Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[Tamas]

Extraordinary SAGE/PHE stat: even though all restrictions have been lifted face-to-face contacts are still lower than last summer and less than a quarter of pre-pandemic contacts.

I assume a lot of that is work contacts, but I really hope that doesn't become a lasting change from this pandemic

Judging by how a lot of people consider(ed) office life / co-workers their primary social outlet, I am pretty sure that statistic is from people not being back at work.

[OttoVonBismarck]

The Denver PD cannot force their police officers to get vaccinated. If he says they are forcing them to get vaccinated, he is wrong. And obviously so.

What is your actual question here?

It wasn't obvious to me that the mayor could order city workers to get vaccinated, and such an order was claimed to exist and it wasn't called illegal. Hence the question for clarification.

I think you're probably confusing a workplace order for something else. The Mayor of Denver cannot force anyone to get vaccinated. Depending on the specific powers of his office, and the specific structure of the Denver civil service, he can issue rules that say to work for the City of Denver you have to have a vaccine. There is going to be a lot of legalese around that, he likely has to have some exemption system for medical and religious reasons. It is also likely that agencies governed by collective bargaining agreements, those agreements will take legal precedence over his order. But this isn't like a legal order that MAKES you get vaccinated. It's basically an employer saying "if you want to work here, you have to get vaccinated." No one is forced to get vaccinated because they have the option of simply quitting their job. The police may not even have to do that, I suspect, due to police departments frequently being unionized with CBAs that exempt them from a lot of things that might go against their agreement.

The only people in the United States who can arguably be said to be on the block for getting forced to take vaccines are members of the military. There's a number of vaccines you're actually forced to get in the military. Vaccines that aren't FDA approved there are legal wrinkles over it (this came up during the anthrax vaccine issue when the military made a non-approved vaccine mandatory), but once the Pfizer vaccine is approved it is highly likely the military will be able to mandate it. Since in the military following orders is more of an actual legal commitment than it is in the private sector where insubordination simply means you lose your job, you can say that members of the military are forced to get vaccines. We don't really have forced vaccines other than that in the United States.

There are some in stances in the early 1900s when municipalities actually fined people for not getting vaccinated, so there is some historical precedent for general vaccine mandates that apply to broader society, but it hasn't been something implemented in ages.

[The Brain]

The Denver PD cannot force their police officers to get vaccinated. If he says they are forcing them to get vaccinated, he is wrong. And obviously so.

What is your actual question here?

It wasn't obvious to me that the mayor could order city workers to get vaccinated, and such an order was claimed to exist and it wasn't called illegal. Hence the question for clarification.

I think you're probably confusing a workplace order for something else. The Mayor of Denver cannot force anyone to get vaccinated. Depending on the specific powers of his office, and the specific structure of the Denver civil service, he can issue rules that say to work for the City of Denver you have to have a vaccine. There is going to be a lot of legalese around that, he likely has to have some exemption system for medical and religious reasons. It is also likely that agencies governed by collective bargaining agreements, those agreements will take legal precedence over his order. But this isn't like a legal order that MAKES you get vaccinated. It's basically an employer saying "if you want to work here, you have to get vaccinated." No one is forced to get vaccinated because they have the option of simply quitting their job. The police may not even have to do that, I suspect, due to police departments frequently being unionized with CBAs that exempt them from a lot of things that might go against their agreement.

The only people in the United States who can arguably be said to be on the block for getting forced to take vaccines are members of the military. There's a number of vaccines you're actually forced to get in the military. Vaccines that aren't FDA approved there are legal wrinkles over it (this came up during the anthrax vaccine issue when the military made a non-approved vaccine mandatory), but once the Pfizer vaccine is approved it is highly likely the military will be able to mandate it. Since in the military following orders is more of an actual legal commitment than it is in the private sector where insubordination simply means you lose your job, you can say that members of the military are forced to get vaccines. We don't really have forced vaccines other than that in the United States.

There are some in stances in the early 1900s when municipalities actually fined people for not getting vaccinated, so there is some historical precedent for general vaccine mandates that apply to broader society, but it hasn't been something implemented in ages.

My question was only about the mayor's (or any employer's) ability to (legally) order employees to get vaccinated. Nothing more, nothing less.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Yes the Supreme Court has in the past refused to hear legal suits objecting to vaccines as conditions of employment. If your employer threatens to fire you for not being vaccinated, at least in most States and most jobs, they can do so and you will not have legal recourse.

[KRonn]

My office started having people back to the office two weeks ago, right as Delta variant hit. So I'm wondering if they'll go back to mostly at home working again soon. Being retired and part time I only have to go in once a week, but may go in more often. I only have a few miles commute. But of course all the medical staff in the hospitals in our system were at their facilities. I'm IT software support so can work from home, and it's so much nicer! 

[DGuller]

It seems like most employers around here who started coming back to the office made in-person appearance optional last week.  I personally decided to stop coming for a while, I think the situation is getting worse pretty quickly even in New Jersey and NYC area.

[The Larch]

UK set to 'hoard' up to 210m doses of Covid vaccine, research suggests

The UK is on course to "hoard" up to 210m spare coronavirus vaccines by the end of the year, research suggests, as ministers were accused of leaving poorer countries "fighting for scraps".
(...)
About 467m jabs are due to be delivered to the UK by the end of 2021, data from life science analytics company Airfinity found. However only 256.6m jabs will be needed to fulfil the expected demand of vaccinating all over-16s and giving a booster dose to the most vulnerable in autumn.

Somebody might have gone a bit overboard when ordering vaccine doses in the UK.

[celedhring]

Is there any science regarding the usefulness of a booster shoot?

[garbon]

Is there any science regarding the usefulness of a booster shoot?

Isn't it down to concerns about the tapering down of antibodies overtime and concerns about how adequate the original vaccination is at that point?

[celedhring]

Yesterday I saw a study that disputed this tapering down, claiming that antibodies were effective until at least 7 months. I'm just asking because the justification for those booster shots seems a bit vague to me.

[Sheilbh]

UK set to 'hoard' up to 210m doses of Covid vaccine, research suggests

The UK is on course to "hoard" up to 210m spare coronavirus vaccines by the end of the year, research suggests, as ministers were accused of leaving poorer countries "fighting for scraps".
(...)
About 467m jabs are due to be delivered to the UK by the end of 2021, data from life science analytics company Airfinity found. However only 256.6m jabs will be needed to fulfil the expected demand of vaccinating all over-16s and giving a booster dose to the most vulnerable in autumn.

Somebody might have gone a bit overboard when ordering vaccine doses in the UK.

Yes and no - I think that figure includes all the jabs the UK has ordered that are still to be delivered, including ones that haven't been finished/approved yet. So we've got a lot on order of Valneva, GSK, NovaVax, Curevac (collectively about 210 million - if you remove those you get to 256.6m) - which we might get, but we might not. And I think that was the right approach - look at all the promising candidates and buy a reasonably diversified basket of ones that might actually become vaccines, knowing that a significant number may never actually see light of day.

But there's far more defined quantities of the known vaccines that work - so I think we've re-upped on Pfizer because the plan is to mix-and-match with booster shots, and ordered J&J for the first time (again, I think to mix-and-match).

Yesterday I saw a study that disputed this tapering down, claiming that antibodies were effective until at least 7 months. I'm just asking because the justification for those booster shots seems a bit vague to me.

From what I can tell there's more noise coming out of Israel that they basically think effectiveness starts to wane after about 6 months - but that's it and I agree without something more I'm not convinced there's a case for doing booster shots as opposed to paying to up manufacturing capacity and paying for shots to distribute to the rest of the world.

I also think I read that people who were in the trials for the approved (and non-approved) vaccines haven't been vaccinated since - I think people on the placebo have - mainly because we don't know how long the protection lasts so we're still waiting to find out from those trial participants. Which makes me slightly wonder if what Israel is seeing isn't a general waning but a waning in the priority group/the elderly which might not be seen in the full trial data which'll include lots of younger people too?

[Josquius]

Did anything ever come of the talk of helping Nepal with vaccines？
Sickening if we don't share with anyone.

[Sheilbh]

Did anything ever come of the talk of helping Nepal with vaccines？
Sickening if we don't share with anyone.

I don't think I remember that talk? I assume Nepal would be a bit like Bhutan with China and India competing to donate vaccines.

The UK has so far donated 9 million vaccines (5 million to Covax/4 million bilaterally - weird mix of countries: Kenya, South-East Asia and the Caribbean) - and has committed to donate 100 million by June, 80% to Covax.

It's not enough and it's not urgent enough. I think we should follow the WHO request that bascially we donate 20% of vaccines we are receiving now. And also I feel like we need to be funding massive increases in manufacturing capacity globally because I still think we're not producing enough.

[Sheilbh]

So there are anti-lockdown/anti-vaxx protesters against the BBC's coverage of the pandemic (reminder there are almost no restrictions left in the UK - only to self-isolate if you are pinged or get a positive test).

They have broken into TV Centre, White City, which the BBC doesn't broadcast from anymore and is now a block of flats

They have no realised their mistake and are intending to move their protest to BBC South Bank - which has never existed. ITV does have studios on the South Bank....but....

[PDH]

One has to admire the thoroughness of their incompetence.