# Coronavirus COVID-19 (2019-nCoV) Thread - 2020 Breaking News **URL:** \ **Category:** The Quarantine Zone\ **Tags:** covid-quarantine\ **Created:** [February 11, 2020, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758 "2020-02-11T01:16:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 296
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2020, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758/5926 "2020-12-06T03:01:36Z")
Victoria.Australia. Hospital-in-the-Home OUT. Quarantine-Jail IN. Starting from Monday, Victoria.Australia is again accepting returning citizens\*. In accord with the decisions of the other\* state premiers (governors), they won’t be allowed to self-quarantine: they will have to pay for hotel rooms\*. The quarantine program will not be run by the Health department. It will be run by the Justice department, with a manager seconded from the prison service, overseen by the Police Minister. \*In Australia, “returned from OS”, that is, “returned from Over Seas”. What words do you use in countries where returning doesn’t necessarily imply crossing an ocean? \*The other state premiers have to all agree, otherwise we’ll be back to state border patrols again. \*They only have to pay AU100 per day, because the security guards are paid out of the Police budget. ---
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2020, 5:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758/5927 "2020-12-06T05:10:47Z")
66,855,796 total cases 1,534,553 dead 46,241,275 recovered In the US: 14,983,425 total cases 287,825 dead 8,787,738 recovered Yesterday’s numbers for comparison: > [@Snowboarder\_Bo](#): > > 66,230,912 total cases > 1,524,457 dead > 45,812,406 recovered > > In the US: > > 14,772,535 total cases > 285,550 dead > 8,658,882 recovered ---
**Author:** ![ThelmaLou](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thelmalou/32/390_2.png) [@ThelmaLou](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThelmaLou)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2020, 1:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758/5928 "2020-12-06T13:10:40Z")
[https://a.msn.com/r/2/BB1bFRoR?m=en-us&referrerID=InAppShare](https://a.msn.com/r/2/BB1bFRoR?m=en-us&referrerID=InAppShare) > After the first cases of Covid-19 were confirmed in the United States on January 20, it took almost 100 days to reach 1 million infections. Now, the country has added more than 1 million cases to its grim total in just five days. 🙁 ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2020, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758/5929 "2020-12-06T17:05:56Z")
While we’re on the verge of getting emergency approvals for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, early availability of the vaccines will be limited, due to production issues. > [@](#): > > Federal officials have slashed the amount of coronavirus vaccine they plan to ship to states in December because of constraints on supply, sending local officials into a scramble to adjust vaccination plans and highlighting how [early promises](https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/05/15/trump-coronavirus-vaccine-january/?itid=lk_inline_manual_2) of a vast stockpile before the end of 2020 have fallen short. > > Instead of the delivery of [300 million or so](https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2020/05/21/trump-administration-accelerates-astrazeneca-covid-19-vaccine-to-be-available-beginning-in-october.html#:~:text=Responding%20to%20President%20Trump's%20call,called%20AZD1222%2C%20with%20the%20first) doses of vaccine immediately after emergency-use approval and before the end of 2020 as the Trump administration had originally promised, current plans call for availability of around a tenth of that, or 35 to 40 million doses. > [@](#): > > The gap reflects the [disconnect](https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/05/15/trump-coronavirus-vaccine-january/?itid=lk_inline_manual_16) between Trump’s campaign promises, as well as the optimistic estimates from some drug companies, and scientific and manufacturing realities. > > The drop-off is a product of manufacturing problems, bottlenecks in the supply of raw materials and other hurdles in ramping up clinical-trial production of 5 liters of protein-based vaccine at a time to commercial-scale fermentation of 2,000-liter batches, the companies and the Trump administration said. > > “There were a couple of our vaccine candidates that took significantly longer, in terms of failed batches, in terms of not having the purity we sought,” Paul Mango, deputy chief of staff for policy at the Department of Health and Human Services, said in an interview. He declined to say which company experienced batch failures. > > “We have cracked the code on these things but we’re two months behind on some of them,” Mango said. Several states said they were expecting an allocation from Moderna about twice the size of the initial wave from Pfizer, roughly a week later. > > The flow is expected to accelerate in January and February but still will not meet the bold predictions of Trump and the leader of Operation Warp Speed, pharmaceutical executive Moncef Slaoui, who said in the White House Rose Garden in May that he was confident “several hundred million” doses of vaccine would be ready by the end of December. > **[Trump’s Operation Warp Speed promised a flood of covid vaccines. Instead,...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/12/05/operation-warp-speed-coronavirus-vaccine-shortfall/)** > > Lower-than-anticipated allocations have spawned widespread confusion and concern in states, which are beginning to grasp the level of vaccine scarcity they will confront in the early going of the massive vaccination campaign. ---
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2020, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758/5930 "2020-12-06T17:40:04Z")
Aye; that’s why I pointed out that new cases are above 200,000: these are big numbers and they add up to huge numbers very quickly. US deaths per day are over 2,000 right now: that’s 10,000 people dying every 5 days; that’s 60,000 dead in a month. And there are signs that both of those numbers are going to go up, not down, in the near future. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2020, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758/5931 "2020-12-06T17:47:41Z")
> [@kenobi\_65](#): > > … > early availability of the vaccines will be limited, due to production issues. > … Great find there **Kenobi** ; thank you. Once we do have vaccine available in quantity we’ll encounter another snag officialdom has not really prepared itself, the media, or the public for: [https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/12/04/get-ready-for-false-side-effects](https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/12/04/get-ready-for-false-side-effects) Plus of course the baleful influence of all the QAnon-style trolls out here. ---
**Author:** ![SayTwo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e56c9b/32.png) [@SayTwo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SayTwo)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2020, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758/5932 "2020-12-06T18:18:06Z")
Here’s the money passage: > We’re talking about treating very, very large populations, which means that you’re going to see the usual run of mortality and morbidity that you see across large samples. Specifically, if you take 10 million people and _just wave your hand back and forth over their upper arms_ , in the next two months you would expect to see about 4,000 heart attacks. About 4,000 strokes. Over 9,000 new diagnoses of cancer. And about 14,000 of that ten million will die, out of usual all-causes mortality. No one would notice. That’s how many people die and get sick anyway. > > But if you took those ten million people and gave them a new vaccine instead, there’s a real danger that those heart attacks, cancer diagnoses, and deaths will be attributed to the vaccine. I mean, if you reach a large enough population, you are literally going to have cases where someone gets the vaccine and drops dead the next day (just as they would have if they _didn’t_ get the vaccine). It could prove difficult to convince that person’s friends and relatives of that lack of connection, though. _Post hoc ergo propter hoc_ is one of the most powerful fallacies of human logic, and we’re not going to get rid of it any time soon. I note that Derek makes no observation that the same issue might be at play for COVID itself. ---
**Author:** ![Treppenwitz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/treppenwitz/32/3445_2.png) [@Treppenwitz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Treppenwitz)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2020, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758/5933 "2020-12-06T19:43:15Z")
Here in the UK a survey suggests that one fifth of people may refuse the vaccine. > **[Coronavirus: fifth of people likely to refuse Covid vaccine, UK survey finds](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/24/a-fifth-of-people-likely-to-refuse-covid-vaccine-uk-survey-finds)** > > Survey of 70,000 people finds only 49% are ‘very likely’ to get vaccine once one is available The UK has [this priority list](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55045639). I calculate that I’m no higher than about eight millionth in the queue. But if the survey is correct, I just moved up a couple of million places.\* j (\*) - yes, I know, probability of refusal might well correlate with a perception of low risk of serious harm from COVID. But I can hope. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2020, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758/5934 "2020-12-06T20:20:59Z")
There are two types of people in the world: Those who know _Die Hard_ is a Christmas movie, and those who need to learn the true meaning of Christmas. ---
**Author:** ![needscoffee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/needscoffee/32/1076_2.png) [@needscoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/needscoffee)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2020, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758/5935 "2020-12-06T20:28:50Z")
Wrong thread? ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2020, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758/5936 "2020-12-06T20:30:06Z")
As a matter of fact. :embarrassed emoji: ---
**Author:** ![Fretful\_Porpentine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fretful_porpentine/32/2873_2.png) [@Fretful\_Porpentine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fretful_Porpentine)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2020, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758/5937 "2020-12-06T20:35:12Z")
> [@Treppenwitz](#): > > Here in the UK a survey suggests that one fifth of people may refuse the vaccine. FWIW, I’ve read that people are fairly terrible at predicting how they will act in the future on surveys, especially when there are tangible benefits to actually _doing_ a thing that do not exist when you’re answering a hypothetical question on a survey. My guess is that the percentage of vaccination refusers will go way down by the time ordinary people are able to get the vaccine, especially if it’s required to do fun stuff like traveling or attending large concerts and sports events. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2020, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758/5938 "2020-12-06T21:00:56Z")
> [@Siam\_Sam](#): > > There are two types of people in the world: Those who know _Die Hard_ is a Christmas movie, and those who need to learn the true meaning of Christmas. > [@needscoffee](#): > > Wrong thread? > [@Siam\_Sam](#): > > As a matter of fact. :embarrassed emoji: Actually, hard on the heels of a post suggesting all the excess COVID deaths are simply figments of our imagination, the idea that _Die Hard_ is all we’ll get for Christmas and that the greed, violence, and self-centeredness inherent in the trope is how people should behave fits together rather nicely. Bravo **Sam**! Ya done good! ---
**Author:** ![Dr\_Paprika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr_paprika/32/3042_2.png) [@Dr\_Paprika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_Paprika)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2020, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758/5939 "2020-12-06T21:20:17Z")
Newsweek suggests 40-50% of Americans might refuse a new vaccine. Giuliani might not need the new vaccine. Trump says he has COVID. I don’t do schadenfraude, but this did not seem hard to predict. ---
**Author:** ![eschrodinger](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschrodinger/32/122_2.png) [@eschrodinger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschrodinger)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2020, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758/5940 "2020-12-06T22:00:29Z")
Washington Post is reporting that Trump announced via tweet that Rudy Giuliani has tested positive. He is 76. This is news, but I have to remind myself of what forum this is, and refrain from further comment. Oops – didn’t refresh the thread, so I didn’t see that last post before posting. ---
**Author:** ![Ziberian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/919ad9/32.png) [@Ziberian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ziberian)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2020, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758/5941 "2020-12-06T23:57:14Z")
> [@SayTwo](#): > > Here’s the money passage: > > > We’re talking about treating very, very large populations, which means that you’re going to see the usual run of mortality and morbidity that you see across large samples. Specifically, if you take 10 million people and _just wave your hand back and forth over their upper arms_ , in the next two months you would expect to see about 4,000 heart attacks. About 4,000 strokes. Over 9,000 new diagnoses of cancer. And about 14,000 of that ten million will die, out of usual all-causes mortality. No one would notice. That’s how many people die and get sick anyway. > > > > But if you took those ten million people and gave them a new vaccine instead, there’s a real danger that those heart attacks, cancer diagnoses, and deaths will be attributed to the vaccine. I mean, if you reach a large enough population, you are literally going to have cases where someone gets the vaccine and drops dead the next day (just as they would have if they _didn’t_ get the vaccine). It could prove difficult to convince that person’s friends and relatives of that lack of connection, though. _Post hoc ergo propter hoc_ is one of the most powerful fallacies of human logic, and we’re not going to get rid of it any time soon. > > I note that Derek makes no observation that the same issue might be at play for COVID itself. It’s easy to test for COVID, but no easy way to test whether a vaccine caused a heart attack so not the same issue at all. A common claim among COVID-deniers is that other causes of death are being counted as COVID, but studies suggest that it is the opposite – many COVID deaths are being counted as something else. [https://www.bu.edu/sph/2020/10/01/us-covid-deaths-may-be-undercounted-by-36-percent/](https://www.bu.edu/sph/2020/10/01/us-covid-deaths-may-be-undercounted-by-36-percent/) [https://www.gpb.org/news/2020/10/20/excess-deaths-show-covid-19-deaths-may-be-undercounted-cdc-says](https://www.gpb.org/news/2020/10/20/excess-deaths-show-covid-19-deaths-may-be-undercounted-cdc-says) ---
**Author:** ![Ziberian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/919ad9/32.png) [@Ziberian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ziberian)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2020, 12:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758/5942 "2020-12-07T00:00:07Z")
Yes, and especially if employers require the vaccine. While many people grumbled when medical facilities started requiring flu shots, and a few quit, most complied. ---
**Author:** ![FigNorton](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fignorton/32/5619_2.png) [@FigNorton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FigNorton)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2020, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758/5943 "2020-12-07T00:30:30Z")
Outside of medical facilities and schools, that kind of rule might be legally problematic in a lot of countries. ---
**Author:** ![SayTwo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e56c9b/32.png) [@SayTwo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SayTwo)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2020, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758/5944 "2020-12-07T00:59:46Z")
> [@Ziberian](#): > > It’s easy to test for COVID, but no easy way to test whether a vaccine caused a heart attack so not the same issue at all. Yes, I know. That’s how we know that 99.8% of people who contract the virus, or 99.9% outside of a long-term care environment, don’t die from it. ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2020, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758/5945 "2020-12-07T01:12:11Z")
> [@SayTwo](#): > > Yes, I know. That’s how we know that 99.8% of people who contract the virus, or 99.9% outside of a long-term care environment, don’t die from it. [Roughly 1.9% fatality rate.](https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758.md?page=295) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758.md?page=297)