Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[Razgovory]

I wonder if business will relocate out areas with a large unvaccinated population to a places where the people get the vaccine.

[PDH]

So according to the Worldometer site, Florida hasn't reported any new data since last Friday.  I guess that is one way of avoiding those bad numbers...

[DGuller]

So according to the Worldometer site, Florida hasn't reported any new data since last Friday.  I guess that is one way of avoiding those bad numbers...

Maybe everyone is out with Covid.

[jimmy olsen]

I believe they are now reporting Tuesday - Saturday.

[celedhring]

But also something else is going on here. Some re-confined a bit like the Netherlands but I'm not sure about the rest

Some Spanish regions have re-instated curfews, but not much else. Catalonia - the region where this wave has hit the hardest - is now improving relatively rapidly with only limited curfews in place. Honestly I believe there's a "virus running out of people" component to it, in between vaccination rates and the number of people that has already had the illness.

[Sheilbh]

But also something else is going on here. Some re-confined a bit like the Netherlands but I'm not sure about the rest

Some Spanish regions have re-instated curfews, but not much else. Catalonia - the region where this wave has hit the hardest - is now improving relatively rapidly with only limited curfews in place. Honestly I believe there's a "virus running out of people" component to it, in between vaccination rates and the number of people that has already had the illness.

Yeah - and Spain has done incredibly on vaccine roll-out.

I think it'll bounce about - it's not just going to go down now. But the decline in the UK and other European (so lots of vaccinations) hotspots is probably up there with the first Pfizer-BionTech trial results announcement in terms of my personal optimism.

Edit: As I've said before - still waiting for the impact of re-opening on Monday - and from everything I've read if this was just immunity it wouldn't be this steep and I expect numbers will bounce about. But this decline is extraordinary given there's been no new lockdown measures/restrictions (from Mike Bird):

Week-on-week change in Covid-19 cases by English region.
East Midlands  -40.4%
East of England  -40.9%
London  -36.1%
North East  -51.5%
North West  -44.1%
South East  -42.1%
South West  -41.5%
West Midlands  -45.9%
Yorkshire and The Humber  -42.2%

[Legbiter]

I think it'll bounce about - it's not just going to go down now. But the decline in the UK and other European (so lots of vaccinations) hotspots is probably up there with the first Pfizer-BionTech trial results announcement in terms of my personal optimism.

Yeah it's extremely encouraging. Case fatality rates dropping like a rock.

Here we seem to have blundered into an interesting experiment, an entire nation with a very high vaccination rate having rather lax control measures and a delta variant outbreak.  5 covid patients were admitted to hospital yesterday, one went into ICU but he was 50+ years old with underlying conditions and unvaccinated.

[Sheilbh]

Large scale study from Catalonia of over a million people looking at blood clotting. AZ and Pfizer have very similar safety profiles and both are broadly in line with what you would expect in the general population - the risk of blood clotting with either vaccine is significantly lower than the same issue arising following infection from covid (and at the point of this study AZ was not being used by Catalonia on older people so it was actually used on a slightly younger population):
https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=654125087110030107009000092026024076057033067063006028024100059115021036002118106074044108054107115001094024083018054117115087025068103017029100073012098124120089117025103113036021012082109108104041056074058058071027078001086097082064065090119121029028112118072003123096084071100068022022086&EXT=pdf&INDEX=TRUE

I think when the history of this pandemic is written there will be an entire chapter on the scaremongering and fears around AZ - people in Australia are still rejecting it now despite shortages of all other vaccines and a delta wave. I think it caused a permanent dip in take-up, has wasted doses and seen the countries most in need of a vaccine reject the one that's being provided at cost. I don't want to get too conspiracy minded - but I hope journalists are already investigating this because the contrast with Good Profit-Seeking Pharma vaccines has been striking. My guess is that when the next pandemic hits, no-one's going to try to license a product globally at cost and will instead just seek a profit

And the contrast is particularly striking of the Western cheap vaccine for the world which has been pretty trashed reputationally v the Chinese roll-out of SinoPharm and SinoVac which is being exported to lots of other countries quite successfully.

[mongers]

The 7 day average daily covid-19 victims in the UK is now around 71 deaths. 

edit:
A week earlier it was 52 daily deaths and another week back it was 32 deaths; I wonder if we'll hit 90-100 in a week time?

[Legbiter]

The 7 day average daily covid-19 victims in the UK is now around 71 deaths. 

edit:
A week earlier it was 52 daily deaths and another week back it was 32 deaths; I wonder if we'll hit 90-100 in a week time?

You're right there's a noticable increase in last week.



Why is the question. Is it just the Euro football?

[Sheilbh]

You're right there's a noticable increase in last week.

[...]

Why is the question. Is it just the Euro football?

But that's case fatality rate. Cases are falling at the minute and have been for about a week - that's too to show in the hospitalisation or deaths data. You probably need to look at fatalities v cases last fortnigh to see the case fatality rate (though I'm not sure how useful it is as a stat). There's possibly early signs in the hospitalisation data thatit is now starting to turn following the case numbers - but too soon to tell.

And of course too soon to tell the impact of Monday's re-opening on cases too.

[Razgovory]

Then there's this.

The Covid-19 vaccine has become so polarizing that some people in Missouri are getting inoculated in secret for fear of backlash from their friends and family who oppose vaccination, a doctor told CNN Wednesday.

"They've had some experience that's sort of changed their mind from the viewpoint of those in their family, those in their friendship circles or their work circles. And they came to their own decision that they wanted to get a vaccine," said Dr. Priscilla Frase, a hospitalist and chief medical information officer at Ozarks Healthcare in West Plains, Missouri.
"They did their own research on it, and they talked to people and made the decisions themselves," Frase told CNN's Anderson Cooper. "But even though they were able to make that decision themselves, they didn't want to have to deal with the peer pressure or the outbursts from other people about them ... 'giving in to everything.'"
In a hospital produced video, Frase said one pharmacist at her hospital told her "they've had several people come in to get vaccinated who have tried to sort of disguise their appearance and even went so far as to say, 'please, please, please don't let anybody know that I got this vaccine.'"

Frase told CNN if a patient asks for privacy to get vaccinated, the hospital tries to accommodate the request -- whether at the drive-thru window or at their cars.
"Anything we can do to get people in a place that they're comfortable receiving the vaccine," Frase said. "It's not a large number, but every single person that we can reach who wants to get vaccinated and we can provide that for them, that's a win. And we take every win that we can get."
Missouri has 41% of its population fully vaccinated against Covid-19, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The state is one of 49 in the US experiencing at least a 10% surge in new Covid-19 cases over last week, data from Johns Hopkins University shows.

Frase said her hospital had 33 patients admitted with Covid-19 as of Wednesday and she's expecting that number to rise.
"The patients that are coming in are generally younger than what we saw before. It's more people requiring a lot more oxygen, a lot quicker," Frase said.


"The majority of people we've admitted have not been vaccinated," she added.
"The biggest thing that I think has been shocking for us is, back in the fall, in the winter, it took us four months to get to our peak admitted patients, which is around 22. It's taken us 30 days to exceed that and be up to 33 today." Frase said.
And it's not just Frase's hospital that is dealing with an influx of patients in Missouri.
The CoxHealth health system said it's expanding morgue capacity in due to an increase in Covid-19 related deaths.
"We've actually brought in a portable piece of technology that allows bodies to be cooled and placed outside the morgue. We have had to expand that because the mortality has gone up so much lately," CoxHealth President and CEO Steve Edwards said during a news briefing in Springfield-Greene County Tuesday.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/29/health/vaccines-in-secret-missouri/index.html

[mongers]

Then there's this.

The Covid-19 vaccine has become so polarizing that some people in Missouri are getting inoculated in secret for fear of backlash from their friends and family who oppose vaccination, a doctor told CNN Wednesday.

"They've had some experience that's sort of changed their mind from the viewpoint of those in their family, those in their friendship circles or their work circles. And they came to their own decision that they wanted to get a vaccine," said Dr. Priscilla Frase, a hospitalist and chief medical information officer at Ozarks Healthcare in West Plains, Missouri.
"They did their own research on it, and they talked to people and made the decisions themselves," Frase told CNN's Anderson Cooper. "But even though they were able to make that decision themselves, they didn't want to have to deal with the peer pressure or the outbursts from other people about them ... 'giving in to everything.'"
In a hospital produced video, Frase said one pharmacist at her hospital told her "they've had several people come in to get vaccinated who have tried to sort of disguise their appearance and even went so far as to say, 'please, please, please don't let anybody know that I got this vaccine.'"

Frase told CNN if a patient asks for privacy to get vaccinated, the hospital tries to accommodate the request -- whether at the drive-thru window or at their cars.
"Anything we can do to get people in a place that they're comfortable receiving the vaccine," Frase said. "It's not a large number, but every single person that we can reach who wants to get vaccinated and we can provide that for them, that's a win. And we take every win that we can get."
Missouri has 41% of its population fully vaccinated against Covid-19, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The state is one of 49 in the US experiencing at least a 10% surge in new Covid-19 cases over last week, data from Johns Hopkins University shows.

Frase said her hospital had 33 patients admitted with Covid-19 as of Wednesday and she's expecting that number to rise.
"The patients that are coming in are generally younger than what we saw before. It's more people requiring a lot more oxygen, a lot quicker," Frase said.


"The majority of people we've admitted have not been vaccinated," she added.
"The biggest thing that I think has been shocking for us is, back in the fall, in the winter, it took us four months to get to our peak admitted patients, which is around 22. It's taken us 30 days to exceed that and be up to 33 today." Frase said.
And it's not just Frase's hospital that is dealing with an influx of patients in Missouri.
The CoxHealth health system said it's expanding morgue capacity in due to an increase in Covid-19 related deaths.
"We've actually brought in a portable piece of technology that allows bodies to be cooled and placed outside the morgue. We have had to expand that because the mortality has gone up so much lately," CoxHealth President and CEO Steve Edwards said during a news briefing in Springfield-Greene County Tuesday.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/29/health/vaccines-in-secret-missouri/index.html

Maybe there's a certain level of bigotry or hate in a given society depending on its history, politics and economic inequalities; and this gets divided up between existing biases, like hating black people and new 'target' like refugees and now vaccinated people?

Does this mean black people in the South might be getting a slightly easier ride these past few months? I don't know and there's always the possibility that the hate/bigotry feeds on itself and grow bigger in individuals and some sections of society?

[garbon]

Because people can't hate on more than one thing at a time?

[Razgovory]

Does this mean black people in the South might be getting a slightly easier ride these past few months? I don't know and there's always the possibility that the hate/bigotry feeds on itself and grow bigger in individuals and some sections of society?

There's not a lot of black people in Southwest Missouri.  The only place with a sizeable black population is Springfield, and less than 3% of the population is black.  The surrounding area has basically no black people.