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

The Quarantine Zone
1634

Australia started with a 3 or 4-vaccine policy (I’ve heard 4, but don’t know anything about number 4). The local Australian vaccine dropped out as unsuitable. Then AZ was not for people under 50. So it’s lucky they didn’t put all their money on just one vaccine.

Then, out of all the world, Australia was just about the last priority for vaccine. Very low infection rate, closed borders. Even NZ, our near neighbor and also zero COVID, has higher vaccination rate – but also wasn’t betting on supplies of a local vaccine, and wanted to plan for traditional open borders with pacific island nations.

So what is Australia going to do? Demand vaccines from the UK or the USA? Try to get priority over countries that really need it?

Vaccine rollout has been badly managed, but the low level of vaccination doesn’t reflect the bad management: if it was well managed we’d have different people vaccinated and shortages at all levels, not more vaccinations.

1635

On bad management of vaccine rollout in Australia:

The health sector is split between state, federal, and private operators. They fight over funding.

The federal government is responsible for funding Doctors, the states are responsible for demanding federal government money to run hospitals.

The state and private sector run hospitals. The federal health department doesn’t run anything, has no direct experience with medicine, and is one of the least functional federal departments anyway.

In a perfect world, some group with experience of large public-health actions would have run the vaccine rollout. There is no such group. Vaccinations are normally done by local city councils, and to a lesser extent by individual private doctors directly funded by the federal government.

Ok, given that vacuum, the existing policy setting is for the federal government to resist paying individual doctors for any new initiative, and for the states to resist using hospitals for anything they can get the federal government to pay for.

So there was no-one with experience running a large rapid response program: to the contrary, their experience was with avoiding responsibility and getting someone else to pay for it.

I don’t want to suggest that funding was the driving force here, as it almost always is: just that systems which are set up to avoid paying for medical services had no idea how to go in the opposite direction, and that the organisations on which responsibility naturally fell had no idea what they were doing.

What this has meant is that sectors which should have seen concentrated government action – aged care, hospitals, quarantine workers etc – have seen ad-hoc incompetence instead. This hasn’t been backed up by wide community roll-out, catching those who should have directly caught, because there hasn’t been wide community roll-out.

The lack of wide community rollout reflects the fact that Australia has bugger-all COVID, and closed borders, but it leaves clear the failure of directed rollout, where that should have been government responsibility at both levels.

1636

The UK is set to remove all coronavirus restrictions on 19 July but is also seeing increases in new cases:

1637

Don’t beleive all the BS they are feeding ya…

I love the ‘excuse’ ‘But they were mostly 50 and older’.

1638

Maybe you didn’t read far enough.
From your article:

Data showed that 1,320 were sick enough to spend a night in the hospital after catching the Delta variant. Of those, 190 were fully vaccinated — that is about 14%. And 831, or a much higher 63%, were unvaccinated.

And the word is spelled “believe”.

1639

182,585,616 total cases
3,953,878 dead
167,186,972 recovered

In the US:

34,527,493 total cases
619,980 dead
29,007,373 recovered

Yesterday’s numbers for comparison:

1640

Who are “they”?

1641

182,981,857 total cases
3,962,879 dead
167,565,591 recovered

In the US:

34,540,845 total cases
620,249 dead
29,026,688 recovered

Yesterday’s numbers for comparison:

1642

Fifteen months after the novel coronavirus shut down much of the world, the pandemic is still raging. Few experts guessed that by this point, the world would have not one vaccine but many, with 3 billion doses already delivered. At the same time, the coronavirus has evolved into super-transmissible variants that spread more easily. The clash between these variables will define the coming months and seasons. Here, then, are three simple principles to understand how they interact. Each has caveats and nuances, but together, they can serve as a guide to our near-term future.

1. The vaccines are still beating the variants

…

2. The variants are pummeling unvaccinated people

Vaccinated people are safer than ever despite the variants. But unvaccinated people are in more danger than ever because of the variants. Even though they’ll gain some protection from the immunity of others, they also tend to cluster socially and geographically, seeding outbreaks even within highly vaccinated communities.
…

So far, so good. But here’s the kicker. Or killer, if you prefer:

…

3. The longer Principle No. 2 continues, the less likely No. 1 will hold

Whenever a virus infects a new host, it makes copies of itself, with small genetic differences—mutations—that distinguish the new viruses from their parents. As an epidemic widens, so does the range of mutations, and viruses that carry advantageous ones that allow them to, for example, spread more easily or slip past the immune system to outcompete their standard predecessors. That’s how we got super-transmissible variants like Alpha and Delta. And it’s how we might eventually face variants that can truly infect even vaccinated people.

None of the scientists I talked with knows when that might occur, but they agree that the odds shorten as the pandemic lengthens. “We have to assume that’s going to happen,” Gupta told me. “The more infections are permitted, the more probable immune escape becomes.”
…

People who are refusing to get vaccinated are putting the rest of the world in danger in the long run.

1643

#3 is still speculative, yet it’s morphed into certainty. I’ve read dozens of times that the trillionth unvaccinated individual will be that one more roll of the dice that will develop the Covid variant that will evade all vaccines and kill us all. That may be possible, and that may not be possible at all. Maybe we should kill all cows, one day one will be born with opposable thumbs and take over the world. I don’t think that’s possible.

I think if Covid is going to evolve into a variant that can evade vaccines, it’s going to happen. If it can’t, it won’t. Unless you want to vaccinate the entire world at the point of a gun.

1644

Can you explain what is speculative about the statement? It’s pretty clear that it refers to probabilities and I’m finding it hard to poke holes in it.

1645

I think we are leaving “breaking news” territory, and I invite you to start a new thread to discuss this topic. If you link the relevant post in this thread, a cross-link is created, and it is easy for anyone reading this thread to see there is more discussion elsewhere, and follow the link to the additional discussion.

1646

I have been waiting to hear this good news: “Recipients of the vaccine produced strong neutralizing antibodies against all variants including the Delta, the U.S.-based company said.”

1647

183,427,884 total cases
3,971,594 dead
167,933,954 recovered

In the US:

34,561,403 total cases
620,645 dead
29,052,087 recovered

Yesterday’s numbers for comparison:

1648

I am very pleased to report that the State of Oregon (sorta) achieved its 70% goal yesterday:

I do have confidence we’ll get to 80% within a few weeks.

1649

I still know 4 eligible who refuse to get vaccinated. I guess we’ll see what consequences that has.

1650

Do any of them have reasons you consider valid? I only know one person who isn’t vaccinated, and she’s not an Oregon resident. I give her stick every chance I can.

1651

No, though two have medical belief systems that are very different from my own. Two are conservatives, one is libertarian, one is liberal.

1652

What a nice way to put it. I like to say “reality-challenged” folks.

1653

184,243,392 total cases
3,987,409 dead
168,622,514 recovered

In the US:

34,588,176 total cases
621,255 dead
29,087,421 recovered

Yesterday’s numbers for comparison: