Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[Sheilbh]

Shelf, you are such an AZ homer. 

Wut?

[Admiral Yi]

Wut?

A homer is a sports fan that lacks objectivity and responds to every "talking point" (as you Brits call sports controversies) in favor of his/her team.

I'm making fun of the way you defend AZ, a vaccine produced by the UK.

It's not a serious point, so no need to litigate.

[Sheilbh]

I thought I was being critical there I think the vaccine is really good and can help save the world and all this controversy is really unhelpful/distracting because it impacts people's trust in the vaccine. The home team bit I do feel strongly about is that it's a good vaccine and because of the terms on which Oxford licensed it it'll be produced at cost - I think that's really good from a moral and ethical perspective. I don't particularly care where it's manufactured (though separately from a UK perspective it helps that we have factories here - same for Novavax, Curevac etc).

But I think AZ has fucked up a lot on data, dealing with regulators and production which is their job. So it's very frustrating that their constant errors are a big part of why there's so much controversy - because they are not doing a good job of the stuff they're meant to deal with. As I say I wonder if Oxford should have been allowed to go for the Merck deal in retrospect because I don't think they would have made the same regular unforced errors and we'd all be focusing on a really good vaccine not corporate incompetence

[Zanza]

Germany scraps strict Easter shutdown

Germany's chancellor, Angela Merkel, has cancelled a hard Easter lockdown just days after imposing it, according to media reports.

The chancellor told state leaders on Wednesday morning that she has decided to scrap the measure after heavy criticism.

Merkel said the strict Easter shutdown, which would have designated 1-5 April as "quiet days" when no more than five adults from two households would be able to meet at home at once, was her "mistake".

Spiegel quotes her as saying: "If possible, we need to correct this [mistake] in time. I do think that is possible." She hoped the German people would forgive her error.

The utter incompetence and poor communication will have lasting consequences for how Germans perceive their politicians and state institutions. 

[Syt]

Speaking of rumors, there's now talk of full lockdown for the East Austrian states after all.

Last night's meeting ran till 2:30 am. Supposedly, everything was clear and hashed out, yet an announcement was scheduled for "the evening." 

EDIT: Literally 5 minutes ago there was an announcement that there will be an announcement at 7 pm.

[PDH]

Speaking of rumors, there's now talk of full lockdown for the East Austrian states after all.

Last night's meeting ran till 2:30 am. Supposedly, everything was clear and hashed out, yet an announcement was scheduled for "the evening." 

EDIT: Literally 5 minutes ago there was an announcement that there will be an announcement at 7 pm.

We would like to hold a press conference announcing that there will be a later press conference during which we will detail upcoming plans for a critical announcement.

[Syt]

Speaking of rumors, there's now talk of full lockdown for the East Austrian states after all.

Last night's meeting ran till 2:30 am. Supposedly, everything was clear and hashed out, yet an announcement was scheduled for "the evening." 

EDIT: Literally 5 minutes ago there was an announcement that there will be an announcement at 7 pm.

We would like to hold a press conference announcing that there will be a later press conference during which we will detail upcoming plans for a critical announcement.

Austrian Covid communication strategy for a year now. That, and Health Minister Anschober's repeated line "The next weeks will be decisive."

[Sheilbh]

Interesting chat with a colleague today - they were saying they get mailed three tests a week for him, his wife and their daughter while school's ongoing. They have lateral flow (with a result in half an hour but high false negatives/low false positives rate) plus the PCR tests to send back - plus they communicate their results to the NHS. Hopefully that will help keeping the risk of school transmission low.

And looking at the government data on cases the number of tests have massively increased since schools re-opened a couple of weeks ago, but the positive cases are basically flatlining (declining very slowly).
https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/

Feels like school re-opening hasn't caused a large increase in cases to unmanageable levels which is good and - speaking to my colleague - all the testing is providing a lot of reassurances. Especially because it apparently explains the false rates issue, but if you've got multiple people doing the test at the same time and any of them get a positive that's very unlikely to be a false positive so go into isolation and notify.

Edit: Also Chile is now up to about 47% of the poulation - they've overtaken the UK and the US - and are currently doing over 1% of population a day. From a standing start at the start of February it's pretty incredible

[Syt]

So, the announcement has been made.

- non-essential shops and "close proximity services" (hairdressers, massage therapists etc.) will close from 1st - 6th April
- from 7th April onward you'll need a negative Covid test to enter the above mentioned businesses (I'm skeptical, because that means that ALL those shops would have to check customers upon entering - that on top of the already existing limit to how many people can be in a shop at any given time)
- FFP2 masks mandatory if people crowd together outside
- FFP2 masks in closed rooms where more than one person is present (i.e. at the workplace; our COO wanted to have a full day 10 person meeting with consultants in two or three weeks time ... good luck with that)
- companies are encouraged again to work remotely; companies who can't or won't work remotely must have all staff tested weekly
- distance learning for schools after Easter break (the B117 variants spreads a lot more significantly in schools and among young people compared to the "original" version)

[Razgovory]

Missouri is doing the worst job with vaccines in the whole USA.   I read a few days ago that I guy had to driver from St .Louis to Kansas city to get a vaccine.  That's well over 200 miles.

[viper37]

Re: Vaccines.

Anyone saw something in the news or read a study about having no benefits from a second shot of the vaccine when you already had covid-19?

[Maladict]

Re: Vaccines.

Anyone saw something in the news or read a study about having no benefits from a second shot of the vaccine when you already had covid-19?

Yeah, we are changing to single shot for Covid survivors. Doctors (unspecified) think it's safe to do so.

[Josquius]

Missouri is doing the worst job with vaccines in the whole USA.   I read a few days ago that I guy had to driver from St .Louis to Kansas city to get a vaccine.  That's well over 200 miles.

By American standards isn't that right next door?

Reminds me of the UKs testing screw ups last year where people had to travel the same distance. A substantially bigger deal here.

[Eddie Teach]

It takes the same amount of time to travel.

[Admiral Yi]

Right next door is maybe 10, 20 miles.