Board 8 > Coronavirus Topic 13: Back to Normal: The Finale: Take 1

(+) Yeah! (+)

Right

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It's not premature to say anymore: Case count is trending downward in the US. And honestly just as importantly, it's trending downward in the UK as well. Deaths are still going to be bad but we're probably a week off from those leveling off and trending downward as well.

There's been a general panic off in Brazil lately about further outbreaks in the city of Manaus and the general Amazonas region which had already been significantly hit (though they had a terrible serology study that claimed far more of the region had been infected than what likely happened) along with Brazil's own claim of this being a Brazilian variant that's evading neutralizing antibodies. We've heard this kind of thing so many times now. It's just more watchful waiting.

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From NYT:

Now city officials are facing a new obstacle: There are not enough doses. On Tuesday, the mayor warned that the city was on track to exhaust its supply before the end of the week.

We will have literally nothing left to give as of Friday, Mr. de Blasio said. This is not the way it should be.

We've thrown out vaccines due to policies.
Now we're out of vaccines too due to supply and policies.


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Kinglicious posted...

From NYT:

Now city officials are facing a new obstacle: There are not enough doses. On Tuesday, the mayor warned that the city was on track to exhaust its supply before the end of the week.

We will have literally nothing left to give as of Friday, Mr. de Blasio said. This is not the way it should be.

We've thrown out vaccines due to policies.
Now we're out of vaccines too due to supply and policies.

Kind of figured this was going to happen once they released the stockpile.

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better to run out than to throw them out

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Just got my second dose

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Corrik7 posted...

Kind of figured this was going to happen once they released the stockpile.

oh totally. this is the more expected norm situation, where it's the vaccines that are the hold up. i'm not sure who's at bigger fault on this one, though i'm glad it's supply issues that are the limiting factor and not dumb policy by cuomo.

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https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/20/health/covid-vaccines-protect-from-variants/index.html

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https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/21/politics/school-reopening-biden-100-days/index.html

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https://nypost.com/2021/01/24/dutch-covid-19-testing-facility-torched-during-ongoing-riots/

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https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/24/us/politics/student-suicides-nevada-coronavirus.html

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What's with these crappy news sites forcing you to sign up just to read an article.

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Waluigi1 posted...

What's with these crappy news sites forcing you to sign up just to read an article.

Try a private window / incognito mode

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apparently, some people think my country is headed towards a civil war because of the anti-lockdown riots.

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welcome to america

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A few people in my apartment block got it and now the whole block has to be tested very soon. I have diarrhea recently, hope it's not Covid because that will be a automatic hospital visit which would really suck

Early Novavax data (thread):

https://twitter.com/megtirrell/status/1354899937285337088?s=21

Overall quite good, but the bad news is that it looks like its efficacy falls quite a bit for the South African variant. Still small sample sizes, though.

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Yeah, it's looking like the SA variant is going to prove tricky and it's good that both Moderna and Pfizer are working on a booster for those now. There's also still the matter of the Brazilian one because it does seem to be hitting Manaus super hard which, again, hopefully isn't indicative of immune escape happening.


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Got tested today, fingers crossed

Oh I should post this here too:

LordoftheMorons posted...

J&J vaccine is 66% effective (85% effective against severe disease, 100% against hospitalizations/deaths).

https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/29/health/johnson-coronavirus-vaccine-results/index.html

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Not the greatest results for J&J. I wonder if giving two doses makes things better.

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No hospitalizations/deaths is a pretty big deal; Id definitely rather get an mRNA vaccine, but having had concerns about being forced to settle for a hypothetically inferior vaccine earlier I think I would take this one if it was my only option for the foreseeable future. (Id still try to get Pfizer/Moderna at the next earliest opportunity, though).

The real downside is at the societal level; if everyone got J&J, that alone wouldnt get us to herd immunity against the new, more contagious strains.

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It looks like they're still testing their two shot regimen and probably aren't far off from results on that one. That'll be the final push to show whether there really is a superiority to mRNA vaccines.

You're right that just the J&J vaccine wouldn't get us to herd immunity, but I doubt any state is going to keep many restrictions at all if we hit like 80-85% vaccinated by June. I think ultimately it's becoming quite evident that at least a booster is going to be necessary to truly get everything fully under control and the vaccination scene will probably be going on into 2022. By that metric, we won't be "back to normal" until 2022.

As far as what that means for anything being kept closed... July everything opens and we have mass 4th of July celebrations. That's my bet. States already are opening up huge amounts and we're still adding 150k cases daily.

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The US will "only" be adding a five digit number of cases on the weekend updates this week, I suspect. That would make it the first since November 3rd.

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I thought cases were rising again.

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Nah, new cases and hospitalizations are declining or holding steady in every state right now.


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We essentially hit what I would guess is our theoretical maximum rate of spread around the new year.

Nowhere to go but down now.

And to hope the bodies immune response and the vaccines work for a long enough period of time to hopefully finally bring a bit of closure to this.

And for the love of everything no significant mutations.

https://www.statnews.com/2021/02/04/johnson-johnson-submits-application-for-covid-19-vaccine-to-fda

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Got scheduled for shot 1 on Monday. Not sure if Pfizer or Moderna.

I'm a teacher

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yeah, based on the way other similar diseases work (flu, colds, etc) we hit peak in the fall to early winter and it sharply drops in Jan. so we should be through the current worst but a few spikes will exist - superbowl sunday, chinese new years, st. patty's.

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Wanglicious posted...

yeah, based on the way other similar diseases work (flu, colds, etc) we hit peak in the fall to early winter and it sharply drops in Jan. so we should be through the current worst but a few spikes will exist - superbowl sunday, chinese new years, st. patty's.

Not necessarily true; it depends on how fast we can vaccinate people before the UK variant becomes the dominant strain in the US. If we cant outrace it there will probably be another peak in March or something.

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Is there a reason we believe the UK and SA variant is much more contagious?

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Yes, for two reasons: Higher viral load identified in the upper respiratory tracts from people infected by either of the two and the fact that both variants have growing proportions of all samples that are sequenced, or have outright become the dominant variant, in the places where they have been identified.

I believe the UK variant is the more contagious of the two, but it still gets neutralized nearly as well by vaccines as the original variant. The SA variant isn't neutralized as readily, but the R0 for it would undoubtedly still be smashed down enough with mass vaccination to allow a booster to be made available specifically for it. And the vaccines still seem to prevent death and hospitalizations from the SA variant.

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denmark's variant is still worse than both since it has mutations in spike proteins.
but it's less common.

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Well this isn't great

https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1357603953953931265

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https://nationalpost.com/news/world/with-millions-of-cases-has-india-achieved-herd-immunity

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Our governor has officially ended all COVID restrictions for the state of IA.

Though at least some cities are continuing anyway.

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https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/07/opinions/covid-flu-twindemic-mystery-sepkowitz/index.html

Good read

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I dont understand why that article says that social distancing/masking/etc stopping the flu but not covid is hard to explain. There is an incredibly simple explanation: covid is much more contagious than the flu. Those measures did work to reduce transmission of both viruses. Because the flu started at like R~1.2-1.3 or something they were enough to stop exponential growth. Covid started at like 2.5-3 and they werent enough to consistently keep R<1.

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got first shot of pfizer today. no side effects to speak of so far.

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Getting my second shot of moderna on Friday. Couldnt be more excited. Cant wait to finally feel like I can breathe again. Its been a very very VERY stressful year

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colliding posted...

got first shot of pfizer today. no side effects to speak of so far.

next day: sore arm, slight headache. very minimal discomfort.

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The WHO reiterated their belief that coronavirus was of animal origin, and I continue to agree with that assessment. The epidemiology research lab in Wuhan was probably aware of things before anyone else, but I don't think a containment breach or anything like that was responsible for anything. It would be like blaming the laboratories monitoring and sequencing the genetic code of the variants in the UK or South Africa for those variants now circulating.

However ever since Denmark's fiasco with a mutated variant from minks, my own suspicion is that China's fur farms are the most likely point of origin.

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Okay.

Said another way, it doesn't make a difference if there was a "containment failure" or whatever at the lab since it was already in the community anyway. I'm still granting that there was misconduct by the CCP, which wasn't really part of this latest WHO evaluation about the lab in the first place. Their misconduct came later while community spread was happening.

The WHO's errors were born more out of a fallacious adherence to caution about global economic damages regarding sounding the alarm, with or without CCP influence. But it had already spread to a point then anyway (as evidenced by COVID positive patients in multiple countries from December and earlier) that the global fate was sealed.

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Plenty of restrictions have been lifting over the last week or so in many states, so we'll get a good view of if the R0 will remain under 1 despite that. Given general behaviors and practices that have been had all along, I suspect it won't change it that much but a number of places will definitely plateau or see a little bit of increased spread because of variant growth.

Also on the earlier topic, I shouldn't have been lazy on fact checking. China as an entity does not rank in the top 10 for worldwide contributors to the WHO, for combined assessed contributions (membership dues) and voluntary contributions (which is what CCP would fall under). Their voluntary contributions are quite minimal.

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Second shot of moderna yesterday. So far just tired and body aches. Some of my coworkers have had a much tougher time with it so Im hoping this is the worst it gets! Itll be worth it in the end~

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Almost half of Israel already vaccinated/recovered from COVID
Great news! glad that the anti-vaccines idiots are just loud minority after all

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https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9274907/Now-scientists-spot-variant-Finland-detects-new-strain.html

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I have a sinking feeling that COVID is basically here to stay and will end up being like the seasonal flu, as it continues to mutate and those strains are less effected by the vaccines we develop.

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