Coronavirus COVID-19 (2019-nCoV) Thread - 2021 Breaking News

The Quarantine Zone
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Introduced August 6 2021. Go and subscribe for updates below.

'To direct the Secretary of Homeland Security to ensure that any individual traveling on a flight that departs from or arrives to an airport inside the United States or a territory of the United States is fully vaccinated against COVID–19, and for other purposes.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

August 6, 2021

Mr. Torres of New York introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Homeland Security

A BILL

To direct the Secretary of Homeland Security to ensure that any individual traveling on a flight that departs from or arrives to an airport inside the United States or a territory of the United States is fully vaccinated against COVID–19, and for other purposes.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. AIR TRANSPORTATION VACCINATION REQUIREMENT.

(a) In General.—The Secretary of Homeland Security, acting through the Administrator of the Transportation Security Administration, shall take such actions as are necessary to ensure that any individual traveling on a flight that departs from or arrives to an airport inside the United States or a territory of the United States is fully vaccinated against COVID–19.

(b) Exception.—In carrying out subsection (a), the Secretary shall ensure there is an exception to the requirement described in such subsection for an individual who is ineligible or medically unable to be fully vaccinated against COVID–19.

(c) Definition.—In this Act, the term “fully vaccinated against COVID–19” means receiving all recommended doses of a COVID–19 vaccine that is licensed under section 351 of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C. 262) or authorized for emergency use under section 564 of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (21 U.S.C. 360bbb–3).

https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/4980/text#HE7A580884AF1405AAC12AE6E9B33CFDB

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A local TV station did a report from the ICU of a hospital in Bend, OR. The numbers hit home more when you actually see what the nurses and doctors are going through. I wish this could be required viewing for all the vax holdouts (not that it would do any good).

There are some heartbreaking statements from some of the nurses about their frustration with people these days.

“What keeps me up at night are the patients who aren’t getting their surgery for their colon cancer because we’re full of COVID patients," Dr. Salton said. "That’s what I lie awake thinking about every night. I think about the patients that I am discharging from the emergency department who normally would be admitted to the hospital but I’ve got no place to put them so we say ‘just go home and hope you don’t die.’”

This is a ~10 minute video, but if you’d rather read the story, follow the link here.

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I’m surprised how many names on the “Disinformation Dozen” list I have never heard of.

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"About 63% of eligible Chicagoans are fully vaccinated, but rates hover in the 20% range in many southern Illinois counties where hospitals are filling up. A total of 126 Illinois lives were lost to the virus over the last week, including 46 on Wednesday — the highest one-day toll in three months.
…
Hospitals statewide were treating 2,000 coronavirus patients Thursday night, the most since early May. Intensive care wards were 95% full in the southern tip of the state, with just four beds available for the entire region, home to more than 400,000 Illinoisans. "
Illinois, rural Illinois, is heading in the wrong direction.

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Hello, dystopia.

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Wow. I’m surprised I didn’t read that one on the front page of today’s Orlando Sentinel (top story: schools may sue governor). The story must have just broke.

~Max

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I apologize, but am I correct to interpret this as including domestic flights? If so, great. If not, we need to.

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It’s a proposed bill that has exactly 0% chance of passing.

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Last year there was talk about health systems “collapsing” and I don’t think any of us really understood what was meant by that term. I have a bad feeling we’re closer to witnessing that in some parts of the country.

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During the initial pandemic, the health system collapsed in NYC and some other areas. They were stacking bodies in refrigerator trucks because there was no room in the morgue, and the graveyards didn’t have capacity.

Do you think it’s going to get worse than that? I don’t. I think vaccination is going to help.

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Right, but there are counties where the vaccination rates are really low among adults, and schools are about to open up in places where governors are fighting against vaccine and even mask mandates, so yeah, I actually do think it can get worse than that. How much worse, I haven’t any idea.

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Seems postworthy. With links from both sides of the aisle (although everyone is crediting the NYT with the scoop):

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Complete headline:
Highly Vaccinated Israel Is Seeing A Dramatic Surge In New COVID Cases. Here’s Why

Israel was the first country on Earth to fully vaccinate a majority of its citizens against COVID-19. Now it has one of the world’s highest daily infection rates — an average of nearly 7,500 confirmed cases a day, double what it was two weeks ago. Nearly one in every 150 people in Israel today has the virus.

What happened, and what can be learned about the vaccine’s impact on a highly vaccinated country? Here are six lessons learned — and one looming question for the future of the pandemic.

1. Immunity from the vaccine dips over time.

…

2. The delta variant broke through the vaccine’s waning protection.

…

3. If you get infected, being vaccinated helps.

…

4. Israel’s high vaccination rate isn’t high enough.

…

5. Vaccinations are key, but they are not enough.

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6. Booster shots offer more protection — if you are one of the world’s lucky few to get them.

…

Experts warn if countries do not vaccinate their populations, more variants will develop, threatening even vaccinated nations.

Looming question: Will we need COVID-19 vaccines every several months? We don’t know.

…

Bold in original. There are several paragraphs under each heading. This is not paywalled.

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I think TX asked FEMA for at least 4 morgue trucks this week. And I don’t remember hearing that they were having to ship patients hundreds of miles to find a hospital with an available ICU bed even during January/February.

I’d like to think the vaccines will make a bigger difference, especially now that more people seem to be getting them. I’m just not sure if it will make enough difference given Delta’s speed of spread and higher rate of mortality.

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NYC didn’t use “morgue trucks”, they used whatever they could get their hands on.

Anyway, I hope it isn’t worse than that. It was pretty bad.

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Well, there’s this-- still in use.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/07/us/new-york-coronavirus-victims-refrigerated-trucks/index.html

(CNN)The bodies of New York City coronavirus victims are still being stored in refrigerated trailers converted into makeshift morgues during the height of the pandemic one year ago, according to the medical examiner’s office.

The long-term temporary morgue at the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal holding 750 bodies – not all victims of Covid-19 – is a reminder of the crush of coronavirus fatalities that overwhelmed city hospitals, mortuaries and funeral homes last spring.
…

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The should outfit those refrigerator trucks with plexiglass sides so everybody can plainly see in, and set those trucks out in shopping mall parking lots.

Be sure the bodies’ toe-tags are plainly visible, although perhaps all turned so the names can’t be seen from the outside.

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211,572,165 total cases
4,428,045 dead
189,320,364 recovered

In the US:

38,398,596 total cases
644,281 dead
30,439,239 recovered

Yesterday’s numbers for comparison:

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…so New Zealand locked down for 1 case a few days ago. It was a Level 4 lockdown nationwide: and to give some context this was both our first nationwide lockdown since May 2020, but it also one of the most stringent lockdown standards in the world. There are almost no cars on the road. Almost everybody is staying home.

Day two it was 10 cases, Day three was 20 cases, today it’s 51 cases. We’ve been told that we haven’t peaked yet, and to expect more over the next few days.

It has been really hard to contextualise how much more infectious Delta is in the current state of the world. But we have a really controlled environment here: and Delta looks like it is a real bugger. This is orders of magnitude more infectious than any of our previous community outbreaks.

We hit two records yesterday. Most vaccinations in a day - 56,800, and most Covid tests in a day - 41,400. Which is a huge ramp up in systems (especially testing) essentially overnight. Over 5000 individual contacts have been identified, they expect another 5000 by the end of the day. Whole Genome Sequencing currently shows that we are probably only dealing with a single cluster, which is a good thing.

We have a wage subsidy programme in place here, where employers and the self-employed can get payment to help get through lockdown. I’m self-employed and eligible. I applied at about 4PM on Friday afternoon, it was approved and deposited in my bank account 2 hours later. (It took 3 days to approve at the first lockdown.)

For those interested, here is the official NZ MOH Covid twitter account, with today’s daily update, just to give you an idea of the quality of information everyone here has access to, both online and in the 1PM daily briefings. Over something that started as a single case. Clear concise, accurate information. Thanking people for getting tested, thanking workers for the work behind the scenes. Constant reinforcement of this…over and over and over again. We can see everything that is being done. We can see that things are working. And that helps compliance. We just want to play our part.

The scale of preparedness for this outbreak has really exceded my expectations. And I’m looking at what we’ve done in the last four days…and I’m looking at the state of the world. I looked at the daily deaths in America, and they are on the rise, now matching the deaths from August/September last year. Short of a revolution in the States that are screwing this up, and a huge shift in strategic direction at the top, I’m not sure how this is all going to end.