26251 replies to this topic

[Mike K.]

We’ve sort of stopped with the frequent calls for hand washing and sanitizing, and wiping stuff down. That likely helped with the flu last year.

[Victoria Watcher]

13 more die of COVID-19 in B.C. as 667 new cases confirmed


https://vancouversun...ronavirus-in-bc

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 15 October 2021 - 02:52 PM.

[vortoozo]

We’ve sort of stopped with the frequent calls for hand washing and sanitizing, and wiping stuff down. That likely helped with the flu last year.

 

Last winter we were also very limited in terms of contact with others (eg outside household).

[vortoozo]

 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says people who received doses of two or more different COVID-19 vaccines will be considered eligible to enter the United States next month. 

 

While the agency has stopped short of recommending the mixed-dose practice in the U.S., it now acknowledges that it is an increasingly common vaccination strategy elsewhere in the world. 

 

CDC says people with mixed-dose COVID-19 vaccinations will be eligible to enter U.S. (msn.com)

[spanky123]

^ You ultimately turned out to be right on this one Vortoozo. Glad it worked out for you.

[Victoria Watcher]

everyone should watch the Gupta / Rogan podcast. It’s free at Spotify.

It’s a great 3 hours.

For both sides.

[vortoozo]

^ You ultimately turned out to be right on this one Vortoozo. Glad it worked out for you.

 

I actually got 2 doses of AZ. But I know this announcement will put a lot of people at ease.

[Victoria Watcher]

OMG.

[vortoozo]

OMG.

 

Care to elaborate?

[Victoria Watcher]

Oh My God.

[rjag]

Just back from a week in London UK. every restaurant and pub is full inside, only the odd temp patio area but they were always there and people were always allowed to stand on the street with their drinks. Trust me when I say there is zero social distancing in the Tube, trains, Restaurants, grocery stores and even the theatre.

 

Went to a play, the rule is you mask upon entry and to your seat where you can remove it. Every seat was filled. At intermission its 30 minutes so enough time to walk over to their bar where everyone is shoulder to shoulder  maskless, drinking and talking.

 

 TFL (Transport for London) requires masks on buses and trains. About 40% on buses wore masks and about 10% masked up on the trains.

 

Gatwick is masks recommended not required until you are at your gate.

 

Paid $360 for 2 sets of home kit PCR tests for our Day 2 arrival and our pre-departure to come back to Canada. Veyr straightforward, swab throat and nostrils, place in secure packaging, register via QR code and walk over to PCR drop boxes scattered throughout the City. Results in 24 hours with official certificate for travel. The UK is dropping the PCR at the end of the month as its quite expensive for families when they travel. 

 

Apart from the initial shock when we had to ride the tube squeezed in like sardines it felt quite normal. People were quite diligent about using hand sanitizers everywhere and many employers provide boxes of rapid antigen tests that take 15-30 mins for self monitoring. My daughter and her husband's employers literally mail them a box a week.

 

My conclusion is Canada is too focused on the fear mongering and its hampering our economy.

 

One of my cousins took the Eurostar from Paris to meet us for 24 hours and he said the train was full. Same as the other cousins who trained from York and Newcastle etc. Whats still operating at 1/2 capacity is the airports which was great for us as no lineups and clear landing and takeoffs with no delays. 

 

What we see from Victoria Council as reasons to keep areas closed or blocked are really moot now

Edited by rjag, 16 October 2021 - 06:35 AM.

[Mike K.]

Interesting about the test, in that there’s no verification the test sample is yours.

Welcome back, rjag!

[Spy Black]

The school of thought that drives places like London, which seems to be that double vaccination allows everybody to go back to how things were in the "before times" is (IMO) simply pandering to the populace in order to reduce the inherent stress of remaining vigilant.

Whereas in B.C., the response focuses more on accepting the COVID threat to life and limb for what it truly is, and not being hesitant to introduce new health orders as required (as we've just done in northern B.C.).

 

Personally, and although I'm as sick and tired of real COVID and COVID theatre as anybody here might also be ... I believe B.C. remains on the proper course.

Like New Zealand, we're continuing to take COVID-19 as the serious threat to society that it is, likely to continue until the hard numbers prove otherwise.

 

If, after the previous year and a half, anybody thinks Bonnie Henry and Adrian Dix are going to suddenly change course and tell us all we can return to normal ... then they haven't really been paying attention.

It should be obvious by now that BH and AD are prepared to continue this course of action for years if required ... until the numbers get to where they want them to be.

 

Anybody thinking we're on the cusp of "normal" in B.C. really needs to give their head a shake.

[Victoria Watcher]

 

This is Ontario:

 

 

 

 

Does it follow that just about everyone in hospital now is either unvaccinated, or old and compromised?  if that's the case now, it's no wonder the vaccinated and/or healthy are good to go back to normal now.

 

 

 

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 16 October 2021 - 07:28 AM.

[rjag]

Coronavirus (COVID-19) Cases and Vaccinations - London Datastore

[spanky123]

I actually got 2 doses of AZ. But I know this announcement will put a lot of people at ease.

 

Didn't think that was possible. I had thought that once the media leaked the details on where the vaccine had come from it was all pulled.

[spanky123]

Does it follow that just about everyone in hospital now is either unvaccinated, or old and compromised?  if that's the case now, it's no wonder the vaccinated and/or healthy are good to go back to normal now.

 

The graph seems to show that you are better off only being partially vaccinated!

 

What the government doesn't show is hospitalization and ICU patients by vaccine type.

[Nparker]

...My conclusion is Canada is too focused on the fear mongering and its hampering our economy...

Fear will always be a very effective way to control the masses.

[amor de cosmos]

Just back from a week in London UK. every restaurant and pub is full inside, only the odd temp patio area but they were always there and people were always allowed to stand on the street with their drinks. Trust me when I say there is zero social distancing in the Tube, trains, Restaurants, grocery stores and even the theatre.

Went to a play, the rule is you mask upon entry and to your seat where you can remove it. Every seat was filled. At intermission its 30 minutes so enough time to walk over to their bar where everyone is shoulder to shoulder maskless, drinking and talking.

TFL (Transport for London) requires masks on buses and trains. About 40% on buses wore masks and about 10% masked up on the trains.

Gatwick is masks recommended not required until you are at your gate.

Paid $360 for 2 sets of home kit PCR tests for our Day 2 arrival and our pre-departure to come back to Canada. Veyr straightforward, swab throat and nostrils, place in secure packaging, register via QR code and walk over to PCR drop boxes scattered throughout the City. Results in 24 hours with official certificate for travel. The UK is dropping the PCR at the end of the month as its quite expensive for families when they travel.

Apart from the initial shock when we had to ride the tube squeezed in like sardines it felt quite normal. People were quite diligent about using hand sanitizers everywhere and many employers provide boxes of rapid antigen tests that take 15-30 mins for self monitoring. My daughter and her husband's employers literally mail them a box a week.

My conclusion is Canada is too focused on the fear mongering and its hampering our economy.

One of my cousins took the Eurostar from Paris to meet us for 24 hours and he said the train was full. Same as the other cousins who trained from York and Newcastle etc. Whats still operating at 1/2 capacity is the airports which was great for us as no lineups and clear landing and takeoffs with no delays.

What we see from Victoria Council as reasons to keep areas closed or blocked are really moot now

that's priceless, there was UK parliamentary report earlier this week on their pandemic response, approved by the 3 main parties (conservative, labour & SNP). maybe you missed it?
 

LONDON — Delaying a lockdown in the U.K. and failing to prioritize social care caused thousands of avoidable deaths, according to a parliamentary report on lessons learned to date from the coronavirus pandemic.
 
The joint investigation published Tuesday by the House of Commons' science and health committees is lawmakers' first stab at digging into why the U.K., which was initially praised for its pandemic preparedness planning, saw cases skyrocket and deaths far outnumber many comparable countries. To date, deaths associated with the coronavirus in the U.K. stand at more than 150,000, placing the country in the Top 10 worldwide for total fatalities, according to World Health Organization data.
 
The joint report noted that while some initiatives were examples of global best practices, others represented serious mistakes.
 
The report praised the “remarkable” achievement of the National Health Service in expanding ventilator and intensive care capacity, and underscores the success of the Vaccines Task Force in quickly delivering life-saving vaccines, which were rolled out at speed. The country’s clinical trials testing for COVID-19 treatments have also been “world-leading,” it said.
 
But delaying decisive action to impose a stay-at-home order “reflected a fatalism about the spread of COVID that should have been robustly challenged at the time,” the committees said.
 
In “accepting that herd immunity by infection was the inevitable outcome,” the report said the U.K. made a “serious early error in adopting this fatalistic approach” and not considering a rigorous targeted public health approach to stop the spread of the virus, as adopted by many East and Southeast Asian countries.
 
*snip*
 
The report praised the “remarkable” achievement of the National Health Service in expanding ventilator and intensive care capacity, and underscores the success of the Vaccines Task Force in quickly delivering life-saving vaccines, which were rolled out at speed. The country’s clinical trials testing for COVID-19 treatments have also been “world-leading,” it said.

https://www.politico...andemic-deaths/
 

Covid infection levels in England are getting close to the peak seen at the height of the second wave and are mostly being driven by rates among schoolchildren, data shows.

 

Estimates from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that around one in 10 schoolchildren in Years 7 to 11 in England was estimated to have Covid last week – the highest positivity rate for any age group.

 

Rates have also increased for people aged 50 to 69, those aged 70 and over, and there are early signs of a possible increase for people from school Year 12 to age 24.

 

Overall, one in 60 people in private households in England had Covid-19 in the week to October 9, up from one in 70 the previous week.

 

One in 60 is the equivalent of about 890,000 people. At the peak of the second wave in early January, around one in 50 was estimated to have coronavirus.

https://www.newschai...children-230308

 

Health-care workers in northern British Columbia hope new circuit breaker measures in the region will help curb the spread of COVID-19.
 
But until then, they are struggling to keep up.
 
"It's not slowing down," said Dr. Darren Jakubec, a staff physician at Bulkley Valley District Hospital in Smithers.
 
"Every day we have [new] people in with COVID on oxygen ... I've personally had to put a person under the age of 30 on a ventilator."
 
Smithers and the neighbouring communities of Burns Lake, Fraser Lake and Vanderhoof — all west of Prince George and east of Terrace — now represent the part of the province with the highest per capita number of new COVID-19 infections in the province.
 
From Oct. 8 to 14, new daily case counts in the area ranged from 37 to 54 per 100,000 people — compared to the rates of two to five per 100,000 recorded in most parts of Metro Vancouver and Victoria.

*snip*

Until recently, most of those transfers could be sent to the University Hospital of Northern B.C. in Prince George, but now even it is hitting capacity, said medical director Dr. Firas Mansour.

"Our high acuity unit is basically an ICU or critical care unit now," he said. "We've never done that before."

Mansour said roughly 25 percent of the hospital is now devoted to caring for COVID-19 patients, with patients taking over parts of the surgical and medical wards, as well.

With hospitals in northern B.C. unable to keep up with demand, critical care patients have been being transferred to Metro Vancouver and Vancouver Island where there is more capacity. But even that is becoming increasingly difficult.

Despite the province contracting two new planes to fly patients out of the region, flight paramedics say they are unable to keep up with the constant demand on their services.

etc 
https://www.cbc.ca/n...thers-1.6213661

As many as 10 deaths feared in 'significant' COVID-19 outbreak at Burnaby care home
90 people have tested positive for virus since outbreak began
https://www.cbc.ca/n...break-1.6212388
 

Newswise — The severe outbreak of COVID-19 in Delhi, India, in 2021 showed not only that the Delta variant of SARS-CoV2 is extremely transmissible but that it can infect individuals previously infected by a different variant of the coronavirus, say a team of international scientists writing in Science.
 
SARS-CoV-2 had spread widely throughout India in the first wave, with initial results from the Indian Council of Medical Research finding one in five (21%) adults and one in four (25%) 10 to 17 year old adolescents had been infected. The figures were much higher in Indian megacities: by February 2021, over a half (56%) of individuals in Delhi were thought to have been infected.
 
Since the first case of COVID-19 was detected in Delhi in March 2020, the city had experienced multiple outbreaks, in June, September and November 2020. After reaching a high of almost 9,000 cases daily in November 2020, new cases steadily declined, with very few new infections between December 2020 and March 2021.
 
The situation reversed dramatically in April 2021, going from approximately 2,000 daily cases to 20,000 between 31 March and 16 April. This was accompanied by a rapid rise in hospitalisations and ICU admissions, severely stressing the healthcare system, with daily deaths spiking to levels three-fold higher than previous waves. 
 
In research published today, an international team of scientists used genomic and epidemiological data, together with mathematical modelling, to study the outbreak. The work was led by the National Centre of Disease Control and the CSIR Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology, India, with collaborators from the University of Cambridge and Imperial College London, UK, and the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

https://www.newswise...-delta-variant/
 
Austrians Invited to Presidential Palace for COVID-19 Shots
https://sputniknews....1089966915.html
 

The COVID-19 pandemic has reversed years of global progress in tackling tuberculosis (TB) and for the first time in over a decade, TB deaths have increased, according to the World Health Organization’s 2021 Global TB report.
 
In 2020, more people died from TB, with far fewer people being diagnosed and treated or provided with TB preventive treatment compared with 2019, and overall spending on essential TB services falling.
 
The first challenge is disruption in access to TB services and a reduction in resources. In many countries, human, financial and other resources have been reallocated from tackling TB to the COVID-19 response, limiting the availability of essential services.
 
The second is that people have struggled to seek care in the context of lockdowns.
 
“This report confirms our fears that the disruption of essential health services due to the pandemic could start to unravel years of progress against tuberculosis,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General. “This is alarming news that must serve as a global wake-up call to the urgent need for investments and innovation to close the gaps in diagnosis, treatment and care for the millions of people affected by this ancient but preventable and treatable disease.”
 
TB services are among many others disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, but the impact on TB has been particularly severe. For example, approximately, 1.5 million people died from TB in 2020 (including 214 000 among HIV positive people).
 
The increase in the number of TB deaths occurred mainly in the 30 countries with the highest burden of TB. WHO modeling projections suggest the number of people developing TB and dying from the disease could be much higher in 2021 and 2022.

https://en.mercopres...vid-19-pandemic

IMF Warns Pandemic’s ‘Continued Grip’ Could Widen Gap in Rich, Poor Nations’ Recovery
https://sputniknews....1089957738.html

Mecca, Medina holy Mosques to host pilgrims with full capacity
https://en.abna24.co...ty_1189013.html
 

MOSCOW, October 15. /TASS/. Russia’s Federal Medical Biological Agency said on Friday it hopes its Mir-19 coronavirus medicine will be registered by the yearend.
 
"The Mir-19 registration dossier was filed electronically on Thursday, October 14 , and in a paper format on October 15. It contains the entire package of necessary documents and a preliminary report on the second phase of clinical tests. The recruitment of patients continues," it said. "The registration is planned by the yearend."

https://tass.com/society/1350325
 

Aside from Lorigo, another common thread in the ecosystem of ivermectin litigation is America's Frontline Doctors (AFLD), a conservative political group founded by Dr. Simone Gold in 2019.
 
AFLD is arguably the most dominant force currently working to legitimize ivermectin as a valid COVID treatment, connecting hundreds of patients with drug providers happy to fuel what's become a multimillion-dollar industry in ivermectin sales, Time reported. The Intercept estimated that, between mid-July to mid-September of this year, AFLD and its partners raked in roughly $6.7 million in revenue by coordinating telehealth consultations for the drug. But in the process, the group reportedly bilked hundreds of unsuspecting customers out of thousands in consultation fees by, in many cases, failing to deliver the drug at all. 
 
Irwin Redlener, who directs the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University said that the group AFLD is "the 21st century, digital version of snake-oil salesmen."
 
"And in the case of ivermectin, it's extremely dangerous," he added. 
 
Throughout the pandemic, AFLD waged a whole host of right-wing disinformation campaigns. It advocated for the use of hydroxychloroquine, called lockdowns "mass casualty events," disputed the efficacy of mask-wearing, and alleged that death certificates were being forged to artificially inflate the pandemic death toll.
 
While Gold has reportedly labeled the group "grassroots," AFLD is led by a cavalcade of high-brass conservatives with roots in think tanks and advocacy groups like the Heritage Foundation, the American Legislative Exchange Council, and FreedomWorks. Its founding director, Jenny Beth Martin, is the co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots, a right-wing group started in opposition to President Obama's domestic agenda before becoming a pro-Trump outfit. 
 
On top of AFLD's connection to the Tea Party Patriots, the group is also affiliated with the Council for National Policy (CNP), a "shadowy coalition" founded in 1981 "that coordinates initiatives among conservative megadonors, political operatives, and media owners, many of them Christian fundamentalists," the Washington Examiner reported. Conservative businessman Richard Uihlein​​ gave the group $4.3 million over a five-year period through 2020.

https://www.salon.co...in-on-patients/
 

Getting vaccinated can significantly reduce your chances of dying from Covid-19. Like, really significantly.
 
Throughout the month of August, unvaccinated adults were 11 times more likely to die from Covid-19 than fully vaccinated adults, according to new data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
 
The CDC also found that unvaccinated adults faced a six times as likely to contract the virus than fully vaccinated adults. The data marks the first time the CDC has released information about how Covid-19 risks can differ depending on vaccination status.
 
*snip*
 
But vaccines work, and they save lives. As Indiana University researchers recently found, vaccines may have saved as many as 140,000 lives by May 9th, 2021. The estimation is based on data from when vaccination rates were still quite low in many areas of the country. There’s no telling how many lives the vaccine has saved as millions more have gotten inoculated.

https://www.rollings...19-cdc-1243086/

FDA advisory panel votes 19-0 to endorse booster dose of J&J vaccine
https://www.statnews...-of-jj-vaccine/

[rjag]

that's priceless, there was UK parliamentary report earlier this week on their pandemic response, approved by the 3 main parties (conservative, labour & SNP). maybe you missed it?
 

 

Those were my observations and comparisons to my experiences here. I stand by my comment. I'm not implying things are better there, but they are treating it as something to live with while getting on with life.

 

FYI the 7-day rolling average of COVID deaths in BC is more than 7 times higher than in Ontario and more than triple the rate in Québec. I do not see that BC is a shining example of good practices