26251 replies to this topic

[Victoria Watcher]

if we were states:

 

 

[amor de cosmos]

B.C. public health order places moratorium on new mink farms due to COVID-19
https://www.timescol...d-19-1.24346314
 
Nerve damage and a buildup of immune cells in the cornea may be a sign of "long COVID," a long-term syndrome that emerges in some people after COVID-19 infection, a new study suggests.
https://www.livescie...long-covid.html
 

Government officials and policymakers have tried to use numbers to grasp COVID-19’s impact. Figures like the number of hospitalizations or deaths reflect part of this burden. Each datapoint tells only part of the story. But no one figure describes the true pervasiveness of the novel coronavirus by revealing the number of people actually infected at a given time — an important figure to help scientists understand if herd immunity can be reached, even with vaccinations.
 
Now, two University of Washington scientists have developed a statistical framework that incorporates key COVID-19 data — such as case counts and deaths due to COVID-19 — to model the true prevalence of this disease in the United States and individual states. Their approach, published the week of July 26 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, projects that in the U.S. as many as 60% of COVID-19 cases went undetected as of March 7, 2021, the last date for which the dataset they employed is available.
 
This framework could help officials determine the true burden of disease in their region — both diagnosed and undiagnosed — and direct resources accordingly, said the researchers.
 
*snip*
 
The researchers used their framework to model COVID-19 prevalence in the U.S. and each of the states up through March 7, 2021. On that date, according to their framework, an estimated 19.7% of U.S. residents, or about 65 million people, had been infected. This indicates that the U.S. is unlikely to reach herd immunity without its ongoing vaccination campaign, Raftery and Irons said. In addition, the U.S. had an undercount factor of 2.3, the researchers found, which means that only about 1 in 2.3 COVID-19 cases were being confirmed through testing. Put another way, some 60% of cases were not counted at all.

https://www.washingt...rue-prevalence/
https://www.scienced...10726152855.htm

I’m the agent assigned to monitor your vaccine tracking chip and I’m bored as hell (the beaverton)
https://www.thebeave...-bored-as-hell/
 

The number of new daily COVID-19 cases has fallen each day for the last six days, though Johnson stressed the pandemic is not over.
 
"I've noticed obviously that we're six days into some better figures, but it is very, very important that we don't allow ourselves to run away with premature conclusions about this," Johnson told broadcasters, noting it would take a while for the lifting of restrictions in England to feed through to the data.
 
"People have got to remain very cautious and that remains the approach of the government."
 
Imperial College epidemiologist Neil Ferguson said the end of Britain's pandemic could be just months away as vaccines have so dramatically reduced the risk of hospitalisation and death.
 
"We're not completely out of the woods but the equation has fundamentally changed," Ferguson, whose modelling of the virus's likely spread at the outset of the pandemic in early 2020 alarmed governments across the world, told the BBC.
Johnson lifted COVID-19 restrictions in England on July 19. New daily cases in the current wave peaked two days earlier at 54,674 and have since fallen dramatically, to 24,950 new cases on Monday.

https://www.ndtv.com...johnson-2496211
 

MILAN — A dispute over blood tests has raised questions about an Italian study that suggested the coronavirus was circulating outside China much earlier than expected, highlighting the challenges of trying to determine when the virus emerged.
 
Scientists in Italy last year published a study that showed neutralizing antibodies against the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus were found in blood taken from healthy volunteers in the country in October 2019 during a lung cancer screening trial.
 
*snip*
 
The Italian scientists from the VisMederi laboratory at the University of Siena and Milan Cancer Institute (INT) say their study revealed details about when the virus started spreading.
 
Their findings released in November showed 11.6% of 959 healthy volunteers enrolled in the cancer screening trial between September 2019 and March 2020 had signs of having already encountered SARS-CoV-2, most of them well before February.
 
Most of the volunteers were from Lombardy, the northern region around Milan, which was the first and hardest hit by the virus in Italy.

https://nationalpost...probing-origins
 

TOKYO -- Daily COVID-19 cases in Tokyo on Tuesday hit a record high, with 2,848 new infections, in a sign of a growing outbreak even as the Olympics take place in the Japanese capital despite the state of emergency.
 
The surge in infections has prompted Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga to urge people to watch the Olympics Games on TV at home. "Delta variant is rapidly spreading," Suga warned on Tuesday. But Suga denied the possibility of canceling the Games.
 
Tokyo is in the midst of a state of emergency that was declared on July 12. Last week, the first-ever postponed Olympics began without spectators.
 
Tokyo also reported on Tuesday two new deaths and 82 severely ill patients due to COVID. The number of severely ill patients was down from 160 on Jan. 20, as more elderly people, who are more likely to suffer severely, get vaccinated.
 
With the jump on Tuesday, the seven-day average of new cases in the capital is now 1,762, up 49.4% from a week ago. The previous daily high for the city was on 2,520, recorded on Jan. 7.
 
Record-breaking new infections on Tuesday signal a resurgence of the virus and a further rise in COVID cases during the Olympics, partly due to the fast-spreading delta variant.

https://asia.nikkei....s-amid-Olympics

Thai cabinet approves additional US$1.4 billion in virus relief measures
Thailand's cabinet approved an additional 46 billion baht (US$1.4 billion) of support measures on Tuesday for education and COVID-19-related assistance as the Southeast Asian country tackles its biggest wave of coronavirus infections to date.
https://www.channeln...asures-15309404

Daily COVID cases reached new high of 1,700 on Monday
Such numbers not seen since mid-March; some 2,000 travelers infected with coronavirus are said to have entered Israel this month
https://www.timesofi...1700-on-monday/
 
Saudi Arabia requires COVID-19 vaccination for Umrah
Condition imposed on visitors coming from abroad
https://www.aa.com.t...r-umrah/2315447

Russia can’t cope yet with COVID-19 due to low vaccination rates, Kremlin says
Dmitry Peskov stressed that a relaxed approach to a number of anti-coronavirus measures was not related to the election campaign
https://tass.com/world/1318209

Russia, Thailand looking at mutual recognition of vaccination certificates
Thai colleagues expressed interest in studying Russia’s practices of anti-coronavirus measures
https://tass.com/world/1317993
 

The ongoing COVID-19 surge among unvaccinated people is pushing the US toward more vaccine mandates, renewed mask use, and other mitigation efforts.
 
With around 51 percent of the country not fully vaccinated and the hypertransmissible delta variant spreading rapidly, the country's pandemic outlook is grim and getting grimmer. Cases are still increasing in all 50 states and up 170 percent in the last two weeks, with the pace of case increases also accelerating.
 
COVID-19 is thriving in places with relatively low vaccination rates. Arkansas and Louisiana have the highest rates of new cases, and both states have only 36 percent of their residents vaccinated. Florida, Missouri, and Mississippi are also seeing surges among the unvaccinated.
 
Hospitalizations for COVID-19 are up 58 percent across the nation, and 97 percent of those patients are unvaccinated. Deaths are also increasing nationwide, up 20 percent, and almost exclusively among unvaccinated people.
In an interview Sunday on Face the Nation, former Surgeon General Jerome Adams underscored that the surge—and the subsequent mitigation efforts to try to tamp it down—is the consequence of individuals' decisions to not get vaccinated against COVID-19.
 
"More mitigation is coming," Adams warned, "whether it's masking or whether it's closures or whether it's your kids having to return to virtual learning, that is coming. And it's coming because this pandemic is spiraling out of control yet again, and it's spiraling out of control because we don't have enough people vaccinated." He encouraged people to get vaccinated to protect themselves, those around them, and also "help every single American enjoy the freedoms that we want to return to."

https://arstechnica....sks-mitigation/
 

A few months ago, the boxy, teal truck parked outside a McDonald’s in San Bernardino might have drawn hundreds of people willing to stand in line for hours under the scorching sun.
 
The truck is San Bernardino County’s mobile COVID-19 vaccination unit. But on July 15, only 22 people got a shot during the four hours it sat there.
 
Roughly 12 feet away, more people were seen waiting by a red canopy for free smartphones, government-subsidized for those with low incomes, than were stepping up for the potentially lifesaving shots.
 
Barry Luque, a 37-year-old car wash worker who visited the red canopy that day for a free phone, was lured by the truck. He had been eligible for a COVID vaccination since April but never got around to making an appointment. Had he not seen the truck in the parking lot on his day off, “this wouldn’t have gotten done,” he said.
 
It’s Luque’s job to guide drivers into the car wash, but his boss won’t let him take his mask off unless he can show proof he’s vaccinated.
 
“People come in from different lives, different styles, different moods, at different times,” he said after getting his first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. “I’ve got to guide them carefully and gently, and it’s kinda hard for them to see the smile on my face.”
 
Luque and the other 21 people who got vaccinated that day — in addition to the scores who drove by or waited in the McDonald’s drive-through line without seeking a shot — offer a snapshot of California’s stalling vaccination effort.
 
Some who finally got the shot, like Luque, were motivated by mandates from employers or are tired of wearing masks. Some want to visit other countries, and vaccinations may help ease travel or quarantine requirements. Others were persuaded, at long last, by family and friends.
 
Those who continue to hold out primarily cite potential side effects and distrust of the medical system.
 
Recent polling shows that no matter which tactics are used, a strong majority of unvaccinated people are unlikely to budge on getting a shot, creating an increasingly dangerous scenario as the highly contagious Delta variant burns through the country. In California on Wednesday, about 2,800 people were hospitalized for COVID or suspected COVID — more than twice as many as six weeks earlier.

https://www.latimes....-but-only-a-few
via
https://khn.org/news...e-slow-traffic/
 
for the first time on record
The combination of high death rates during the COVID-19 pandemic, immigration restrictions and persistently low birth rates means the U.S. population might have shrunk in 2020, according to a new piece in the Wall Street Journal.
https://www.axios.co...ada68d0570.html
https://www.wsj.com/...isk-11627231536

Lawsuit Seeks to Reinstate Federal Unemployment Benefits in Florida
In a newly filed lawsuit, 10 plaintiffs – all from Broward County – are asking the court to reinstate the $300 unemployment benefit right away.
https://www.nbcmiami...lorida/2506540/
 

MONDAY, July 26, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- Eight in 10 American adults who haven't received a COVID-19 shot say they are unlikely to get one, a new survey shows.
 
The results mean "that there will be more preventable cases, more preventable hospitalizations and more preventable deaths," Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease specialist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, told the Associated Press.
 
Among those who haven't been vaccinated, 35% said they're unlikely to get vaccinated and 45% say they definitely won't, while only 3% said they'll definitely get the shots and 16% said they probably will, according to the poll from the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
 
Even though vaccines have been shown to provide strong protection against the new coronavirus, the poll also found that 64% of unvaccinated adults have little to no confidence the shots are effective against coronavirus variants, including the Delta variant that accounts for 83% of new cases in the United States, the AP reported.
 
Among those already vaccinated, 86% of those have at least some confidence that the vaccines will protect them.
 
"We always knew some proportion of the population would be difficult to persuade, no matter what the data showed, [and] a lot of people are beyond persuasion," Adalja told the AP.
 
COVID-19 cases in the United States have nearly tripled over the past two weeks. Like other top officials, Adalja says the current spike in cases is "a pandemic of the unvaccinated," because they account for nearly all COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths.

https://www.webmd.co...y-that-way-poll
 
once again, in 2019:

Ten threats to global health in 2019

Air pollution and climate change

Noncommunicable diseases

Global influenza pandemic

Fragile and vulnerable settings

Antimicrobial resistance

Ebola and other high-threat pathogens

Weak primary health care

Vaccine hesitancy

https://www.who.int/...-health-in-2019
 

Daily coronavirus cases in the US could quadruple next month as a large number of people aren't getting vaccinated, the former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned.
 
Dr. Tom Frieden, who led the CDC between 2009 and 2017, warned that US case numbers could surge like they did in the UK, where the Delta variant was dominant before it was in the US, CNN reported.
 
"We're heading into a rough time. It's likely, if our trajectory is similar to that in the United Kingdom, that we could see as many as 200,000 cases a day," he said.
 
He said this could happen in the next four to six weeks.
 
The US is currently recording between around 30,000 and around 60,000 new cases a day.

https://news.yahoo.c...-083451962.html

[Victoria Watcher]

Testing people who have been vaccinated and have no symptoms could extend this pandemic forever. That’s because a PCR test, which still remains the gold standard of testing (over antigen-based testing), can detect just a few virus particles — or even just one. Those small amounts of the virus are not enough to cause transmission, according to studies in the Journal of Infectious Diseases and the Lancet. Indeed, such small amounts of exposure can boost immunity in the vaccinated while causing no ill effects.

 

 

https://www.washingt...ing-vaccinated/

[Matt R.]

Where are they testing vaccinated people with no symptoms?

Matt.

[Victoria Watcher]

Where are they testing vaccinated people with no symptoms?

Matt.

 

as per the article:

 

Employers, entertainment venues, schools, airlines, local governments and even hospitals are adopting universal testing policies regardless of vaccination status. 

 

[phx]

The BC vaccination rate is averaging about 60,000 / day. It’ll wind down in a couple of weeks, though, and we’ll be lucky to get 60% of the population fully vaccinated.

 

September would be a good time to start with the booster shots.  

[SimonH]

The BC vaccination rate is averaging about 60,000 / day. It’ll wind down in a couple of weeks, though, and we’ll be lucky to get 60% of the population fully vaccinated.

 

September would be a good time to start with the booster shots.  

BC s already at %62 and Canada %64 fully vaccinated. (over 12 years of age)

[phx]

BC s already at %62 and Canada %64 fully vaccinated. (over 12 years of age)

BC is at 55% of the total population, which is what counts.

[Barrrister]

Kids can transmit Covid along with every other disease known to man. The little ones only look cute and harmless.

[Nparker]

If one is fully vaccinated fearing child-to-adult transmission shouldn't be much of a worry.

[Barrrister]

Todays BC numbers seem to be really climbing compared to a week ago.

[Victoria Watcher]

 

[amor de cosmos]

Unvaccinated Canadians make up almost 90% of newly reported COVID-19 cases across the country
https://www.victoria...ss-the-country/
 

Abstract

Disruptions resulting from an epidemic might often appear to amount to chaos but, in reality, can be understood in a systematic way through the lens of “epidemic psychology”. According to Philip Strong, the founder of the sociological study of epidemic infectious diseases, not only is an epidemic biological; there is also the potential for three psycho-social epidemics: of fear, moralization, and action. This work empirically tests Strong’s model at scale by studying the use of language of 122M tweets related to the COVID-19 pandemic posted in the U.S. during the whole year of 2020. On Twitter, we identified three distinct phases. Each of them is characterized by different regimes of the three psycho-social epidemics. In the refusal phase, users refused to accept reality despite the increasing number of deaths in other countries. In the anger phase (started after the announcement of the first death in the country), users’ fear translated into anger about the looming feeling that things were about to change. Finally, in the acceptance phase, which began after the authorities imposed physical-distancing measures, users settled into a “new normal” for their daily activities. Overall, refusal of accepting reality gradually died off as the year went on, while acceptance increasingly took hold. During 2020, as cases surged in waves, so did anger, re-emerging cyclically at each wave. Our real-time operationalization of Strong’s model is designed in a way that makes it possible to embed epidemic psychology into real-time models (e.g., epidemiological and mobility models).

https://www.nature.c...599-021-00861-3

Bushfires, not pandemic lockdowns, had biggest impact on global climate in 2020
https://phys.org/new...est-impact.html

29 Times Anti-Vaxxers Made Headlines For Regretting Not Getting The Vaccine While They Still Could
https://www.boredpan...cine-headlines/

Tokyo Olympics: Record Virus Cases In Tokyo As More Regions Weigh Emergency
Tokyo Olympics: Covid cases in Tokyo topped 3000 for the first time on Wednesday as several neighbouring regions considered emergency restrictions to tackle infections.
https://sports.ndtv....ergency-2497077

Millions of Sydney residents will spend another month in lockdown, authorities announced Wednesday, citing a still-fast-growing coronavirus outbreak and stubbornly low vaccination rates.
Australia's biggest city had been due to exit five weeks of lockdown on July 30, but the restrictions will now remain in place until August 28 as case numbers continued to climb.
https://medicalxpres...s-outbreak.html
 

A man named Thomas Patrick Connally Jr. has allegedly threatened to scalp and torture Dr. Anthony Fauci, the senior White House medico and director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, as well as other health officials, according to court documents.
 
Emails cited in court documents reveal Connally threatening to break "every bone" in Fauci's "disgusting elf skull" and "bludgeon" it "into the pavement". 
 

He then goes on to call Fauci "a sickening, compromised satanic freemason criminal" and "sickening vile piece of criminal dog sh*t".

The man also expressed his hope that someone would "take a baseball bat and smash your eyeballs out", along with spewing other deadly threats.

NIH Director Francis Collins is also allegedly subject to threats from the person, who demanded he "drop the 'mandatory vaccine' talk, maggot, or you’re getting 6 mandatory shots in your worthless satanist fag**t skull".

No stranger to angry people, Fauci received these threats in December 2020, with Collins receiving letters in April. According to court documents, in response to the threats "HHS-OIG began protective operations around Dr. Fauci in March 2020".

https://sputniknews....court-docs-say/

Edited by amor de cosmos, 28 July 2021 - 07:09 AM.

[Victoria Watcher]

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that people getting their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine at any city-run vaccination site will receive a $100 incentive starting Friday, July 30.


https://www.foxnews....ovid-19-vaccine

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 28 July 2021 - 11:25 AM.

[Nparker]

Too much carrot, not enough stick.

[Victoria Watcher]

to be fair cuomo did say he was going to have people go door to door and take people away in cars to get the vaccine.

[Victoria Watcher]

RT might be off slightly in the translation.


Andrew Cuomo’s plan to send officials to the homes of the unvaccinated, pressurize them and DRIVE them to get jabbed is tyrannical

https://www.rt.com/o...ccinated-drive/





pressurize them seems extreme.

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 28 July 2021 - 11:32 AM.

[Greg]

Nothing more tyrannical than providing someone with transportation. What next, offering to drive people to the polls to vote?

[Victoria Watcher]

I think cuomos “offer” sounded more like the type you can’t refuse.

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 28 July 2021 - 11:52 AM.

[Matt R.]

Central Okanagan back to mask mandate and physical distancing as of midnight. It’s not over yet.

https://globalnews.c...h-announcement/

Matt.