NZ’s lockdown is tight but not completely airtight; I don’t see how they’d get goods from abroad otherwise. They also had a trouble bubble with Australia.
109,390,606 total cases
2,411,502 dead
81,484,415 recovered
In the US:
28,261,470 total cases
497,174 dead
18,224,288 recovered
Yesterday’s numbers for comparison:
Our problem was returning citizens. That’s probably a thing with New Zealand as well … it’s a constant source of possible new infections, even with compulsory quarantine.
That is still unknown. One of the infected people (assumed to be the index case of this breakout) worked at an airport processing laundry from international flights, and has tested positive for B.1.1.7 (the UK variant). While experts suggest that fomite transmission from laundry is unlikely, the genomic analysis shows no links to existing cases identified at the border or evidence of a chain of transmission from previous community cases.
Wastewater analysis in the region also does not show wider-scale community transmission.
Fortunately, the Pfizer vaccine has just been approved for use, and MIQ/border workers and their families are due to start vaccination this week, followed by medical personnel and those working and living in aged care facilities.
…the thing about having so many layers of defense against covid is that the cases we do get tend to be relatively unusual. A few weeks ago there was a community outbreak that was traced back to a certain hotel and may have been spread simply because two doors were open at the same time. Earlier community outbreaks have been tracked back to sharing a rubbish bin, and being in the same lift (minutes apart) .
Its a very tricky virus.
The problem with the latest outbreak (and the reason why they went straight to a 3-day lockdown) is they can’t find the source. This is problematic because the elimination strategy is all about breaking chains of transmission but they can’t find the start of the chain. It is similar to the Americold cluster last August where they never found the source of the outbreak. There is a chance with this case as well that they won’t find the source either. Unlike Americold it looks like this one was caught early enough to stop the outbreak get out-of-hand. But it might take a few days before we know for sure.
“Trouble bubble” is my new favourite typo 
There was a short-lived travel bubble: but it was one-way only (New Zealanders travelling into some states in Australia didn’t have to isolate) but it was never reciprocal.
LOL. Gawd, how did I miss that one?!
it is a good one. i believe trouble bubble can be used in many cases. i have a trouble bubble at the office, as some of my office mates (top of the totem) still believe covid is not worse than the flu. they want more people in the office.
looks like the u s is leading in variants with 7 so far.
Quite. These were recovered patients, it’s not stated if they were also vaccinated. And the vaccines are not 100% effective.
There are always outliers in biology, especially with anything involving the immune system. There was overreaction to a few reports of reinfection last year.
they have decided to name the u s variants after birds.
72580014 (medrxiv.org) this is the preprinted report.
here is a small bit with the named variants:
Six U.S. lineages and a provisional naming system.
The largest of the 677 variant sub-lineages (“Robin 1”) is a B.1.2 / 20G clade
virus carrying Q677H that first appears in GISAID data from a sample with a August 17,
2020 collection date. As of Feb 4, 2021, this sub-lineage contained 754 sequences
(Table 1, FIG. 3). Robin 1 is found in over 30 US states, but predominates in the
Midwest. A second Q677H clade, distinguished from Robin 1 by an N2361K
substitution in orf1a, first appeared from a Oct 6, 2020 sample from Alabama and is
named “Robin 2” owing to its similarity to the parental Robin 1 sub-lineage. This cluster
contains 303 sequences, and is found mostly in the Southeast.
The next largest cluster is the Q677P variant of 20G (B.1.2) (“Pelican”), which
was first detected in Oregon from a sample with collection date of Oct 23, 2020 and as
of Feb 3, 2021 contains 504 sequences. The Q677P variant has been detected in LA,
NM, NC, WY, MA, ID, MI AZ, CA, TX, WI, and MD, and five international sequences
(Australia (2), Denmark, Switzerland, India)(Emma B. Hodcroft, 2021). The remaining
Q677H sub-lineages each contain around 100 or fewer sequences, and are named:
Yellowhammer, detected mostly in the southeast US; Bluebird, mostly in the northeast
United States; Quail, mainly in the Southwest and Northeast; and Mockingbird, mainly in
the South-central and East coast states (Table 1, Fig. 3). A schematic summarizing the
key lineage-specific and shared protein polymorphisms of the US S: Q677P and
S:Q677H variants is shown in FIG 4.
That looks right. That particular anomaly has since disappeared, and several others in Florida and Pennsylvania have appeared at various times in the past. I expect it will get sorted eventually.
New false theory that it’s spread by birds coming to social (and possibly other) media in three . . . two . . .
I admit that I 'm glad to see that I’m not the only person who finds the rate of case decline to be odd:
Despite Washington state’s obscenely slow and f’d up rollout and that the state DOH told me that despite being at high risk due to lupus, I’ll turn 65 in late September before I’ll get my first dose people from out of state keep assuring me we’ll all be vaccinated by the end of July because Biden said so. Not so fast:
Biden announced Thursday that the US will have purchased enough doses to vaccinate 300 million Americans by the end of July. White House aides quickly followed up with a clarification: vaccines aren’t vaccinations. Even though the doses will be available by July, it’s unclear when nearly all Americans will actually be vaccinated.
Dr. Fauci is predicting that by April, " virtually everybody and anybody in any category can start to get vaccinated."
I respect both the president and Dr. Fauci, but from the state level, the situation looks much less rosy. Washington state hasn’t even determined who will be in phases 2, 3, and 4, only that those groups will probably start getting the vaccine in late summer/early fall.
There’s a disconnect in there somewhere.
The wife has not been able to visit her family in Bangkok for two years. Her planned trip last year got cancelled. No use making new plans until there’s a clearer picture. Thailand is all but shut to foreigners now. You can go there, but the requirements are very oppressive, plus your first two weeks will be spent in quarantine, in a government-approved facility where they keep a close watch on you. The wife does not want to waste two whole weeks like that, so she’ll wait. And as this and that area of the country experiences fresh outbreaks, restrictions on interprovincial travel pop up and disappear at a moment’s notice, so you cannot count on being able to travel upcountry or even return from there. I was planning to go next year, but who knows.
I’m vaccinated now, the wife is not, but they say you can still carry and transmit the virus after being vaccinated, so the quarantine is not lifted for folks like me.
The Thai economy is crashing with the tourism industry completely dried up. I used to wander all over Bangkok in the wee hours of the morning without the slightest apprehension, you could not have found a safer city, but friends there tell me darker streets are filling with those made homeless by the crisis, and now it’s best to avoid such areas as the desperation mounts.
Oregon; and I must say I’m both intrigued and amused by the arcane but not incorrect usage of ‘breakthrough’:
ETA: Breakthrough Hammersmash would be a great name.
I think that vaccines are having an effect. Not in terms of herd immunity or in isolation. But I think it could be having an effect in a couple ways. First, it breaks the chain of exponential growth, even if just for one strand of the chain. That could make some difference, even if fairly small. The other effect it could be having is that people are more willing to take precautions if it’s not forever, and they’re seeing the end of the tunnel with the vaccine. People weren’t willing to forgo their holiday if it was going to go on indefinitely. But if there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, people might be willing to put up with more.
Also, the infection rate was so high in some areas, people were taking precautions from that, so that could have also helped as well. Just my swag at what’s going on after reading the article.
I’m definitely seeing this with some of my customers. People who were willing to do in-person group activities in the fall are now choosing to hold back until the grandparents living with them (or whoever) get vaccinated. Even though the risk right now is arguably lower than it was in early November, they want to avoid the sense of regret they’d get from getting COVID from a non-essential activity when they were close to being vaccinated.
I’ve been to Thailand and am still in touch with some friends I made there; like a lot of Thailand, they’re in the hospitality/tourist side of things and not doing real well. One is moving far up country to family until things improve. And yes, where they live has moved in and out of “red zone” (I don’t recall what term they use for it) lockdowns more than once and it hurts everyone that much more, and crime has grown.
On the other hand, my napkin calculations of “if they had the US rates of Covid” is 6 million cases, 109k deaths. Thailand has an impressive health system, but I can’t even imagine the country crushing under such stats and I’m glad it isn’t and my friends are safe, or safe-ish.
Remember the USS Theodore Roosevelt?
109,676,360 total cases
2,418,768 dead
84,215,251 recovered
In the US:
28,317,703 total cases
498,203 dead
18,356,625 recovered
Yesterday’s numbers for comparison: