COVID-19

GroupDIY Audio Forum

Help Support GroupDIY Audio Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Status
Not open for further replies.
I think is was Harold Wislon who said two weeks is a long time in politics. It was not that many weeks ago that von der Leyen was bitching about Astra Zeneca (manufacturers of the Oxford vaccine) not being able to supply the number of vaccines in the timescale agreed and she was hell bent on getting them no matter who they were destined for.

Now both Germany, Belgium and France report they are having trouble getting people to have the jab. They have plenty of stock. People are just not turning up for their appointments. according the Macron the Oxford vaccine has an 'image' problem and they are planning an advertising campaign to get more people vaccinated.

Cheers

Ian
 
Life is an ongoing IQ test and people fail every day.

===

I heard a thoughtful suggestion that The Covid "super spreaders" were health professionals and vaccinating them first broke the back on run away community spread... I have remained optimistic through all the doom and gloom news reportage.

====
An interesting tidbit, reportedly Moderna has already begun phase one testing on a new vaccine candidate to prevent the new (So Africa) Covid strain. It took them something like 30 days to develop. I expect it will get approved without full phase 3 trials since it is a variant on an already approved vaccine.

===

J&J one dose covid vaccine approval is imminent.

JR
 
ruffrecords said:
I think is was Harold Wislon who said two weeks is a long time in politics. It was not that many weeks ago that von der Leyen was *****ing about Astra Zeneca (manufacturers of the Oxford vaccine) not being able to supply the number of vaccines in the timescale agreed and she was hell bent on getting them no matter who they were destined for.

Now both Germany, Belgium and France report they are having trouble getting people to have the jab. They have plenty of stock. People are just not turning up for their appointments. according the Macron the Oxford vaccine has an 'image' problem and they are planning an advertising campaign to get more people vaccinated.

Cheers

Ian

That's certainly false for Belgium. The main problem is some manufacturers having problems supplying the promised quantity in time. Second there are a number of smaller problems, like the central database not having any or accurate/recent contact info, mainly for the elderly, making it hard to contact them.

The latest number showed 86% of people contacted showed up. Taking into account possible errors in contact data, that is next to "all showed up".

We get 87.500 Pfizer/BioNTech-vaccins weekly. This should be up to 100.000 in February. As these are produced in Belgium, these form the foundation of our vaccination strategy.

That number should have been raised with other manufacturers, but there are production problems, most notably with Astra-Zeneca. 7.7 million doses were ordered in total, less than half of what was promised, arrived.

The Astra-Zeneca vaccin is cheaper and doesn't need super low temperatures, so it would be better suited for less developed areas and that's part of the EU policy. Unfortunately, due to the production problems, that strategy needed to be adjusted, resulting in even more delays.
 
cyrano said:
That's certainly false for Belgium.
You are quite right. I saw all three countries referenced in a single article but Belgium was not one having problems convincing people to have the vaccine. My apologies.

Cheers

Ian
 
Yesterday, a Japanese newspaper reported that a total of 4008 health care professionals have been inoculated here within 24 hours. Wow, I thought. Japan has a population of 126M, so at that rate it'll take them only 87 years to vaccinate everybody. Guess that's what happens when ordering jabs late... ...
 
Script said:
Yesterday, a Japanese newspaper reported that a total of 4008 health care professionals have been inoculated here within 24 hours. Wow, I thought. Japan has a population of 126M, so at that rate it'll take them only 87 years to vaccinate everybody. Guess that's what happens when ordering jabs late... ...
Interesting. Nigel Farage (Mr Brexit himself) decamped to Japan soon after the Covid outbreak. He wrote about it in an article. From what I rememeber he seemed to be saying he thought he would be safer there if only because of the cultural attitude of obedience to rules. I bet he is regretting that choice now that all Brits at home of his age have received at least one vaccination.

Cheers

Ian
 
That implies you still live to see the day in the UK. Compared to Japan, UK has 30x the number of deaths.
 
Ah, newspapers and math...

You don't need to inoculate everyone to get to safety. And you can only work with what you have. So late ordering is a problem. One you can't solve immediately. Japan is probably doing OK, but that quote is typical for today's press.

What Israel has done is remarkable. Two questions remain, however. One is "how did they get the amount of vaccins in such a short time while all other countries are having problems getting enough vaccins?" Another one is "Why are Palestinians getting hardly any vaccins?". Israel also seems to have brokered a deal with Russia to supply Syria with millions of vaccins, in exchange for ONE (1) prisoner. Must be a pretty important person.

You need to take care with what the press is reporting. The journalists start out with lies from politicians, add their own interpretations and end up with...

For once, here in Belgium, it isn't a complete disaster. The reason is we have a boatload of virus experts and these are used to working together. And we're sitting on several large-scale production sites, which helps a lot with logistics.

I was worried politics and egos would have ruined that, but it didn't happen. There's just one expert who's anti-vax. And he's been excluded from talking to the press.

Literally nobody takes him seriously anymore. I happen to know the guy. His words got twisted by the press. Not on purpose, but just because that's what they do. They condense. Unfortunately because of the polarised situation, he got the wrong end of the stick. His career could be over, unless we forget about it. He's smart enough to know better.
 
Interesting. Nigel Farage (Mr Brexit himself) decamped to Japan soon after the Covid outbreak
Oh, thanks for that info. I didn't know that. That's funny. I mean that really funny. LOL. Brilliant !  ;D  ;D
I should seek him out. If he's in Tokyo I might even have an idea where he's hanging out.
 
Children Likely the 'Leading Edge' in Spread of COVID-19 Variants

In earlier surges, children — especially younger children — played only minor roles in transmitting the infection. When they were diagnosed with COVID-19, their symptoms tended to be mild or even absent, and for reasons that aren't well understood, they haven't usually been the first cases in households or clusters.

Now, as more SARS-CoV-2 variants have begun to dominate, and seniors gain protection from vaccines, that pattern may be changing. Infectious disease experts are watching to see if COVID-19 will start to spread in a pattern more similar to influenza, with children becoming infected first and bringing the infection home to their parents.


https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/948584?src=mkm_covid_update_210401_MSCPEDIT&uac=37266AR&impID=3286430&faf=1#vp_1
 
That's pretty strange.

We don't see that over here. No rise in infections in the 0-9 year age range. The number of infections is very low, the number of sick children due to Covid is next to zero, excluding those who were sick before getting infected. That last group doesn't even show in the numbers, as there's only a few dozen on a population of around 11 million.
 
cyrano said:
That's pretty strange.

We don't see that over here. No rise in infections in the 0-9 year age range. The number of infections is very low, the number of sick children due to Covid is next to zero, excluding those who were sick before getting infected. That last group doesn't even show in the numbers, as there's only a few dozen on a population of around 11 million.

I think this is what set off this speculation. I don't know if it's an aberration, or the canary in the coal mine.

https://www.mass.gov/info-details/covid-19-response-reporting
 

Attachments

  • peds-covid-mass.jpg
    peds-covid-mass.jpg
    87.9 KB · Views: 7
The numbers for Massachusetts seem fairly normal...

The rise in infections in your previous link were only for Italy (one small village, with a remarkable rise, but statistically insufficient) and Israel, with under 10 cases in very young people, again, not enough data to suspect a trend.

Could it be a fluke in testing?

I'm more worried about the double mutation in one province in India, which might be related to a mutation in California. That mutation looks like it could be much more infectious. And possibly also more dangerous, as in causing more deaths.
 
Well, time will tell. I'd expect the rising proportion of cases in the younger age groups as the proportion of older vaccinated people grows - we'll see if the absolute numbers increase. I guess we'll see in the next few months if there are surges, and whether they are caused by more contagious mutants, and being spread more and more by the unvaccinated pediatric population.
 
That's definitely a factor to take into account. Another one is "the weaker have already died" as one of my biologist friends likes to put it.

The stats are a moving target. Albeit a slowly moving target.
 
Some bad news: A mutation in France doesn't show up in tests:

https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-variant-france-can-evade-tests-2021-3?international=true&r=US&IR=T

The French ministry of health and social affairs announced Monday that among a cluster of 79 COVID-19 cases in Brittany, eight patients were infected with the new variant, but several of them tested negative.

Despite those negative tests, the patients showed typical COVID-19 symptoms.
 
Shuttering the economy for a few weeks to "bend the curve" appears to still be in favor with some politicians.

I won't speculate too much about motivations*** but wonder about Covid spread from infected economic migrants (reportedly single digit infection rate) held in overcrowded facilities long enough for the virus to incubate, then sending those possibly(?) newly infected migrants around the country.

I wonder what Dr Fauci thinks about this...? We don't know because he is staying in his lane (politically). Saying nothing about this tells us something about all his other commentary.

Wash your hands, social distance, wear a mask in public, and get vaccinated as soon as you can. Vaccine supplies appear to be increasing despite a few glitches. Spring is coming literally and figuratively.

JR

*** I also question the motives of teachers volunteering to teach economic migrant children in person, while still declining to teach US children in person. If they were trying to piss off parents on purpose  they couldn't do a better job.
 
Interesting development...

https://academic.oup.com/jid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/infdis/jiab147/6179975

Virus-virus interactions influence the epidemiology of respiratory infections. However, the impact of viruses causing upper respiratory infections on SARS-CoV-2 replication and transmission is currently unknown. Human rhinoviruses cause the common cold and are the most prevalent respiratory viruses of humans. Interactions between rhinoviruses and co-circulating respiratory viruses have been shown to shape virus epidemiology at the individual host and population level. Here, we examined the replication kinetics of SARS-CoV-2 in the human respiratory epithelium in the presence or absence of rhinovirus. We show that human rhinovirus triggers an interferon response that blocks SARS-CoV-2 replication. Mathematical simulations show that this virus-virus interaction is likely to have a population-wide effect as an increasing prevalence of rhinovirus will reduce the number of new COVID-19 cases.

This could be very good news!
 
i got my first Moderno shot yesterday  ;D
damn! my left upper arm still hurts tho :(
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Latest posts

Back
Top