# 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:** 307
**Author:** ![susan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/susan/32/17537_2.png) [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2020, 1:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758/6147 "2020-12-19T13:07:08Z")
> **[Employers Can Require Workers to Get Covid-19 Vaccine, U.S. Says (Published...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/18/us/eeoc-employers-coronavirus-mandate.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage)** > > The federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said employees could be barred from the workplace if they refused the vaccine. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2020, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758/6148 "2020-12-19T14:11:42Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > My only pause is whether or not the place she is being held is safe from the virus, as I don’t think she deserves to be infected with it. I’m also concerned for the other people in the prison, as if she does have it I doubt they deserve to be infected from her. ---
**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 19, 2020, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758/6149 "2020-12-19T14:36:27Z")
Last night I was driving home from work at midnight. This was Friday night becoming Saturday morning. Somebody had crashed on the freeway ahead and we were slowed to about 5mph. Adjacent to me was a convertible with the top down, and 6 college-aged people crammed into it. All hollering and waving at another similar convertible adjacent which another 6 similar people crammed into it. Having a convertible myself, but with the top up, I ran my top down and shouted over: “Hey, can I join your group?” FTR I’m a gray-haired 60-ish person dressed in my work uniform. Instantly they’re all hollering and waving at me and inviting me to join them. It’s obvious they’ve all been drinking _just a wee bit_. Including the drivers. As the conversation develops, they’re all refugees from up North, having flown to Miami a few days ago as a group to get away from the cold. And right now they’re on their way to some nightclub I’ve never heard of and want me to join them. “No thanks, us fogeys need our sleep.” And _sotto voce_ don’t want your damn COVID either. ---
**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 19, 2020, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758/6150 "2020-12-19T16:43:25Z")
Wow - here in the south of England things just got ugly. A new security level (“Tier 4”) is being introduced to contain the spread associated with a new coronavirus variant. > From midnight, a new tier four will be introduced in areas including London, Kent, Essex and Bedfordshire. > A stay-at-home order will be issued to residents there, with those travelling to work or for education exempt. > Social mixing will be cut to meeting one person in an open public space. BBC story which is srill being compiled and expanded as I post this: > **[Covid-19: Christmas rules tightened for England, Scotland and Wales](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55379220)** > > Family mixing at Christmas will be much reduced and scrapped completely for parts of the South East. j ---
**Author:** ![Deeg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/deeg/32/2955_2.png) [@Deeg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Deeg)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2020, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758/6151 "2020-12-19T17:02:20Z")
I think I agree with you. Is it that much more dangerous than a DUI? ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2020, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758/6152 "2020-12-19T17:07:30Z")
The New York State Department of Health is now investigating Covid-19 denier Kelly Brogan M.D. > **[Kelly Brogan – Shooting the Messenger](https://shootingthemessenger.blog/tag/kelly-brogan/)** > > Posts about Kelly Brogan written by Dean Sterling Jones When your brand of crazy gets to be too much for Gwyneth Paltrow’s GOOP, you must _really_ be out there. Also in the news: there’s quite a kerfuffle in France over the arrest of Jean-Bernard Fourtillan. His adherents claim he’s been confined in a psychiatric hospital for questioning the official line about the pandemic and vaccination - but the real story is that he and a fellow-antivax nutter are in trouble for running an unauthorized clinical trial of a hormone patch that’s supposed to treat everything from Alzheimer’s disease to depression and psychosis. ---
**Author:** ![squeegee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/squeegee/32/14537_2.png) [@squeegee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/squeegee)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2020, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758/6153 "2020-12-19T17:30:24Z")
Well, I could get behind up to a month in the calaboose. Four seems like too much. But yes, breaking quarantine is serious, put her in slam for a while. ---
**Author:** ![casdave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c6cbf5/32.png) [@casdave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/casdave)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2020, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758/6154 "2020-12-19T18:42:18Z")
The added driver to this is that is is believed (fairly authoritively by medical professionals) that we have a more infectious mutation. No news about where it might have originated but it is apparenetly up to 70% more infectious but not thought to be any more lethal. This MIGHT explain what is happening in Italy and Spain - it might not. Seems there is a lot to learn, the situation keeps changing. Whilst we in the Northern areas of the UK have been in the third tier - the highest UK lockdown condition - the rates of infection have stabilised to some degree but they have not declined all that much, and this is readily apparent in the CDC UK data, some areas went down but as an average across lots of T3 areas it is fairly flat. That new T4 level is very nearly the same as the earlier lockdown - no indoor mixing of people ffrom differant households - no mention yet of a selected ‘bubble’. When schools were opened up and insistance from the political lead that they remain open, there were lots of voices expressing doubts although I can very much understand why there was a drive to maintain school attendance from a social, learning and parents work point of view. If it does turn out to be fully verified this agent is more infectious then it really increases the pressure because it will result in faster increases in hospital demand. We will need to see if this is more widespread than the UK alone. ---
**Author:** ![smithsb](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smithsb/32/12107_2.png) [@smithsb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smithsb)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2020, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758/6155 "2020-12-19T18:44:30Z")
> [@I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](#): > > I keep wondering if there are adequate safeguards to prevent vaccine from reaching ungood temperatures or other storage/transport SNAFUs (like the ‘shaken not stirred’ mentioned above). Sensors check too warm and too cold. Here’s a link to a number of stories with problem storage/shipment. [https://tinyurl.com/ybe4typ4](https://tinyurl.com/ybe4typ4) ---
**Author:** ![psychonaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psychonaut/32/4655_2.png) [@psychonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychonaut)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2020, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758/6156 "2020-12-19T19:53:29Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > Which vaccines have been approved in the EU? That hasn’t made headlines here in the US. No vaccines have been approved in the EU, though it is expected that the BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine will gain approval from the European Medicine Agency on Monday. ---
**Author:** ![Aspidistra](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aspidistra/32/3894_2.png) [@Aspidistra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspidistra)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2020, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758/6157 "2020-12-19T21:02:48Z")
She’s been there over three weeks now - she’s unlikely to actually have it by this point (not that this excuses her original decisions) Also, the Cayman Islands has about ten times less Covid and thirty times less Covid deaths than the US (perhaps because they are being very strict with their quarantines?) So although prisons in general are terrible places for infection, a _Cayman_ prison is probably less of an infection hotspot than wandering around her own home town ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2020, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758/6158 "2020-12-19T21:18:56Z")
At the risk of stating the obvious, the only reason her punishment seems severe is because we’re constantly exposed to a significant proportion of our own fucking political leadership minimizing COVID every day. The injustice is not that it’s wrong for her to be in prison, it’s that half our leadership _should_ be. ---
**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 19, 2020, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758/6159 "2020-12-19T21:19:08Z")
[Got some stats & news here:](https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-1237d7daa7479373efbcf6b196969c3c) > [@](#): > > …the crisis deepening at an alarming rate in California, where hospitals are being stretched to their limits as the virus explodes across the state. Nearly 17,000 people were hospitalized with confirmed or suspected COVID-19 infections as of Friday and a state model that uses current data to forecast future trends shows the number could reach an unfathomable 75,000 by mid-January. > > With California’s more than 48,000 new cases leading the way, the United States as a whole added a record 249,709 new cases of COVID-19 in one day, according to Johns Hopkins University. An additional 2,814 people died nationwide, pushing the death toll to more than 313,000. > > Texas, Florida, New York and Tennessee all recorded more than 10,400 new cases each. Over the past two weeks, the seven-day rolling average for new cases in the U.S. jumped to 219,324 daily from 183,787, an increase of almost 20%. > [@](#): > > Of the more than 272,000 shots of the Pfizer vaccine that had been given as of Saturday morning, U.S. health officials said they had seen six cases of severe allergic reaction. One of the half-dozen people had a history of vaccination reactions, they said. And, as noted already: > [@](#): > > In a potential complication, England’s chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, said Saturday the U.K. had informed the World Health Organization that officials believe a new variant of the coronavirus can spread more rapidly. Britain’s health secretary said this week that the new variant was believed to be linked to the rapid surge of COVID-19 cases in south and southeastern England. ---
**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 19, 2020, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758/6160 "2020-12-19T21:47:58Z")
The new British variant is extremely concerning because the mutation affects the spike protein, which is what the current vaccines target. If the spike protein changes too much, there could be a difference in how well the vaccine works. Is any travel currently allowed in and out of Great Britain? I wonder if swifter action will be taken to contain this variant than the original virus. The new restrictions still seem lax given what is unknown about the variant. ---
**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 19, 2020, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758/6161 "2020-12-19T21:55:44Z")
> [@](#): > > The new variant showed 17 mutations, most in a segment of the virus’s genome that encodes for the spike protein, the protruding structure essential to the pathogen’s ability to bind with the receptor cells in a person who gets exposed and then infected. > > On Saturday, the chief science adviser updated the changes to the virus, saying there were 23 different mutations. > **[Britain tightens lockdowns over virus mutation with ‘significantly faster’...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/coronavirus-mutation-britain-lockdown/2020/12/19/fd010eea-4206-11eb-b58b-1623f6267960_story.html)** > > The coronavirus variant is believed to spread faster, but does not appear more deadly or resistant to vaccines. No evidence yet that it affects vaccine efficacy, but I think that’s a straight up “no evidence” because they have not yet been able to evaluate. ---
**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 19, 2020, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758/6162 "2020-12-19T22:01:08Z")
> [@](#): > > In addition, Birney said the vaccines have been tested with many variants of the virus circulating. “So there is every reason to think that the vaccines will still work against this new strain, though obviously that needs to be tested thoroughly.” > **[What is the new Covid strain – and will vaccines work against it?](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/19/what-is-the-new-covid-strain-and-will-vaccines-work-against-it)** > > Testing of the prevalence and effects of the new variant will take weeks, but scientists don’t expect it to cause more severe disease or be resistant to the vaccine ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2020, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758/6163 "2020-12-19T23:16:56Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > Crown counsel: “With all due respect, I would suggest this court should not be following precedents from a country that has millions of cases and over 300,000 deaths.” Do Canadian courts have flags with yellow fringes around them? If so, joinder is created with the United States and U. S. Admiralty Law, and specifically the Uniform Commercial Code, applies. 🙄 ---
**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 20, 2020, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758/6164 "2020-12-20T01:39:32Z")
China reports 23 new cases today, for a reported rate of 3 cases per million people. Nothing to see here folks. No reason at all to doubt these cromulent statistics. ---
**Author:** ![Courk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/91b2a8/32.png) [@Courk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Courk)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2020, 2:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758/6165 "2020-12-20T02:18:19Z")
Can you elaborate on this? What does that mean? I can start a separate thread if it’d be better. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2020, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758/6166 "2020-12-20T02:28:48Z")
See here: [https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-bottom-line-to-all-these-sovereign-citizen-cases/926331](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-bottom-line-to-all-these-sovereign-citizen-cases/926331) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758.md?page=306) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758.md?page=308)