This is the non-political thread, so I won't say much. But I am happy that the new administration is vaccine focused and not herd immunity focused.

I think that, as a matter of science, we should prioritize vaccines.

And I am probably less chauvinistic than most others on here. But even I think that the American President should have a mild preference for Americans over foreign nationals in matters like this. So that will be a nice change, too.

I thought we gave up on the idea of 2 seperate threads?

And yeah, from what I've read, we've secured enough vaccines for 100 million people so far between Pfizer and Moderna. It really doesn't need to be said, but that's not enough.

Maybe we did. I kind of checked out for a while.

We can give up on the pretense as there are no longer 2 separate threads. It's a farce and the pandemic is inherently political in some aspects.

SI

IIRC Ben merged the Coronavirus Political thread into the Trump thread. It was just Trump bashing anyway.

I vote we keep this thread non-political.

Definitely not the consensus i am seeing recently. Might have been early on when many studies where looking at the shortterm antibodies. ? There's essentially 3 types, two of which are decreasing relatively shortly, one (IgG) longer but not Infinite. But none of that is surprising and later studies showed that IgG antibodies stabilise at a low but aparently perfevtly sufficient level showing reactivity in the lab and essentially no reinfections in health care setting studies (easy to monitor) even with decent levels of general infections now and in the spring.
One of the biggest studies done on the general public is this from Mount Sinai hospital in New York, 30k people overwhelmingly showing robust neutralizing Response after an average of 5 months with data in line with the first SARS and MERS, where lab response hints very strongly at immunity even now after a lot of years.

Robust neutralizing antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 infection persist for months | Science

Antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 are associated with protection against reinfection | medRxiv

(This the healthcare one)

There's also B and T Cell immunity, which is even more difficult to measure but looks very promising when done.

I see Republicans are hard at work positioning themselves for a time when there is no incentive whatsoever to Trump up things re: Vaccine.
Today invited a anti-vaxx personality (+ HIV Denialist + Climate Change denialist + Darwinism denialist + anti Public Health + a whole slew of other positions in that vein) to a hearing.
(Yes, the association she represents is exactly like that).

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...67579.html?amp

Again, i am pretty sure Trump will start on that at some point as well undermining things.

Disagree, this is the way it is because of political stupidity.

My mother is practically demanding we ignore precautions; she really doesn't care if she gets it.

As for my father, I guess depending on how severe his cancer is, he figures he's rolling the dice no matter what.

Yet they cannot fathom that if one of my kids actually give it to them and they die how they would process that they were at fault (my kids not my parents). It's so selfish and stupid. So we miss a Thanksgiving or Christmas, is it really that big of a deal, over being isolated in a hospital and dying alone gasping for air?

Duly noted

Except, of course, the response to the pandemic and things like DeSantis sending goons down to harangue his own former state COVID officials are going to be somewhat political but definitely belong here.

Never mind that Trump is still doing his full blown "election was stolen" tour so any COVID news in the Trump thread gets buried.

So, like adults, we'll try to put stuff where it best fits even if there's a risk of whining to the moderator.

SI

"The Thread We Talk About Republicans That Do Shitty Things."


/notes original also omits "where"

Same point. Once we get political in this thread, it will inevitably turn Trump bashing (tell me if you really believe otherwise), and helpful COVID news, articles, personal experiences etc. gets buried.

Honestly, the root cause of the disasterous response is Trump. Even your example of DeSantis is Trump based as he has enabled or DeSantis has felt empowered to do it.

Of course, that example matters for non-political reasons as well as political - Florida's fraudulent numbers matter in terms of how safe is it in Florida right now.

SI

It's FOFC - we're not getting that many posts, and we don't even seem to have personal disagreements about political topics. The only time we have a problem is when some esoteric religion argument breaks out, just avoid that stuff & we'll be fine with a catch all thread. IMHO

Found it! And I mis-read it completely; the immunologist implied that data shows people who get it twice get it fairly quickly, with an average so far of 70-ish days between first negative test after the first infection and second positive test. Here's the article, which does imply that the B and T cell immunity looks promising and much more long-term:

More people are getting COVID-19 twice, suggesting immunity wanes quickly in some | Science | AAAS

Er ... "don't even seem to have personal disagreements about political topics"?

Honestly, we must not be reading the same thing. Go to Trump thread and do search for "racist/racism". My swag is 60-70% political disagreements end up with that accusation.

Yes, I don't think the personal disagreements are about political topics. The racism accusations fly like anywhere on the internet, but they pass or are shouted down & the personal ones end up being about religion or people being pedantic with language. No one here is actually arguing Trump won...

I don't disagree there are "personal ones ... about religion" (and think SCOTUS discussion was fairly mild) in the Trump thread but there are plenty that deal with political/Trump "policies" including the Wall, Immigration, Muslim entrance restrictions, maybe BLM (maybe not in Trump thread because it had its own thread), tax cuts and "pulling one self up by their own bootstraps", and generally discussions trying to look at "both" sides of a discussion etc.


True.

Bottom line. If you don't think the Trump thread contains "personal disagreements about political topics" (and a lot of it), I don't know how to convince you otherwise and we'll agree to disagree.

Kudos to the first and second ones. Looking forward to my turn eta 2Q.

I read an article somewhere that said the Queen was not going to be in the first batch because she was not a health care worker and I assume she did not want to "cut in line". I read another article that said maybe she would take it early just to show it was safe. I think there are pros and cons to either position, wonder where that will land.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/08/europ...ntl/index.html

But the election was stolen, that should be the big news....!:banghead:

Isn't that graph a tad misleading? This is a country that averaged over 7,000 deaths a day in 2017.

Seem very clear that it's trying to reference "deaths due to a specific cause"

Messaging gets really diluted when we asterisk it to death, but ymmv

(heavily predacted)

I read a twitter thread recently that explained that Covid deaths as "reported" actually lag anywhere from 1-3 weeks due solely to the administrative reporting function. Meaning, there's the lag that occurs from an increase in cases to hospitalization to death which is maybe 2-4 weeks, but then there's another administrative lag when deaths are reported from the date death actually occurs to when we see them on a daily report. So, deaths as reported today might relate back to infections that happened upwards of 4-8 weeks ago, and might have occurred weeks ago.

I don't know if that's entirely true or not, but if it is, I have to imagine January daily numbers are going to easily surpass what we're seeing now. Possibly February, too, depending on whether we can start to get cases under control.

Not quite that massive a delay, from what i understand. This is generally true for mortality figures (which are compiled based on death certificates) and can be seen really clearly looking at CDC data on excess deaths. But the Covid deaths themselves get reported rather sooner. Big AFAIK disclaimer and going from memory from when i last looked it up weeks ago.

Lots of vaccine news today:

1) Astrazeneca published a paper in Lancet, which unfortunately adds more confusion than it clears up. Not only was the "accidental" half dose only given to people under 55 but also they got the 2nd more than 8 weeks later. Which is just not actionable and makes it impossible to compare to the standard dosage on 2 fronts.

2) the FDA published 150 pages of data and analysis on the BionTech/Pfizer vaccine. Some aditional info on "needs to be observed" side effects including temporary cerebral palsy. It also alludes to being effective at least short term after the first dose (all you can judge, since everybody got a 2nd after 21 days).

Headliner graphic showing efficacy more visually:



The first bunch of cases veeeery likely were infected before the trial or directly after the first dose (doesn't work instantly). That's why the 2 curves run parallel to start.

Asterisking to death is indeed bad, but when you are talking about extra deaths that don't even approach the typical daily deaths from other causes, that's not what's going on. It's more accurately described as ignoring the big picture and is a gross distortion at best. Propaganda is still bad even when it supports a worthy cause.

This is crazy to think about - while the Trump administration attempted to bypass doing pretty much anything for about 9 months except push to keep the county open while it fast-tracked a vaccine, that approach was obviously flawed.

The good news is: vaccines!
The bad news is: pic.twitter.com/29awQzJYYx

— katie rosman (@katierosman) December 8, 2020

The second person vaccinated was William Shakespeare from Warwick. No lie. We even fucked up the extra publicity making him first would have brought!

And Mr. Shakespeare has more than a passing resemblance to the original.

Because I find it interesting... We seem to average around 2000 a day from both heart disease & cancer, D-Day was around 2500, and the Spanish Flu killed an estimated 195k Americans in October 1918, or 6.5k per day.

I definitely do not like the China government but kudos for trying to do good. Wouldn't surprise me if there are some issues with the vaccine (hopefully minor and not like permanent) but given the choice of waiting for Western vaccines to become available (if its Q2 or Q3 for us in the US, what would it be in Indonesia? or Africe?), I don't think developing countries have many good options.

Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

The husband of my wife's friend's test came back positive. Their whole house is sick now.

FYI for you guys, MrBug posted tonight that he's heading to the hospital with Covid pneumonia. He's been very sick for the last 8 days. He's lost about 10 pounds, been running a 102 temp and can't keep anything down. Send your best thoughts and prayers his way.

Jesus. Hope he is ok.

Keep strong, MrBug!

Well, shit. Hope he rebounds, and swiftly.

"Oh, the numbers. Oh, only those way over 40. Oh, we're mostly just worried about our parents."

Yeah, screw that noise. We're not bulletproof, either.

Kick some ass, Bug. We're all pulling for you.

I hope he doesn't mind my copy/paste to here.

MrBug's most recent message this morning:

We are all thinking of you Mr. Bug! Stay Strong! And thanks for the update ABC!

Oh man. That's rough

SI

Damn. Good luck Mr. Bug!

So crazy how hit-and-miss this is. Our company president, his wife and stepson all got it within hours of each other, and his wife's brother died from it. Both my kids got it - Caitlin came home for 1 day (lost taste the next day, tested positive 2 days after that), was in the car with me and Mackenzie for 45 minutes and Mackenzie got it. Wife and I spent about 3 weeks in the house with Mackenzie while she tested negative and then positive, kept her isolated, and neither of us got it.

Interesting tool to see how overwhelmed your hospital is.

Is Your Hospital Overwhelmed With COVID-19 Patients? Find Out With This Tool : Shots - Health News : NPR

Beds used by Covid patients - 20%
Beds used overall - 75%
Daily Covid patients 7 day average - 56

Shouldn't the 7 day average of 56 implies the beds used by Covid should be higher than 20%? Maybe those covid patients have covid but are not serious enough to stay in the hospital?

94% full with 33% COVID patients.

That's a good tool, 90% & 32% here.

Here's the reaction of the local conservatives...

https://www.facebook.com/26788519078...4684564438474/

Hope you get better soon, MB! That's gotta be terrifying, but good news that you are feeling better.

65% & 21%. I thought it would be higher. I guess it's good that I'm wrong?

We got a couple hospitals in a 15 min drive

They go (Covid, Overall:
16%, 65% (Emory Decatur)
7%, 77% (Emory Unversity Hospital

That's the area in Texas my wife is from. After listening to her family since this started I'm not the least bit surprised.

We had to submit to our department yesterday whether we wanted the COVID vaccine or not so it looks like we will be getting it shortly after it's approved.