26251 replies to this topic

[Barrrister]

I have a question, why is it that Ontario seems to have about half the number of Covid cases than does BC  especially since Ontario has three times the population. What are they doing right and what are we doing wrong.

[dasmo]

Hi all, I hope you are enjoying the fall. I have been. Some of my friends less so. I have a few who work in health care. One was fired yesterday. No hearts for them anymore. Anyhooo… I just came to collect another “told ya so”.

https://www.fda.gov/...risk-false-test

[sebberry]

Hi all, I hope you are enjoying the fall. I have been. Some of my friends less so. I have a few who work in health care. One was fired yesterday. No hearts for them anymore. Anyhooo… I just came to collect another “told ya so”.

https://www.fda.gov/...risk-false-test

 

What's "told ya so" about it?  It's the process working as it should.  Remember the early days of HIV testing?  

[Ismo07]

Hi all, I hope you are enjoying the fall. I have been. Some of my friends less so. I have a few who work in health care. One was fired yesterday. No hearts for them anymore. Anyhooo… I just came to collect another “told ya so”.

https://www.fda.gov/...risk-false-test

 

You told us that an unauthorized test would be recalled...  Love it...

[SimonH]

Hi all, I hope you are enjoying the fall. I have been. Some of my friends less so. I have a few who work in health care. One was fired yesterday. No hearts for them anymore. Anyhooo… I just came to collect another “told ya so”.

https://www.fda.gov/...risk-false-test

Why was he/she/they/them/it  fired ?

[Victoria Watcher]

Officials lie when they find it convenient.



Hinshaw apologizes to family of 14-year-old after saying he died from COVID-19




Alberta's top doctor delivered a public apology Thursday after saying earlier this week that a 14-year-old boy with other medical conditions had died from COVID-19.

While an initial report had indicated that COVID-19 was a secondary cause of the teen's death, a subsequent review has determined that not to be the case, Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Deena Hinshaw told a news conference.

https://www.cbc.ca/n...id-19-1.6210691

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 14 October 2021 - 05:47 PM.

[Victoria Watcher]

Multiple messages criticizing the province’s vaccine mandate for government workers were sent by employees to coworkers using their government emails, the B.C. Public Service Agency has confirmed.

The emails attacked the province for implementing a vaccine mandate for its employees, introduced on Oct. 5.

The mandate applies to all 30,000 public service employees, who must be able to show proof of vaccination by Nov. 22 or face suspension from work – a similar rule was also introduced for federal workers.



https://www.vicnews....accine-mandate/



“Attacked” the province? Or just criticised them and expressed a contrary opinion? Not everything is terrorism.

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 14 October 2021 - 06:10 PM.

[phx]

I have a question, why is it that Ontario seems to have about half the number of Covid cases than does BC  especially since Ontario has three times the population. What are they doing right and what are we doing wrong.

The waves seem to come and go independent of lockdowns.  We had less covid before, but now we have more.

[Nparker]

I have a question, why is it that Ontario seems to have about half the number of Covid cases than does BC  especially since Ontario has three times the population. What are they doing right and what are we doing wrong.

Maybe it has something to do with the poor vaccination rate in the Northern Health region. They are still only at 56% compared to 74% for Island Health and almost 79% for Vancouver Coastal.

[Victoria Watcher]

here we have worldwide deaths:

 

 

https://www.worldome...fo/coronavirus/

 

 

 

[dasmo]

Lies are like cockroaches, if you see one there are many.
“ On Tuesday, Hinshaw announced that a 14-year-old was one of 33 new COVID-19 deaths reported over the long weekend, but that the teen also “had complex pre-existing medical conditions that played a significant role in their death.”

Pathetic half truth apology. The sister broadcast on social media that their brother had stage 4 brain cancer for nine months.

https://nationalpost...-die-from-covid

[sebberry]

here we have worldwide deaths:

 

 

https://www.worldome...fo/coronavirus/

 

 

 screenshot-www.worldometers.info-2021.10.15-07_21_06.png

 

"It's just a flu" they said.

[amor de cosmos]

Newswise — BOSTON – Based on the strength of clinical trial data showing the vaccines conferred robust protection against COVID-19, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration granted emergency use authorization to the mRNA-based vaccines known as BNT162b2 (BioNTech, Pfizer) and mRNA-1273 (Moderna) in December 2020, and to the Ad26.COV2.S (Johnson & Johnson) single-shot vaccine in February 2021. To date, nearly 200 million Americans have received a COVID-19 vaccine, and as some approach the one-year anniversary of their immunization, questions remain about the vaccines’ long-term efficacy.  
 
In a paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine, a team of experts at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) compared immune responses induced by the three vaccines over an eight-month follow-up period. The investigators evaluated the 61 participants’ levels of various antibodies, T cells and other immune products at two to four weeks following complete immunization – the time of peak immunity – to eight months after vaccination. Thirty-one participants received the BNT162b2 vaccine, 22 received the mRNA-1273 vaccine and eight received the Ad26.COV2.S vaccine. 
 
“The mRNA vaccines were characterized by high peak antibody responses that declined sharply by month six and declined further by month eight,” said corresponding author Dan H. Barouch, MD, PhD, director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at BIDMC, who helped develop the Ad26 platform in collaboration with Johnson & Johnson. “The single-shot Ad26 vaccine induced lower initial antibody responses, but these responses were generally stable over time with minimal to no evidence of decline.” 
 
The team also found that mRNA-1273 elicited antibody responses which were generally higher and more durable than BNT162b2. All three vaccines demonstrated broad cross-reactivity to variants of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The findings have important implications for understanding how vaccine immunity may wane over time; however, the precise immune responses necessary to confer protection against SARS-CoV-2 has not yet been determined, the researchers point out.

https://www.newswise...id-19-vaccines/
 

When immunity levels are high like this, models suggest there will be a rapid decline in COVID-19 cases. But while cases have fallen in these countries over the past months, they’ve now plateaued, and in some cases seem to be creeping up again.
 
This inability to drive cases down further is probably due to a number of factors. Principally, there’s the rise of the delta variant, which is more transmissible. This, above all else, has put to rest the hope of quickly getting rid of COVID. The more infectious something is, the more people need immunity to it and the stronger that immunity needs to be to stop it spreading.
 
And while the vaccines available provide exceptionally high protection, it’s not total. Some vaccinated people will still get COVID. There’s also growing evidence that immunity – from vaccination or infection – fades over time.
 
Immunity may also be spread unevenly across the population. Outbreaks that are happening right now in the UK are concentrated in those parts of society where susceptibility is still prevalent, such as in schools. Delaying vaccinating schoolchildren has led to severe outbreaks in young people, with cases in Scotland, for example, exceeding any past peaks in these school-age groups.
 
These factors explain why cases aren’t being completely driven down. In fact, they are the reason why many modellers predicted that with measures to control the virus removed, we could see a massive outbreak. And yet, in many highly vaccinated countries, the numbers are seeming neither to massively explode nor quickly decline. Why?
 
Well, the current plateauing of cases could be caused by feedback between the perceived risk of COVID and the lifting of protection measures. Despite restrictions having been relaxed, many are still cautious about going out and socialising. Masks, hand washing and social distancing are compulsory in many countries and regions, but even where they’re not many people are continuing with them. Use of public transport is still down compared to pre-pandemic levels and working at home is still prevalent in many places. Some countries have also introduced vaccine passports.
 
These largely voluntary behaviours may be counterbalancing the virus’s ability to defy immunity levels and spread.

https://theconversat...-arrived-169561
 
In a paper recently uploaded to the preprint server medRxiv*, the efficacy and safety of a DNA-based vaccine are investigated, finding that the unique vaccine imparts a robust and long-lasting immunogenic response.
https://www.news-med...e-response.aspx
 

Some airline pilots returning to the skies are making errors after months of not flying during the COVID-19 pandemic, with a vice president at a pilots' organization calling it a "critical situation" in an interview with Bloomberg.
 
Dozens of pilots, flight attendants, and other aviation staff have anonymously reported safety incidents related to flying during the pandemic via the Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS), a monitoring platform funded by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) funded, Bloomberg first reported.
 
Most of the errors have been minor, per Bloomberg – but the publication noted that small mistakes have led to some huge aviation disasters in the past.
 
In one incident reported via ASRS, a captain said that a first officer missed an altitude constraint by 800 feet on a flight. The captain said that the first offer was "freshly back from a year leave due COVID."
 
Another first officer said that during another flight, they accidentally switched off the wrong engine for cool down. "I believe not flying that much in the past year [due to] the pandemic played a factor into my error," the officer wrote.

etc
https://www.business...reports-2021-10
 

Our NZES data clearly show the 2020 New Zealand general election can indeed be thought of as a COVID election. Support for the government’s rapid public health and economic policy responses, and the popularity of Ardern, go a long way to explaining the outcome.
 
However, as the word cloud suggests, there are a number of policy issues that remain of concern to voters, including housing, health and the economy. These were issues that featured in 2017 and may continue to matter through to the 2023 election.
 
Our preliminary analysis, then, is a reminder that Labour cannot take its new voters for granted.

https://theconversat...election-169351

COVID Testing Lab in UK Suspended as Over 40,000 People May Have Received Wrong Results
https://sputniknews....1089943060.html
 
Russia breaks record again for COVID-19 deaths, infections
https://medicalxpres...infections.html
 

Russia on Friday launched a population census delayed several times by the coronavirus pandemic that has exacerbated the country's worsening demographic crisis.
 
Russia's population has been in near-constant decline since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, due to a low birth rate, an under-resourced healthcare system, and emigration.
 
The coronavirus pandemic, which has killed at least 400,000 people in Russia according to the national statistic agency Rosstat, has seriously aggravated the problem.
 
In 2020, the population shrank by 510,000 people — the sharpest decline in 15 years, Rosstat calculated.
 
It found that the population, which numbered 146.2 million as of January 1, declined by another 595,000 people by the end of August.
 
Russia has also seen its birth rate stagnate as the mortality rate spikes, Rosstat data shows.
 
The country is seeing falling birth rates because the generation becoming parents now were born in the 1990s, when the birthrate fell drastically due to economic uncertainties.

https://www.themosco...c-crisis-a75302
 

The share of women who are content with their role in society has dropped to a record low point, according to a Gallup survey released Friday.
 
Only about four in ten women (44%) said they were satisfied with their treatment, marking a new statistical basement in the 20 years the polling company has been asking about the topic. That’s just off the 46% marks reached in 2018 and 2020.
 
Meanwhile, one-third of women now say they have the same job opportunities as men. That’s the lowest point since 2001.
 
Dissatisfaction is especially pronounced for women of color. Almost half (46%) of white women said they were content with women’s treatment, but 43% of Hispanic women and 38% of Black women felt the same way.
 
Six in 10 men (61%) said they were satisfied with the way women are treated in society, matching a low point first set in 2018. At the same time, 61% of men say women have equal job prospects and 61% support affirmative action for women.
 
Almost three-quarters of women, 72%, favor affirmative action programs for women.

https://www.marketwa...why-11634249624
 

For many Americans, COVID lockdowns — with nowhere to go and nothing to do — were a time to save. But for almost 20% of U.S. households, the pandemic wiped out their entire financial cushion, a poll released Tuesday finds.
 
The share of respondents who said they lost all their savings jumped to 30% for those making less than $50,000 a year, the poll from NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health finds. Black and Latino households were also harder hit. The researchers surveyed a nationally representative sample of 3,616 U.S. adults ages 18 or older.
 
Avenel Joseph, a vice president at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, said many people dipped into their savings to cover child or health care expenses. “When crisis hits, or anything goes out of the norm — your child is sick, for example — you are sacrificing wages,” she said. Almost two-thirds of households earning less than $50,000 a year said they had trouble affording rent, medical care, and food.
 
About two-thirds of people surveyed said they received financial assistance from the government in the past few months. But 44% said those programs only “helped a little.”

https://www.seattlet...covid-pandemic/
 
In a press release, the Navy sets a deadline for all active duty sailors to be fully vaccinated by November 28, while those in the selected reserve have until December 28.
https://sputniknews....1089934802.html
 

A storm is brewing over the pricing and licensing of Merck's antiviral pill molnupiravir, which the pharmaceutical giant says can halve the risk of hospitalization and death in high-risk COVID-19 patients.
 
Merck's advance purchase agreement with the US government pegs the price of a five-day treatment at about $700. But an independent analysis by public health researchers at Harvard estimated that a sustainable generic price—with a 10 percent profit margin built in—would be just $20 per treatment. Further, rival generic manufacturers in India are already expected to offer the drug at $15 or less for a treatment once it's authorized for use.
 
Given that, the $700 price tag in the US represents a 46-fold markup of the drug, which is named after Thor's hammer, Mjölnir.
 
In a statement earlier this week, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) struck hard at the pricing as well as at Merck's licensing agreements. "Instead of offering broad open licenses widely to all able manufacturers in different countries, a narrow voluntary license approved by Merck in April 2021 only includes Indian generic companies," Leena Menghaney, South Asia head of MSF’s Access Campaign, said in a statement. "This hinders countries like Brazil from being able to produce and import generic versions and raw materials. Middle-income countries excluded from the license had 30 million COVID-19 infections in the first half of 2021—50 percent of all infections in low- and middle-income countries."

Another strike against Merck's plans so far is that, while the pharmaceutical giant is expected to reap billions in profits, it was not responsible for the drug's development; Merck is not recouping research and development costs here.

Molnupiravir was developed by researchers at Emory University with an estimated $35 million in federal funds, including grants from the National Institutes of Health and the Defense Department. The drug was in the works for years before the pandemic. Pharmaceutical company Ridgeback Biotherapeutics bought the rights to the drug in early 2020 and partnered with Merck a few months later.

https://arstechnica....e-a-46x-markup/

17 employees have died from Covid in a Florida school district since August
https://www.nbcnews....august-n1281429
 

The ongoing feud between state and local officials in Florida over vaccine mandates escalated on Tuesday when one county was hit with a whopping $3.57 million fine for requiring COVID jabs for all employees.
 
The Florida Department of Health issued the fine against Leon County—home to the state’s capital, Tallahassee—over its “blatant violation” of Florida’s controversial “vaccine passport” law that prohibits governments and businesses from requiring residents to show proof they were vaccinated against the coronavirus. The notice states that the county broke the law 714 times in making all municipal employees show proof they’d been vaccinated. Fourteen workers were fired after refusing to get jabbed.
 
“It is unacceptable that Leon County violated Florida law, infringed on current and former employees’ medical privacy, and fired loyal public servants because of their personal health decisions,” Gov. Ron DeSantis said in a statement announcing the fines. “We will continue fighting for Floridians’ rights and the Florida Department of Health will continue to enforce the law. We’re going to stand up for Floridians’ jobs, stand up for Floridians’ livelihoods, and stand up for freedom.”

https://www.thedaily...olks-are-pissed
via https://www.rawstory.com/florida-fine/
 

Rob Skiba, an influential figure in flat earth and Christian circles, has died of COVID-19, colleagues announced on Thursday. He had been fighting the virus since at least late August, when he began exhibiting symptoms after “Take On The World,” a biblical flat earth conference. “He has been sick since coming back from TOTW,” a Facebook friend posted in early September, adding that Skiba had been hospitalized for low oxygen levels. One of the country’s most prominent advocates of Flat Earth Theory, Skiba was also skeptical of COVID-19 vaccines and some of the illness’ treatments. On the first day of the Take On The World conference, Skiba authored a Facebook post suggesting that the COVID-19 vaccines were dangerous.
 
‘To those who disagree with my position on our current situation... One of us is right,” he wrote. “Unless YHWH miraculously intervenes, based on what I’m seeing/hearing, the one scenario that really does appear to be coming into focus is the likelihood that within I’d say 2 to 3 years or so... one of us will probably be dead. Truly, I take no joy in saying this, nor will I if I'm the one still standing.”
 
Skiba’s community memorialized him on social media. “Whether you agree or disagree with him on a particular subject, you can’t help but love his genuine, authentic, loving, disarming, comical approach to very polarizing content,” a friend wrote in tribute. “What a great teacher.”

https://www.thedaily...ies-of-covid-19
https://crooksandlia...acher-rob-skiba

[spanky123]

Lies are like cockroaches, if you see one there are many.

 

 

Yep. Need to scare the youngsters into getting vaccinated. The greater good and all of that.

 

And yet the same a*holes wonder why people don't trust them and there is an anti-vax movement.

Edited by spanky123, 15 October 2021 - 08:09 AM.

[Ismo07]

Lies are like cockroaches, if you see one there are many.
“ On Tuesday, Hinshaw announced that a 14-year-old was one of 33 new COVID-19 deaths reported over the long weekend, but that the teen also “had complex pre-existing medical conditions that played a significant role in their death.”

Pathetic half truth apology. The sister broadcast on social media that their brother had stage 4 brain cancer for nine months.

https://nationalpost...-die-from-covid

 

Unfortunately there are many lies, most come without apologies...  I can't find the links to all the lies right now, but you've seen them already I'm sure.

Edited by Ismo07, 15 October 2021 - 08:19 AM.

[Szeven]

 

 

Yep. Need to scare the youngsters into getting vaccinated. The greater good and all of that.

 

And yet the same a*holes wonder why people don't trust them and there is an anti-vax movement.

 

 

All the data is out there, people are just bored and lazy. It's so much easier to just join a gang that makes you feel good, provides content, builds relationships etc.

[Victoria Watcher]

New COVID cases continue downward trend, but officials urge caution as flu season approaches

https://www.cbc.ca/n...eason-1.6212516



Tam pointed to the approaching flu season as a reason for Canadians to remain cautious.

"If a continuing fourth wave of COVID 19 were combined with a resurgence of the flu, this could place additional pressures on the health care system," Tam told a press conference Friday.

Strict health measures in place to prevent the spread of COVID-19 last fall and winter had the added effect of limiting the spread of the influenza virus, Tam said, adding last year's flu season was virtually "non-existent."

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 15 October 2021 - 01:50 PM.

[Nparker]

...Tam said, adding last year's flu season was virtually "non-existent."

So was most human contact. I am not sure that hiding ourselves away in our homes for the rest of all time is a reasonable option to keep the populace healthy.

[Ismo07]

So was most human contact. I am not sure that hiding ourselves away in our homes for the rest of all time is a reasonable option to keep the populace healthy.

 

It's true at this point we have to understand we might get sick.  Take all personal precautions you can but time to live again... Not that i haven't been really...

[Victoria Watcher]

so flu was nearly non-existent last year. but it’s expected back this year? how so?