Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[Sheilbh]

I don't know - I saw something about getting vaccinated seeming to help with long covid. But I don't know with covid itself

[viper37]

I don't know - I saw something about getting vaccinated seeming to help with long covid. But I don't know with covid itself

"If you currently have the virus, then getting vaccinated will not be immediately helpful as the body takes time to mount an immune response," says Dr. Eudene Harry, MD, a board-certified emergency medicine physician in Orlando, Florida. "If you have recently received flu or any other vaccinations, then it is recommended by the CDC that you wait to receive COVID vaccine at least 14 days." In any case, if you have had COVID-19, it is still recommended that you eventually receive the vaccine, as it is still unclear how long immunity from infection lasts, Dr. Harry says.
Source

[Berkut]

You know what sucks about the politicization of the pandemic response?

It kind of leaves this sort of bad taste in everyone's mouth about the scientific and technical response.

Which, absent a lot of fuck ups, in the aggregate is pretty astounding. At least the science and production part of it.

Humans should be pretty proud of our scientific ability to produce multiple vaccines in less then 18 months to a new virus. It's pretty fucking amazing, in fact.

It's like if during WW2 there was a faction in the Allies who said the Axis really wasn't so bad, and all this war stuff is an over-reaction, and maybe we should just, you know, get along with the Nazi's. And this went on throughout the actual war, and even afterwards people were STILL saying "Well sure, like 250 million people died after all, but was that because we insisted on fighting them? Probably would not have been so bad if we just let them be! And look at all the bad things that came out of fighting them!"

Our response to COVID sucked in so many ways, but the technical and scientific response was fucking incredible. And I think that is going to get lost, which really, really sucks. Not just on an emotional level, but on a practical level as us humans think about how we can solve other problems, global problems, that will require some faith in science and technology. The politicization of COVID means that there will always be a part of the population that will be convinced it was all bullshit and waste of effort and essentially a giant scam, instead of an amazing example of what is possible scientifically and technologically when we really want to do something. This should have been the modern worlds trip to the moon.

[The Larch]

Yikes.

Football linked to 2,000 Scottish Covid cases

Nearly 2,000 Covid cases in Scotland have been linked to people watching Euro 2020 football matches.


Public Health Scotland said two thirds of the 1,991 cases were people who travelled to London for Scotland's game with England on 18 June.

This included 397 fans who were inside Wembley for the match.

A relatively small number of cases reported attending the Fanzone in Glasgow, or Scotland's two home matches at Hampden.

Scotland was only allocated 2,600 tickets for the match at Wembley because of Covid restrictions.

But tens of thousands of fans are believed to have travelled to London despite warnings not to do so unless they had a ticket.

Many gathered together in large groups in central London ahead of the game, with those in Leicester Square being moved on by police shortly after half-time.

Public Health Scotland said it had tagged positive Covid cases if they attended either a Euro 2020 organised event, such as a match at Hampden or Wembley Stadium or the Fanzone at Glasgow Green.

People who tested positive after attending an informal gathering, such as a pub or a house party to watch a match, were also tagged.

It said that 1,294 of the 1,991 total cases had reported travelling to London, including 397 who were actually at the match.

Only 55 of those who tested positive reported being at the Fanzone, while 38 had been at Scotland's match with Croatia at Hampden, and 37 at the team's opening fixture against the Czech Republic.

About 90% of the cases were male, with three quarters of the total - 1,470 cases - being aged between 20 and 39.

It is not known whether those who tested positive contracted the virus while they were watching a match, or elsewhere.

[alfred russel]

You know what sucks about the politicization of the pandemic response?

...

This should have been the modern worlds trip to the moon.

The response was enormously political. All the restrictions etc. were political decisions. The vaccine development, approval, manufacture, and distribution have had significant government influence.

But it really highlights just how shit people are. It turns out covid mRNA vaccines were easy to create with existing technology: basically a month into covid we had a bunch of really effective ones developed. The delay was just about testing to prove they were safe and effective before rollout to the general population.

Malaria has been killing 400k people a year for a long time--most under 5 and way more valuable than the old geezers dying from covid. And now with covid kickstarting mRNA vaccines there is a super promising mRNA vaccine in development that seems to promise almost total immunity. But how many years was this just sitting out there with no one caring because it was mostly Africans, and the rest of us could pop malaria pills on our holidays?

[Sheilbh]

Very interesting Twitter thread from someone on the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation - which basically advises the governments in the UK on vaccines and immunisation campaigns:

Robert Dingwall Flag of Scotland Flag of European Union Reunite
@rwjdingwall
I am seeing a lot of tweets about vaccinating UK teenagers and advocates getting air time in places like @BBCNewsnight As a JCVI member, I am constrained in what I can say right now. However, two things are worth considering (1/8)
The risk/benefit for teenagers must be firmly established. The UK programme has already been modified because the risk/benefit of AZ was not clear for 20 and 30 somethings. Teenagers are at intrinsically low risk from Covid. Vaccines must be exceptionally safe to beat this (2/8)
Given the low risk of Covid for most teenagers, it is not immoral to think that they may be better protected by natural immunity generated through infection than by asking them to take the *possible* risk of a vaccine. (3/8)
The pandemic will end through population immunity, whether from vaccination or prior infection. A last wave of mild infections in unvaccinated younger people may well be what we are now seeing. The ONS serology data are more important than vaccine uptake in assessing this. (4/8)
It is well past time to panic about infection rates and to publish them obsessively. Even hospitalization rates are increasingly misleading as better therapy reduces length of stay. Covid is now a long way from being an important cause of mortality (5/8)
A reminder: medicine cannot deliver immortality and it is profoundly damaging to society to imply that it can, if only we try hard enough. We are all going to die one day - the question is when and how, not whether (6/8)
I am particularly concerned about the calls for Covid measures to continue to reduce all respiratory infections. As Rene Dubos noted 60 years ago, humans, viruses and bacteria form an ecosystem which has evolved over millennia. (7/8)
Surely we have enough experience of the unintended consequences of humans reshaping other ecosystems  to suit their own ends not to rush into reshaping this one without really understanding what it would mean for human lives and immune systems (8/8)

[The Larch]

Apparently in California there's a shortage of firefighting crews this summer because many of their prisons temporarily released inmates to avoid covid transmission due to overcrowded facilities, so now the state has had to take the wildly innovative measure of... paying people to be trained to do the job.

[Berkut]

What's that wooshing sound?

[DGuller]

What's that wooshing sound?

Flashover?

[Sheilbh]

You know what sucks about the politicization of the pandemic response?

It kind of leaves this sort of bad taste in everyone's mouth about the scientific and technical response.

Which, absent a lot of fuck ups, in the aggregate is pretty astounding. At least the science and production part of it.

Humans should be pretty proud of our scientific ability to produce multiple vaccines in less then 18 months to a new virus. It's pretty fucking amazing, in fact.

It's like if during WW2 there was a faction in the Allies who said the Axis really wasn't so bad, and all this war stuff is an over-reaction, and maybe we should just, you know, get along with the Nazi's. And this went on throughout the actual war, and even afterwards people were STILL saying "Well sure, like 250 million people died after all, but was that because we insisted on fighting them? Probably would not have been so bad if we just let them be! And look at all the bad things that came out of fighting them!"

Our response to COVID sucked in so many ways, but the technical and scientific response was fucking incredible. And I think that is going to get lost, which really, really sucks. Not just on an emotional level, but on a practical level as us humans think about how we can solve other problems, global problems, that will require some faith in science and technology. The politicization of COVID means that there will always be a part of the population that will be convinced it was all bullshit and waste of effort and essentially a giant scam, instead of an amazing example of what is possible scientifically and technologically when we really want to do something. This should have been the modern worlds trip to the moon.

I think there are lessons to learn on the scientific side. I can only really speak from experience in the UK - and covid hasn't been politicised or polarised here. There are few policies that have had such universal support as lockdowns, covid restrictions and the vaccine roll-out - none of them have had less thant 75% support in polls and it's across age groups, education, political parties, Leave/Remain etc.

I think the positive bits are clearly vaccines and gene sequencing. From memory, we had a gene sequence of covid within about a month of it being acknowledged. That's been essential in identifying and tracking variants.

The vaccines are extraordinary - I think we pay insufficient attention to how this could have gone the other way, a number of big covid vaccine projects failed and it is incredible and so good that we have multiple that work. And I think Macron was probably right when he was defending some of the EU decisions that went wrong on vaccines by saying that Europe was maybe "too rational" - that they were briefed by experts that it would take at least two years to get working vaccines - I also remember the NYT piece on how long it would take to vaccines which, I think estimated we might have some by 2030. What both of those show, for me, is how we can upend what is rational with sufficient state financial backing, everyone working for the same end goals - so researchers, public sector bodies, pharma companies, regulators etc. The normal process of vaccine development of do a trial, publish the results, raise more funding - onto the next trial - was deliberately concertinaed with great results. Both of those I think show what we should be doing and what we should be aiming for in response to other crises such as climate - but also the next pandemic because I think it's probably only a matter of time and there is a risk that it will have a higher IFR than covid.

On the downside as I've said before the scientific response got some key assumptions wrong. That's fine in and of itself, but I don't think it adjusted quickly enough in the UK and possibly the WHO. I think it was slow on masks and the importance of border controls. I think it has been very slow in emphasising that it's aerosol transmission - which I still think is not adequately emphasised enough in the public health messaging.

In the UK from the minutes of the scientific advisory groups and the evidence we've seen it seems like we weren't paying attention to East Asia or adapting to their successful response and it seems like scientists presented policy makers with basically two approaches: one was herd immunity with 400k deaths (ICR of 1% and, say, 66% of 65 million to get to herd immunity) and the other was lockdown. I think there were things in between in Korea, in Japan etc that were not seen as options for whatever reason.

Part of that I think is on the scientists/technical side, but part of it is also on the policy makers who shouldn't dumbly receive the advice their receiving but should push back, ask questions and really stress test what they're being told - I don't think either of those necessarily worked as we'd want. And as I say I think, in the UK, the impression I get is that our scientific advisers and policy response has been slow to adapt and quite conservative - I think it got wedded to certain assumptions, models, policies, messages etc in a way that wasn't helpful. And I think there was a bit of groupthink going on.

That's the bit I'd look to fix. Scientists or any other type of expert won't always be right and that's fine, but I think we do need it to be more responsive, nimble, open to challenge from outside (I regularly think about that Channel 4 News Professor of Epidemiology v tech bro clip). Similarly I think we need the same from policy makers and also need them to be more challenging and questioning of the advice they receive.

[Barrister]

Most mask restrictions lifted tomorrow.

Government of Alberta has announced that employees must start returning to their workplace in August with everyone to be back in September.

[Grey Fox]

Masks restrictions still on.

Workplace starts return to the office next week. Expect to be 100% on September 7th.

Quebec government starts on September 7th & expects to be 100% in November.

I expect, I'm going to have to look for a new employer that allows remote work. No way am I going back 100% to the office.

[Valmy]

It kind of leaves this sort of bad taste in everyone's mouth about the scientific and technical response.

Huh. It leaves a sort of bad taste in my mouth about politicians and politically driven news media. Once it became a political issue our civic society ceased to really care about the scientific or technical facts at all.

[PDH]

Apparently in California there's a shortage of firefighting crews this summer because many of their prisons temporarily released inmates to avoid covid transmission due to overcrowded facilities, so now the state has had to take the wildly innovative measure of... paying people to be trained to do the job.

It was only a couple of years ago that the state government overruled the unions and made it that prison-trained (and deployed on wild fire fights) inmates could get a firefighting job after being out of jail.  California tries a lot of stupid things at times, but eventually comes around to better things...

[The Larch]

Apparently in California there's a shortage of firefighting crews this summer because many of their prisons temporarily released inmates to avoid covid transmission due to overcrowded facilities, so now the state has had to take the wildly innovative measure of... paying people to be trained to do the job.

It was only a couple of years ago that the state government overruled the unions and made it that prison-trained (and deployed on wild fire fights) inmates could get a firefighting job after being out of jail.  California tries a lot of stupid things at times, but eventually comes around to better things...

I remember stories about that, about how former inmates with firefighting experience couldn't get firefighting jobs because their past as inmates barred them from those very same jobs once out of prison.