoors, better treatments if infected etc - but that may just be wishful thinking, as it requires political action.
That shit crossed my mind, not gonna lie, to go all out and just fake the shit out of it.
Interesting that Victorian students just topped the NAPLAN (literacy and numeracy standardised tests) despite that being the state most impacted by lockdown and remote teaching. Of course the main point of school isn't really education (as you learn so slowly you can catch up a suboptimal few months/year relatively easily if your school is decent) but social which has been lost. https://www.theage.com.au/national/...onths-of-remote-learning-20210824-p58lcs.html
Last edited:
@Solius did you get your results back? I'm not sure if I just missed your post
Compulsory vaccination would be a good start. Not holding people down and sticking needles in but significant carrot and stick encouragement. And not just for covid. All the normal childhood ones plus chickenpox, HPV and annual flu shots (and probably others).
Nah forgot to update. Negative!
I feel fine now apart from a little tickley cough but that’s easing off each day.
Will schools in the UK be doing the same regular testing as they were toward the end of the last school year?
Good to hear
My lads school will do two tests a week
I tend to avoid reading corona news, since the vaccine roll out, but then I stumpled upon the Israel situation, and felt like shit again.
Yeah, better vaccines that stop spreading the infections are the only possible solution by the looks of it, but it's questionable how far away are we from those vaccines yet.
Good stuff, get well soon
Low-quality article. "Highly vaccinated country" doesn't stop the delta variant so the suggested solution is to be "100% vaccinated every several months"
Low-quality article. "Highly vaccinated country" doesn't stop the delta variant so the suggested solution is to be "100% vaccinated every several months"
Not “every several months”, no. The hope here is that a third dose gives long term protection. Time will tell. It wouldn’t be the first vaccine that needs more than two doses shortly after one another for optimal duration of protection.
A 65% vaccinated country like Israel can't stop the spread of Delta. A country like Israel with only around 85% of its 70+ vaccinated can't reduce the case v hospitalisation rates enough to cope.Low-quality article. "Highly vaccinated country" doesn't stop the delta variant so the suggested solution is to be "100% vaccinated every several months"
Boosting the already vaxxed won't do much for the big picture, but it will help some of the ones unlucky enough to be collateral damage from getting hospitalised alongside the unvaxxed, having caught it in a high infection rate environment. It may make some of the others who get exposed to it in a high infection rate environment less likely to pass it on.
Beyond that they're dependant on additional people getting vaccinated or catching it and recovering. Given that they probably don't want another round of lockdowns.
Yesterday, just in time for our Independence Day (today), Uruguay reached 70% of the population with two doses. 10% of these have already received a third booster. A further 7% are on one dose but, for the most part, couldn't get the second due to infection. 17% of the population are minors, for which vaccine rollout hasn't been approved. That leaves 6% not vaccinated for whatever reason, largely aged 12-30.
It was only a few months ago that we spent several weeks topping the world deaths per million charts, hovering consistently around 18-20/million/day. Yesterday COVID patients were occupying 1.5% of our ICU capacity, down from 45% at one point (effectively 68% of our pre-pandemic capacity as we had increased beds by 50% in 2020*). Vaccines work, simple as.
We've had cases of delta but it hasn't gained any traction so far, daily cases/hospitalisations are consistent with the expected rates from having most of the population on the less effective Sinovac, but with acute cases getting flattened regardless.
I know first hand that there's a delta wave forming in Brazil that will likely hit them hard in September, so will keep you posted on how we cope with the trickle down in September-October.
For those interested in the finer detail, these are the platforms and sequencing:
Early March
-#1 Priority Groups: healthcare, Old-Age homes and Homeless people got Pfizer. Teachers and police got Sinovac.
From mid-March
-50-70: Primarily 2xSinovac -18-50: 2xSinovac (available in the necessary numbers) and now boosting with 1xPfizer. Covax Fund (multilateral WHO bollocks) AstraZeneca was not available in quantity, nor offered any certainty around deliveries. When some finally arrived in May they wound up getting used mainly with this age group and to accelerate across the dry border with Brazil (inc. vaccinating Brazilians in joint cities). There was the added bonus of using a platform different to the one in Brazil (Sinovac) so as to protect (or at least gage effectiveness) against variants, which largely creep in across that border.
-18-50: 2xSinovac and now getting booster with 1xPfizer.
From mid-April
-Over 70: 2xPfizer
From mid-May
-Pregnant or U-18: 2xPfizer
From late July
-Pfizer booster for Sinovac
-Government already has orders in place aligned with 1xPfizer booster for everyone next year.
*Deserves a separate post
It was only a few months ago that we spent several weeks topping the world deaths per million charts, hovering consistently around 18-20/million/day. Yesterday COVID patients were occupying 1.5% of our ICU capacity, down from 45% at one point (effectively 68% of our pre-pandemic capacity as we had increased beds by 50% in 2020*). Vaccines work, simple as.
We've had cases of delta but it hasn't gained any traction so far, daily cases/hospitalisations are consistent with the expected rates from having most of the population on the less effective Sinovac, but with acute cases getting flattened regardless.
I know first hand that there's a delta wave forming in Brazil that will likely hit them hard in September, so will keep you posted on how we cope with the trickle down in September-October.
For those interested in the finer detail, these are the platforms and sequencing:
Early March
-#1 Priority Groups: healthcare, Old-Age homes and Homeless people got Pfizer. Teachers and police got Sinovac.
From mid-March
-50-70: Primarily 2xSinovac -18-50: 2xSinovac (available in the necessary numbers) and now boosting with 1xPfizer. Covax Fund (multilateral WHO bollocks) AstraZeneca was not available in quantity, nor offered any certainty around deliveries. When some finally arrived in May they wound up getting used mainly with this age group and to accelerate across the dry border with Brazil (inc. vaccinating Brazilians in joint cities). There was the added bonus of using a platform different to the one in Brazil (Sinovac) so as to protect (or at least gage effectiveness) against variants, which largely creep in across that border.
-18-50: 2xSinovac and now getting booster with 1xPfizer.
From mid-April
-Over 70: 2xPfizer
From mid-May
-Pregnant or U-18: 2xPfizer
From late July
-Pfizer booster for Sinovac
-Government already has orders in place aligned with 1xPfizer booster for everyone next year.
*Deserves a separate post
I also posted this in the vaccines thread (link), but given that the article referenced also discusses the effect of COVID-19 on fertility and related things, I thought I might repeat it here, in case it's not been mentioned yet.
So, here's a quote from today's Nature Briefing:
So, here's a quote from today's Nature Briefing:
This abstract refers to the following article with further details and references: https://www.scientificamerican.com/...igns-of-harming-fertility-or-sexual-function/. Its title and subtitle are this:Nature Briefiing said:
In case anyone still woried about this aspect.
I know I'm flogging a dead banned horse, and posting a tweet from someone crowing about his own internet argument, but the cowardice from Glenn Greenwald in this argument is exactly what I found irritating about @LazyRed-Ninja (here, he never replied).
It's fine if you want to do a hard, no-feelings analysis of comparing Covid to other problems (here, Glenn chooses car crashes and analogises a lockdown with banning cars).
The problem is that these people never actually do that. There are allusions to massive problems, comparisons to other things, but no concrete proposal, no hard numbers. Aside from the direct dead from covid that they never quantify, they don't eve npretend to think about ICU overcapacity or things like that.
It's fine if you want to do a hard, no-feelings analysis of comparing Covid to other problems (here, Glenn chooses car crashes and analogises a lockdown with banning cars).
The problem is that these people never actually do that. There are allusions to massive problems, comparisons to other things, but no concrete proposal, no hard numbers. Aside from the direct dead from covid that they never quantify, they don't eve npretend to think about ICU overcapacity or things like that.
My aunt just died of it. Double vaxed with Moderna, but 84 years old, so probably the vaccines did not really have much effect on her.
@Revan Sincere condolences
Sorry to hear that, condolences
Thats really sad news. All the best Mate.
Sorry for your loss mate. I had a relative die who was double vaxxed, also in their 80s. It's not common but these people are more than statistics.
I really don’t like the emotional blackmail & borderline bullying people who don’t want the vaccine are receiving. People who are double jabbed are still getting the virus, people who are double jabbed are still dying, and a small minority are suffering severe side effects to the vaccine, some even dying. If you’re one of those people trying to force the vaccine on people just think twice before you bully them, that’s all I’m saying. People have the right to a choice.
I agree that bullying isn't right mainly because it won't change anybody's mind if they're being called stupid and aggressively being told to do it. It is a choice, but that choice should also have repercussions in terms of the potential cost to society.
Somebody not taking the vaccines will have a higher cost on average due to more needing ICU and hospital treatment. There is also the higher risk of transmitting it to others which comes with both health and personal costs to those involved. It's free choice, but there should be repercussions based on the added risks as that's open and fair.
Delta Airlines adding $200 to cover additional insurance costs is a good policy which still gives choice.