Coronavirus COVID-19 (2019-nCoV) Thread - 2020 Breaking News

The Quarantine Zone
5906

A little more information on the UK “Authorisation” of the Pfizer vaccine:

This temporary Authorisation under Regulation 174 [of the Human Medicine Regulations 2012 (as amended)] permits the supply of identified COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine BNT162b2 batches, based on the safety, quality and efficacy data submitted by Pfizer/BioNTech to MHRA in the period from 1st October to 2 December 2020;
This authorisation is not a marketing authorisation;

My bolding. Source.

-which begs the question, what is “Regulation 174”? Well, I’m delighted to oblige: it’s a derogation from having a marketing authorisation under certain circumstances.

Supply in response to spread of pathogenic agents etc

  1. The prohibitions in regulation 46 (requirement for authorisation) do not apply where the sale or supply of a medicinal product is authorised by the licensing authority on a temporary basis in response to the suspected or confirmed spread of—

(a)pathogenic agents;

(b)toxins;

(c )chemical agents; or

(d)nuclear radiation,

which may cause harm to human beings.

So to be clear, what has happened in the UK is that the regulatory agency has not granted a Marketing Authorisation (licence); rather it has, in response to the pandemic and based on an evaluation of the data currently available, decided to make the product available on a temporary basis (presumably until they decide that a Marketing Authorisation can be granted, and the situation can be thus regularised).

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5907

The darkest days are yet to come.

5908

65,536,041 total cases
1,511,915 dead
45,376,605 recovered

In the US:

14,535,196 total cases
282,829 dead
8,561,427 recovered

Yesterday’s numbers for comparison:

5909

Are there any COVID stats coming out of Russia these days?

5910

Panama, like many other places, has been experiencing a second surge lately. Yesterday we topped 2,000 in daily new cases for the first time. During the first surge in April, we were running at about 1,200 new cases day. We then leveled out at about 600-700 per day for several months, and the economy was reopened. A new surge started in early November, and we are now at over 1,500 new cases per day, with no sign of it leveling off.

Curfew has been made earlier in some provinces (starting at 9 PM instead of 11 PM) but otherwise I haven’t seen much talk of shutting down again.

5911

Nearly 3,000 dead, in the USA alone, in one day?

Gaah.

5912

We’re losing a 9/11 attack’s-worth every single day. And still the denial continues.

As I said in another thread:

5913

Probably not really. There was a good article last week about how the numbers would be all over the place until next week : first artificially low due not only less timely reporting from Thanksgiving through Sunday but also less testing due to the holiday weekend, and then later this week we’d see numbers that are higher because of the data and testing catch ups. It’ll be Tuesday before they are likely showing the real picture.

5914

Premier of Manitoba is getting a lot of press coverage for comments he made yesterday. I’ve seen him quoted by Washington Post (paywalled), and also on Yahoo and Newsweek.

Here’s link to the Newsweek article:

Manitoba is facing a real increase in covid cases - they were very low for most of the summer, but their numbers have climbed steadily over the past couple of months.

5915

And in other Canadian covid news:

5916

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

Yesterday’s numbers for comparison:

The US has for past 3 days had increasing record high numbers of new cases; today was over 235,000 new cases.

5917

The UK will apparently start immunizing people next Tuesday:

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5918

To be fair, it’s a bit more nuanced than that. He’s saying Alberta fucked this up despite being forewarned and that they should both pay for this request and that fulfillment should require Alberta to actually start following the recommendations of the scientific community. One can obviously disagree*, but it’s not quite as binary as the statement above.



*I’d be more inclined to agree with him if I thought that all Albertans were science-denying dickheads. As a bleeding heart, social justice warrioring, democratic socialist liberal who has more often than not lived in red states, I think he should probably show a bit more sympathy.

5919

At least there is two us. Welcome aboard.

5920

From his tweet:

I’m not seeing any nuance there. And that’s all I will say, since we’re in the Zone.

5921

You’re not seeing nuance as you only copied a subset of a single tweet. Not only did you cut off the tweet, you left out the rest of the thread. I can remedy that omission:

Ottawa should not provide Alberta field hospitals. No way. There are several reasons … in this thread.

First, the COVID mess is Alberta’s own making, after ignoring mountains of advice. Kenney, Shandro, and Hinshaw chose this.

The UCP preached “personal responsibility”, rather than order disease controls. Very well: let Kenney, Shandro, and Hinshaw be personally responsible.

Second, Alberta is the richest province in Canada, so if it needs a bailout, it should pay 100%. This disaster, was made in Alberta, by Albertans, ignoring common sense. It is unjust for poor Atlantic Canada, a COVID success, to subsidize rich Alberta’s cocky failure.

Third, Kenney and Shandro never miss a chance to say that healthcare is a provincial, not federal, responsibility. Nothing embodies healthcare more than a hospital. Unless they swallow several plates of crow, and admit it is a federal jurisdiction too, let the province do it.

Fourth, if Ottawa will provide field hospitals, there must be a quid pro quo that the UCP imposes minimum standards of disease control. It is absurd to provide hospitals without also reducing the infections that send people to hospital. The UCP must offer that, or no deal.

I realize Albertans are in danger, which is awful. I would have liked Ottawa to impose minimum standards of disease control on all provinces sooner. But Alberta rejected that. This is a good moment to remember: if you don’t “bail in” nationally, you might not get bailed out.

To close: this isn’t a natural disaster that nobody saw coming, but a made-in-Edmonton disaster that everyone saw coming.

Before Ottawa offers help, Alberta MUST agree to pay 100%, and MUST implement a hard lockdown—or no deal because there is no free lunch. end

A bit more nuance there than in that single statement you quoted.

5922

That’s not nuance. You should look up the word. Those are all broad sweeps of attacking Alberta government policy and moral reasoning for Ottawa to punish Alberta’s population for it.

Attacking Alberta policy is reasonable but this guy wants to make sure Albertans suffer for it.

5923

Okay, cloudy.

5924

Well, I don’t know what you’re talking about but kudos on keeping swear words out of your post. It’s a good practice for calming yourself.

5925

That is breaking news :slight_smile: You heard it here first…