Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[Sheilbh]

Interesting - and really informative press conference on AZ vaccine - it's particularly interesting seeing how the various regulatory/advisory bodies interact and what they're responsible for. But there's been 242 cases of the blood clotting issue in the UK to the end of April. In generally incidences are 10.5 per million, 10.1 per million for the over 40s and about 15 per million for the under 30s.

So the MHRA, which is the regulator for medicines, has not changed their advice or their authorisation - it's safe and it's effective. The JCVI which advises government and clinicians on using vaccines/vaccine rollout have changed their advice so people under 40 will generally be offered an alternative.

This isn't based on new data about the AZ vaccine (though there is some). Rather it's based on the UK context - so covid cases are very low now, the vaccine program's fairly advanced and there's good supplies of alternatives. If those circumstances change then their advice would change as it would be better to get the vaccine than have to wait for an alternative. The other reason for the 40 cut off point is because covid is very closely linked to age so the risks start to shift.

Unrelated but I've just noticed the Guardian do the thing I've wanted by naming the researchers in their vaccine naming (the UK has always referred to AZ as the Oxford/AZ vaccine) - so it's Pfizer/BioNTech or the NIH/Moderna. Which I think is very good given

[Agelastus]

...Which I think is very good given

"Given"...

[Sheilbh]

...Which I think is very good given

"Given"...

The importance of the work by the scientific researchers - nice to see them get shout outs as well as the manufacturers

[celedhring]

The national curfew is set to expire this Sunday at midnight. People are already calling it "The Covid New Year Eve". I expect a certain degree of, ahem, dissipation. It's not going to be pretty 

[The Larch]

The national curfew is set to expire this Sunday at midnight. People are already calling it "The Covid New Year Eve". I expect a certain degree of, ahem, dissipation. It's not going to be pretty 

But bars are still supposed to close down around midnight, right? 

Over here we're expecting heavy rains for saturday night, so that should dampen the mood. 

[Jacob]

Heard a thing (from someone in the insurance world) that apparently there's something like another 50 vaccines in development, as well as 270ish medicines/ treatments as well in various stages of trials and approval.

[Barrister]

Heard a thing (from someone in the insurance world) that apparently there's something like another 50 vaccines in development, as well as 270ish medicines/ treatments as well in various stages of trials and approval.

Try 90 vaccines in development...

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/science/coronavirus-vaccine-tracker.html

[The Larch]

Heard a thing (from someone in the insurance world) that apparently there's something like another 50 vaccines in development, as well as 270ish medicines/ treatments as well in various stages of trials and approval.

Just took a quick look at wiki, it's 94 vaccines in different stages of human trial (plus who knows how many in earlier phases of development), besides the 15 different ones already being used all over the world. As for treatments, last year there were literally hundreds being investigated, from which there are 10 currently in the later stages of human trials.

In a few years there's going to be a plethora of options to choose from, and many other drugs for other diseases will come from this. This has been a massive health crisis, but it has spearheaded an amazing amount of medical research and breakthroughs.

[Josquius]

The British list is immensely dissapointing. So many minor territories. Holiday in the Falklands anyone?
And why Portugal. I wasn't under the impression they were doing better than the rest of Europe?

[Barrister]

The British list is immensely dissapointing. So many minor territories. Holiday in the Falklands anyone?
And why Portugal. I wasn't under the impression they were doing better than the rest of Europe?

I would adore a holiday in the Falklands.

[HVC]

The British list is immensely dissapointing. So many minor territories. Holiday in the Falklands anyone?
And why Portugal. I wasn't under the impression they were doing better than the rest of Europe?

I would adore a holiday in the Falklands.

You want sheep and bad weather? You can find that in Alberta too

[Barrister]

The British list is immensely dissapointing. So many minor territories. Holiday in the Falklands anyone?
And why Portugal. I wasn't under the impression they were doing better than the rest of Europe?

I would adore a holiday in the Falklands.

You want sheep and bad weather? You can find that in Alberta too

But the penguins...

[The Larch]

And why Portugal. I wasn't under the impression they were doing better than the rest of Europe?

In fact Portugal was in a pretty bad situation earlier this year, but after rather strict measures is in a much better situation now.

[Sheilbh]

And why Portugal. I wasn't under the impression they were doing better than the rest of Europe?

In fact Portugal was in a pretty bad situation earlier this year, but after rather strict measures is in a much better situation now.

Yeah - looking at sort of classic European holiday/travel destinations Portugal have the lowest numbers:
https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=2021-01-01..latest&pickerSort=asc&pickerMetric=location&Metric=Confirmed+cases&Interval=7-day+rolling+average&Relative+to+Population=true&Align+outbreaks=false&country=ITA~HRV~GRC~FRA~MLT~PRT~GBR~ESP

The really striking thing is Malta isn't on the green list (it's on amber) when everyone thought it would be and it's only marginally worse than Portugal

Edit: Although it is over 50 cases per million - and I wonder if that's maybe one of the triggers?

[jimmy olsen]

University of Washington estimates the pandemic has killed 900k in the US. 7 million worldwide

https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/05/06/994287048/new-study-estimates-more-than-900-000-people-have-died-of-covid-19-in-u-s