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

[Snowboarder_Bo]

New York City:

NYC will require vaccination proof for indoor dining, gyms

[Snowboarder_Bo]

200,304,173 total cases
4,259,667 dead
180,563,688 recovered

In the US:

36,049,015 total cases
630,497 dead
29,756,586 recovered

Yesterday’s numbers for comparison:

@Snowboarder_Bo

199,611,690 total cases
4,249,312 dead
180,101,722 recovered

In the US:

35,895,980 total cases
629,862 dead
29,717,537 recovered

Worldwide there have now been more than 200,000,000 Covid-19 cases.

In the US there have now been more than 36,000,000 Covid-19 cases.

[Senegoid]

@From the APNEWS article linked by Snowboarder_Bo above

China orders mass testing in Wuhan as COVID outbreak spreads | AP News

…as widening outbreaks of the delta variant reached the city where the disease was first…

What went around came around.

[Snowboarder_Bo]

Indonesia:

Indonesia surpasses 100,000 deaths amid new virus wave

It took 14 months for Indonesia to exceed the 50,000 death mark at the end of May, and just over nine weeks to double it. The Health Ministry recorded 1,747 new deaths of COVID-19 in the last 24 hours, bringing the total to 100,636.

Those figures are believed to be an undercount.

Since the beginning of June, more than 2,800 people have died during self-isolation at home, according to LaporCOVID-19, an independent virus data group that keeps track of deaths at home. Some of those deaths are reflected in official figures but others are not, he said.

“They were rejected by the hospitals, so they went back home and did the self-isolation at home with limited access to medicine, no oxygen and no monitoring from doctors until they died,” said Ahmad Arif, one of the LaporCOVID-19 founders.

(bolding mine)

[Snowboarder_Bo]

China:

China seals city as its worst virus outbreak in a year grows

Meanwhile, another COVID-19 hotspot was emerging in the city of Zhangjiajie, near a scenic area in Hunan province famous for sandstone cliffs, caves, forests and waterfalls that inspired the on-screen landscape in the “Avatar” films.

The city, with a population of about 1.5 million, ordered residential communities sealed Sunday, preventing people from leaving their homes. In a subsequent order on Tuesday, officials said no one, whether tourist or resident, could leave the city.

[asahi]

And now surveillance data from the UK is starting to confirm that Israel was right and CDC was wrong. Vaccine efficacy? About 50-60%. There you have it, folks: the vaccines are NOT 90% effective. You will end up in the doctor’s office or worse if you continue with this assumption. I honestly don’t know what is going on at CDC.

Vaccinated People Three Times Less Likely to Contract Delta Variant in UK Study

In a recent interview, Dr. Gottlieb summed up what my thoughts are. CDC does a lot of good things. They are good at surveillance, but this pandemic reveals the need for an agency that can give accurate data in real time, and we just don’t have that. CDC tends to be about 2-4 weeks behind on pretty much everything, which is unfortunate.

The good news? We’ll probably get to some level of herd immunity within the next 2-4 weeks…whether we want to or not.

[bordelond]

@asahi

And now surveillance data from the UK is starting to confirm that Israel was right and CDC was wrong. Vaccine efficacy? About 50-60%. There you have it, folks: the vaccines are NOT 90% effective.

This is specifically against Delta, FWIW.

Also FWIW – only Pfizer and Astra-Zeneca vaccines are included in the study. While Moderna is an mRNA vaccine like Pfizer, it’s dosage is over three times larger (100 mcg vs 30 mcg), and – speculatively – that could have an impact on breakthrough prevalence.

Further, from your link:

Some recent research has suggested that Delta is more likely to break through and cause infection in vaccinated people and that infected vaccinated people may then have a similar viral load initially as unvaccinated people, raising fears that they may also be as contagious as the unvaccinated. But this new research actually showed that vaccinated people had smaller viral loads on average, while other studies have found that vaccinated people clear their infection faster, limiting their window of transmission.

[Snowboarder_Bo]

Here’s another cautionary tale:

Unvaccinated, hospitalized: Patient now advocates for shots

But just days after Daniels went to visit Contreras in New Orleans — a long-awaited reunion that came after not seeing each other for months because of the pandemic — the nephew was rushed away in an ambulance. He couldn’t breathe, even when sitting completely still. He is now in a hospital in a New Orleans suburb, on a ventilator and in a medically induced coma.

At about the same time, Daniels started feeling weak, had blurred vision and was so short of breath he could barely make it from his couch in the living room to the bathroom. He tested positive for the virus, then went to a hospital in Baton Rouge already overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients, where he stayed for a week on oxygen as he recovered from pneumonia.

Some of those patients, like Daniels, now wish they had taken the shot.

“They’re talking about putting tubes down your throat possibly if your oxygen doesn’t go up within the next hour, and that is frightening,” he told The Associated Press on Monday as he lay in a bed with an oxygen tube in his nose. He was released shortly afterward but still must use oxygen at home.

“I am now a huge advocate for doctor’s orders,” Daniels added. “They think we ought to get vaccinated, I think we ought to get vaccinated.”

[Snowboarder_Bo]

Oh, and we have a Round Two starting Friday; it’s baaaaaaaaaaaaack:

Sturgis bike rally revs back bigger, despite virus variant

[Snowboarder_Bo]

201,008,826 total cases
4,270,245 dead
181,015,550 recovered

In the US:

36,176,471 total cases
631,299 dead
29,787,316 recovered

Yesterday’s numbers for comparison:

@Snowboarder_Bo

200,304,173 total cases
4,259,667 dead
180,563,688 recovered

In the US:

36,049,015 total cases
630,497 dead
29,756,586 recovered

They seem to have adjusted totals a bit at WoM and added about 250,000 cases to the total at some point. Yesterday’s total, which would have been set a couple of hours before I posted last night, is now 252,000 more than what I found.

I know some of y’all notice that kind of thing.

[CalMeacham]

This is inevitably political, but it’s statistical and striking, too. Have a look at the plot at the top of it

Guess what? The Partisan Vaccination Divide Appears To Be GROWING.

The piece is interesting reading.

One moral: Don’t live in a county named “McPherson”

[ThelmaLou]

From that excellent Daily Kos link:

• Only 3 counties have broken the 85% threshold for full vaccination: Kalawao County, HI (pop. 86), Nantucket, MA (pop. 11,400) and Los Alamos County, NM (pop. 14,700). Bristol Bay Borough, AK (pop. 900) is next in line, however, at 83.9%.

• Miller County, AR (pop. 43,200) has the lowest vaccination rate in the country at just 9.0%. It’s one of 4 counties nationally which have vaccinated less than 10% of their total populations, along with Slope County, ND (pop. 750), McPherson County, SD (pop. 2,400) and McPherson County, NE (pop. 500).

• Of counties with more than 100,000 residents , the top-vaxxed are Santa Fe, NM (74.9% vaxxed); Marin County, CA (73.6% vaxxed); and Cumberland County, ME (71.4% vaxxed)

• Of counties with more than 100,000 residents, the least -vaxxed are Shelby County, AL ; Livingston County, LA ; and Robeson County, NC , none of which have vaccinated more than 26% of their total populations to date.

• There are 45 counties with more than 1 million residents. Of those, the highest-vaxxed is Montgomery County, MD (71.0% vaxxed) while the lowest-vaxxed is San Bernadino County, CA (40.5%).

[Trom]

@asahi

There you have it, folks: the vaccines are NOT 90% effective.

At prevention infection.

Preventing infection is not what the vaccines were designed to do or what was studied in the vaccine trials. It happens to be a nice bonus.

The vaccines are still extremely effective at preventing serious illness and death.

[Trom]

Agh, should read “preventing infection.”

[Snowboarder_Bo]

Florida:

'There are only so many beds': COVID-19 surge hits hospitals

A South Florida hospital chain is suspending elective surgeries and putting beds in conference rooms, an auditorium and even a cafeteria as many more patients seek treatment for COVID-19.

“We are seeing a surge like we’ve not seen before in terms of the patients coming,” Memorial Healthcare System’s Chief Medical Officer Dr. Marc Napp said Wednesday during a news conference in Hollywood.

Napp said they’ve opened up an additional 250 beds at Memorial’s six hospitals in Broward County.

Unlike during last year’s spring and summer COVID surges when many sick people tried to avoid hospitals for fear of catching the virus, patients suffering from other ailments are also seeking treatment now, Napp explained.

On Wednesday, there were more than 1,600 inpatients admitted for overnight stays across the system’s facilities. Typically, the health system doesn’t have more than about 1,400 inpatients under its care at a time.

“This is the highest number of patients Memorial has ever seen,” he said. “It’s the sheer number coming in at the same time. There are only so many beds, so many doctors, only so many nurses,” Napp said.

Across Florida, more than 12,000 patients were hospitalized with COVID-19 on Wednesday, and nearly 2,500 of them were in ICU beds. On Tuesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported more than 50,000 new COVID-19 cases in Florida during a three-day span, raising the seven-day average to one of the highest counts since the pandemic began. In total, the state has seen more than 2.6 million cases and 39,179 deaths.

[Miller]

@ThelmaLou

Of counties with more than 100,000 residents , the top-vaxxed are Santa Fe, NM (74.9% vaxxed); Marin County, CA (73.6% vaxxed); and Cumberland County, ME (71.4% vaxxed)

Marin County represent!

[Chronos]

@asahi, Please stop spreading anti-vax propaganda.

[asahi]

It’s not anti-vax propaganda at all; it’s important that people have accurate information about the efficacy of the vaccines. I’d appreciate it if you take back that comment.

Employers like mine, for instance, are making decisions about enforcing mask mandates and forcing people to come back to work in a poorly ventilated office. Why? Because CDC says these vaccines have 90-95% accuracy, and there’s a growing body of data showing that this is wrong.

[ThelmaLou]

@asahi

It’s not anti-vax propaganda at all; it’s important that people have accurate information about the efficacy of the vaccines. I’d appreciate it if you take back that comment.

I took it as sarcasm. [Where are those sarcasm tags??]

[Chronos]

Yes, and people are also making decisions on whether to get vaccinated. Incorrectly telling people that the vaccine only has a 50-60% effectiveness, rather than the actual number of greater than 90%, discourages people from getting the vaccine.