Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[Grey Fox]

For Xmas, we get to stay home.

[Sheilbh]

Yeah - NYE has just been cancelled. No events anywhere except on TV

[Maladict]

Yeah - NYE has just been cancelled. No events anywhere except on TV

Might as well cancel it indefinitely, it's such a stupid celebration.
Or move it to the Ides of March 

[Sheilbh]

I spent long enough in Scotland to prefer NYE to Christmas

Edit: Incidentally Our World in Data is now tracking vaccines. As they put on Twitter rarely has a site been this empty of data but a lot of hope:
https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations

[Grey Fox]

1200 Montreal residents got vaccinated on Monday & Tuesday.

It's a start.

[alfred russel]

But the government(s) have concluded that it's too late to change the guidance on Christmas

I guess from their point of view those who die of the virus won't vote for them anyways, but the disgruntled, Christmas-ridden Dorseys of the country still might, so better safe than sorry.

I really don't know what you can't get about this. In a beyond worst case scenario, where the relaxing of Christmas rules in the UK leads to 1-1000 britons dying in the coming weeks - which would be more than has died through the entire pandemic - the electoral base would barely budge.

How many christmases do you think you have left? I'm guessing about 40. Pandemic aside, this could be your last--no one can be certain. For a lot of us it will be the last we can gather with the families that we have--parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles of course don't live forever.

The point here isn't that 1-1000 people dying is worth Christmas. But everyone needs to stop and ask themselves what makes life worth living. I think it has something to do with spending time with friends, family, and even colleagues at work, and doing things that you love. In my opinion at least, it has zero to do with zoom bullshit or living under effective house arrest.

If your experience in 2020 was shitty due to covid-19, congratulations you just sacrificed probably 1/80th of your life for a less deadly disease.

[alfred russel]

For whatever it is worth, my family has canceled christmas gatherings and is doing bullshit zoom stuff.

I'm spending christmas with my fiance's family, who is gathering as they always have. Her sister is an er doctor and is actually getting the first vaccine shot this friday.

[Zanza]

First German hospital in the worst hit area in Saxony confirms that they have to use triage to decide who gets intubated and who does not for lack of equipment.

[Eddie Teach]

2020 got a bum rap.

[Sheilbh]

First German hospital in the worst hit area in Saxony confirms that they have to use triage to decide who gets intubated and who does not for lack of equipment.

God that's grim

Is there capacity elsewhere in the system? Like when the French TGVed patients from the Grand Est to other regions?

[Maladict]

First German hospital in the worst hit area in Saxony confirms that they have to use triage to decide who gets intubated and who does not for lack of equipment.

Wow, did not expect that so soon from Germany with that many beds/population.

[fromtia]

My father is getting vaccinated on Saturday. Something of a relief as he is more or less held together with duct tape at the age of 82. I would imagine that's why they have him at the front of the line.

A few weeks ago we lost a very dear family friend to Covid so it's a little bitter in a way, I'm sure our friends wish their father had made it to the finish line unscathed as well.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/nov/27/erik-fudge-obituary

[The Larch]

'We want them infected': Trump appointee demanded 'herd immunity' strategy, emails reveal
Then-HHS science adviser Paul Alexander called for millions of Americans to be infected as means of fighting Covid-19.

A top Trump appointee repeatedly urged top health officials to adopt a "herd immunity" approach to Covid-19 and allow millions of Americans to be infected by the virus, according to internal emails obtained by the House Oversight Committee and shared with POLITICO.

"There is no other way, we need to establish herd, and it only comes about allowing the non-high risk groups expose themselves to the virus. PERIOD," then-science adviser Paul Alexander wrote on July 4 to his boss, Health and Human Services assistant secretary for public affairs Michael Caputo, and six other senior officials.

"Infants, kids, teens, young people, young adults, middle aged with no conditions etc. have zero to little risk....so we use them to develop herd...we want them infected..." Alexander added.


"t may be that it will be best if we open up and flood the zone and let the kids and young folk get infected" in order to get "natural immunity...natural exposure," Alexander wrote on July 24 to Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephen Hahn, Caputo and eight other senior officials. Caputo subsequently asked Alexander to research the idea, according to emails obtained by the House Oversight Committee's select subcommittee on coronavirus.

Alexander also argued that colleges should stay open to allow Covid-19 infections to spread, lamenting in a July 27 email to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield that "we essentially took off the battlefield the most potent weapon we had...younger healthy people, children, teens, young people who we needed to fastly [sic] infect themselves, spread it around, develop immunity, and help stop the spread."

Alexander was a top deputy of Caputo, who was personally installed by President Donald Trump in April to lead the health department's communications efforts. Officials told POLITICO that they believed that when Alexander made recommendations, he had the backing of the White House.

"It was understood that he spoke for Michael Caputo, who spoke for the White House," said Kyle McGowan, a Trump appointee who was CDC chief of staff before leaving this summer. "That's how they wanted it to be perceived."

Senior Trump officials have repeatedly denied that herd immunity — a concept advocated by some conservatives as a tactic to control Covid-19 by deliberately exposing less vulnerable populations in hopes of re-opening the economy — was under consideration or shaped the White House's approach to the pandemic. "Herd immunity is not the strategy of the U.S. government with regard to coronavirus," HHS Secretary Alex Azar testified in a House Oversight hearing on Oct. 2.

In his emails, Alexander also spent months attacking government scientists and pushing to shape official statements to be more favorable to President Donald Trump.

For instance, Alexander acknowledges in a May 30 email that a draft statement from the CDC about how Covid-19 was disproportionately affecting minority populations was "very accurate," but he warned HHS and CDC communications officials that "in this election cycle that is the kind of statement coming from CDC that the media and Democrat [sic] antagonists will use against the president." The problems were "due to decades of democrat neglect," Alexander alleged.

Alexander also appeared to acknowledge that the White House's own push to let states wind down their Covid-19 restrictions was leading to a spike in cases.

"There is a rise in cases due to testing and also simultaneously due to the relaxing of restrictions, less social distancing," Alexander wrote in a July 24 email. "We always knew as you relax and open up, cases will rise."

The emails represent an unusual window on the internal deliberations of the Trump administration, and the tensions between political appointees like Alexander — a part-time professor at a Canadian university — and staff members in health agencies. On Sept. 16, HHS announced that Alexander would be leaving the department, just days after POLITICO first reported on his efforts to shape the CDC's famed Morbidity and Mortality and Weekly Reports and pressure government scientist Anthony Fauci from speaking about the risks of Covid-19 to children.

In a statement, an HHS spokesperson said that Alexander's demands for herd immunity "absolutely did not" shape department strategy.

"Dr. Paul Alexander previously served as a temporary Senior Policy Advisor to the Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs and is no longer employed at the Department," the spokesperson said.

Alexander did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Caputo, who took medical leave the same day that Alexander left the department, has referred previous inquiries to HHS.

Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.), who chairs the coronavirus subcommittee, said in a statement that the documents "show a pernicious pattern of political interference by Administration officials."

"As the virus spread through the country, these officials callously wrote, 'who cares' and 'we want them infected,'" Clyburn added. "They privately admitted they 'always knew' the President's policies would cause a 'rise' in cases, and they plotted to blame the spread of the virus on career scientists."

Clyburn said that the documents — which the Trump administration only released to his subcommittee after the election, more than two months after his probe began — underscore why HHS must cooperate with his investigation and that CDC Director Redfield must appear for an interview about an email that he allegedly told staff to delete. Otherwise, "I will be forced to start issuing subpoenas," Clyburn said.

The email cache provided a real-time look at the administration's deliberations as the Covid-19 crisis first began to rebound during the summer.

"So the bottom line is if it is more infectiouness [sic] now, the issue is who cares?" Alexander wrote in a July 3 email to the health department's top communications officials. "If it is causing more cases in young, my word is who cares...as long as we make sensible decisions, and protect the elderely [sic] and nursing homes, we must go on with life....who cares if we test more and get more positive tests."

"How can this be researched and proven true or false?" Caputo asked Alexander in one July 25 email exchange, after Alexander had emailed Hahn and nine top communications officials across HHS and FDA about the value of herd immunity.

Alexander wrote back with data that he said he'd pulled from several studies, including a link to a June 30 Quanta Magazine article about the "tricky math" of herd immunity.

"I did not want to look like a nut ball and if as they think and as I think this may be true ... several hard hit areas may have hit heard [sic] at 20% like NYC," Alexander added. "[T]hat's my argument....why not consider it?"

The health department has worked to distance itself from Alexander since his mid-September departure, and several Trump appointees said that Alexander was often isolated during his roughly six-month stint advising department officials.

"His rants had zero impact on policy and communications," a senior administration official insisted. "Caputo enabled him to opine, but people pushed back and it even got to a point where Caputo told him to stop sending the emails."

But McGowan, the former CDC chief of staff, said that Alexander was effective at delaying the famed Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports and watering down guidance that came from his agency.

"He absolutely put pressure on the CDC on different guidance documents, on MMWRs," McGowan said. "He wanted to change MMWRs that were already posted, which is just outrageous."

While McGowan said that even though agency officials fended off Alexander's demands to edit the morbidity and mortality reports, "it's the type of political meddling that delayed guidance, delayed MMWRs from getting them out as quickly as possible to be effective," McGowan added.

[grumbler]

Is this Alexander stuff even newsworthy?  Personally, I think it is fine to have someone on staff who challenges the groupthink consensus, and fine if he /she is then ignored because they cannot support their ideas with evidence.  If everyone on a staff agrees about everything, then you've got a crap staff.

[Zanza]

First German hospital in the worst hit area in Saxony confirms that they have to use triage to decide who gets intubated and who does not for lack of equipment.

God that's grim

Is there capacity elsewhere in the system? Like when the French TGVed patients from the Grand Est to other regions?

Distribution is uneven. There are still 4.500 ICU beds available in Germany, but some areas are below 10% free beds now (the administrative districts with the red circles):