Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[PDH]

Never argue with a douche, they will douche-bag and douche-canoe all over and you will just feel dumber for having done so.

[DGuller]

You are wrong on this--read what I wrote more carefully.

The first part was comparing costs with costs: I specifically laid out a scenario where you are writing a balanced article about the costs of covid.

The second part was comparing differential country comparisons and assuming similar responses could have achieved similar outcomes (whether fair or not).

The counter-factual has not be tried by any country, not even Brazil.  The cost of not having lockdowns or others kinds of restrictions is unknowable, because no one was dumb enough to be a control group for long enough.  We could have 5 million extra dead if we didn't take measures that cost 330 million shit-years.

[alfred russel]

You are wrong on this--read what I wrote more carefully.

The first part was comparing costs with costs: I specifically laid out a scenario where you are writing a balanced article about the costs of covid.

The second part was comparing differential country comparisons and assuming similar responses could have achieved similar outcomes (whether fair or not).

The counter-factual has not be tried by any country, not even Brazil.  The cost of not having lockdowns or others kinds of restrictions is unknowable, because no one was dumb enough to be a control group for long enough.  We could have 5 million extra dead if we didn't take measures that cost 330 million shit-years.

The counter factual I was hinting at is very difficult to make because there seems to be no statistically detectible link between extended severe lockdowns and more mild measures like mask wearing--as the peer reviewed study I linked to last night concluded.

However--you are misinterpreting what I was driving toward. It is the incremental benefit of harder measures.

For example, Canada and Germany close down more than we do and have half the deaths (theoretically at least). Is that reduction in death worth the incremental pain caused on the rest of the population?

[Barrister]

Canada has really shat the bed when it came down to vaccines though.

Can't the local pharma industry in Canada set up vaccine production facilities? 

[Gets on his soapbox]

There's been a big media narrative in this country that Canada doesn't have any domestic vaccine production facilities - that the Mulroney government sold it in the 1980s.  While this is true as far as it goes, that facility still exists.  It's just now owned by Sanofi, a French company, but it still exists in Toronto and it still manufactures vaccines.

Now Sanofi's vaccine candidate has not been successful to date.  Now I'm not sure why the government wasn't able to co-ordinate for Sanofi to license one of the other vaccines to produce in Canada so we're not at the mercy of other countries production.  Maybe there's a valid reason, but I haven't heard it yet.  We're stuck relying on vaccines being produced in the EU, and the nightmare scenario is still possible where the EU imposes export controls on the vaccines preventing any from being shipped out of it's borders.

The government of Canada has started construction of a government-controlled vaccine production facility, but between building the facility and getting it certified we can't expect any meaningful production before 2022.

[Zanza]

@Zanza: this article in Der Standard has a decent Germany vs Austria comparison: https://www.derstandard.at/story/2000124330209/warum-oesterreich-schlechter-als-deutschland-durch-die-krise-kommt

Yes, it's unusual. Normally, Switzerland and Austria do a bit better than Germany in whatever field you look at, but not in this pandemic where they handle it a bit worse (until now).

[Zanza]

Worrying signs in Germany that government having the procurement conflict with Astrazeneca and not allowing the vaccine for over 65s creates considerable rejection of the AZ vaccine here. When you consider the snail speed at which we are progressing that's another limiting factor. The whole vaccine rollout here leaves much to be improved.

I think the Handelsblatt report was unehlpful as well and it's something I've complained about the entire pandemic, but political correspondents reporting on science based on briefings by politicians, or civil servants, or spads is not great in a pandemic.

Handelsblatt has no range with people sceptical about vaccines. Bold on the other hand...

Early in the pandemic, we had a extremely popular podcast where Christian Drosten, Germany's foremost virologist, explained in detail the newest scientific insights on the virus. He is hated by the Covidiots for that though.

These days, there does not seem a similarly credible proponent for the science behind the vaccination to explain it. Not that you could convince people that decided emotionally against the vaccine with rational arguments.

[Zanza]

Yeah - that's fair. To be honest I look at the Europe and the Americas and think there are just degrees of failure. Germany and Canada have definitely done better than our countries but it's the APAC countries big and small, rich or poor who have really done very well.

I concur. Germany is middle of the field when looking at the entire pandemic, but in the last two months or so, it's one of the worst countries worldwide.

[Barrister]

The counter factual I was hinting at is very difficult to make because there seems to be no statistically detectible link between extended severe lockdowns and more mild measures like mask wearing--as the peer reviewed study I linked to last night concluded.

However--you are misinterpreting what I was driving toward. It is the incremental benefit of harder measures.

For example, Canada and Germany close down more than we do and have half the deaths (theoretically at least). Is that reduction in death worth the incremental pain caused on the rest of the population?

Mask wearing has never been a political issue in Canada and certainly by the fall masks were widespread.  Nevertheless in the fall our Covid-rates were spiking dramatically.  Government brought some restrictions late November, then much stricter restrictions in early December (Like closing dine-in restaurants) - and immediately our Covid numbers started declining.

I can't link to it directly but about one-third down this page there's a graph displaying Active Cases in Alberta, with marks on when those restrictions went into effect, and it's really quite striking.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/alberta-covid-coronavirus-february-22-1.5922176

[celedhring]

Canada has really shat the bed when it came down to vaccines though.

Can't the local pharma industry in Canada set up vaccine production facilities? 

[Gets on his soapbox]

There's been a big media narrative in this country that Canada doesn't have any domestic vaccine production facilities - that the Mulroney government sold it in the 1980s.  While this is true as far as it goes, that facility still exists.  It's just now owned by Sanofi, a French company, but it still exists in Toronto and it still manufactures vaccines.

Now Sanofi's vaccine candidate has not been successful to date.  Now I'm not sure why the government wasn't able to co-ordinate for Sanofi to license one of the other vaccines to produce in Canada so we're not at the mercy of other countries production.  Maybe there's a valid reason, but I haven't heard it yet.  We're stuck relying on vaccines being produced in the EU, and the nightmare scenario is still possible where the EU imposes export controls on the vaccines preventing any from being shipped out of it's borders.

The government of Canada has started construction of a government-controlled vaccine production facility, but between building the facility and getting it certified we can't expect any meaningful production before 2022.

Sanofi facilities are manufacturing the Pfizer vaccine in Europe. I know there's a special place in hell for patent deals, but I wonder why that can't be replicated in Canada.

[Grey Fox]

Pfizer thinks it's too small.

[celedhring]

So, Catalonia is back to an R number of 1, which is probably due to the prevalence of the British variant (it is expected to become dominant next week).

On the plus side, the segmented data for the vaccinated populations is extraordinary. Care homes (which were completed last week), saw a 70% drop in week-to-week infections, and a 92% drop from the peak of the third wave (mid-January).

[Sheilbh]

On vaccines just saw this chart from Israel - basically similar trendlines in all age groups despite calendar times being different. They really work

[celedhring]

So, as of today Spain has had 7 (yes, seven) confirmed flu cases in the country for the whole flu season. Apparently there's been entire weeks without the ECDC having a single confirmed positive in the entire EU. This is both great and not so great since apparently it makes it harder to come up with an effective vaccine for next season, due to lack of current virus samples.

Myself is the first time I don't catch it since well, forever.

[Sheilbh]

That's interesting - I knew that the NHS had the lowest rate of flu infections/best flu season in years because social distancing stops infections for all sorts of illnesses. I wonder if we will move to it becoming normal to have masks and a slightly more distanced/outdoor winter season now. We have a lot of flu deaths in an average year - and next year will probably be a bad one if we don't have a good flu vaccine/scientists are having to guess what flu strain we'll get - and I wonder if we should tolerate that when small lifestyle changes like putting on a mask, or sitting outside with a blanket and a heater could change that?

In separate news Ghana has received the first vaccines distributed under Covax - 600,000 arrived this morning.

Meanwhile in the UK vaccine rates have more or less halved. Apparently this was accounted for by government and is to do with supply issues they were aware of. But I think there's a large boost to supply in March and then no anticipated dips through to the summer.

[Richard Hakluyt]

Apparently flu typically has an R number of 1.3 while covid is 3.0 or even more with some variants. So if we lockdown to stop covid spreading then the flu rate will be absolutely crushed.