[PluggyRug]

Scape Scape:

Chinese Covid-19 vaccine efficacy is 'not high,' top health official admits

$1:

(CNN)The efficacy of Chinese Covid-19 vaccines is "not high" and authorities are weighing options to bolster protection -- including mixing different shots, China's top disease control official has said.

"The protection rates of existing vaccines are not high," Gao Fu, director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, told a conference in the southwestern city of Chengdu on Saturday.
He listed two options to solve the problem: one is to increase the number of doses, or adjust the dosage or interval between shots; the other is to mix vaccines developed from different technologies.
Gao's remarks are a rare public admission from the country's top health official that the efficacy of China's coronavirus vaccines is not ideal -- and improvements are needed to boost protection.

Just say thanks that Canada's deal for Chinese vaccines fell through.

[Public_Domain]

the efficacy has never been great, but to my understanding the chinese vax used dependable and typical established methods to push production as quickly as possible in a way that is known to be safe; afaik the chinese vax wasn't experimental, whereas the american ones are.

i hope they succeed in developing a stronger safe vaccine, but lord knows it'll be called nefarious when they do

[CDN_PATRIOT]

Anything experimental from this continent is preferable to something Chinese. It's hard to trust them, what with their poor track record on just about everything.

-J.

[DrCaleb]

CDN_PATRIOT CDN_PATRIOT:

You'd think that businesses would want to drop masks with the mandate and go back to normal rather than dragging it out. I get the whole 'herd immunity' thing, but haven't we all had enough of this damn pandemic? Don't we all want to get back to normal (if we haven't done so already)?

I'm confused as to why businesses want to prolong all of this. We all did our time, so let's get back to normal and live again.

Does that make sense?

-J.

(P.S. I'm not trying to be an a**hole by any means. Just don't get some of this)

Want is not the same as able. This pandemic is not over. People want to get back to normal, but normal won't happen till the other 6 billion people on the planet get fully vaccinated. Until then, the virus will circulate and mutate and come back on us.

In the mean time, masks and distancing in addition to herd immunity are our only weapons. We've seen every major variant enter Canada, despite travel restrictions and quarantines. Because people aren't taking the health measures seriously. So if some people aren't going to take it seriously, then the rest of us must do extra in order to make up for their ignorance.

It's not businesses 'prolonging' it, they are just trying to protect their workers so they still have staff to remain open and hopefully don't go bankrupt. That is the balancing act, they have to open to remain viable, but they also need staff to stay open.

[DrCaleb]

$1:

Growing proportion of Alberta COVID-19 cases have no known source

While Alberta's daily COVID-19 case counts remain low compared with the peak of the third wave, a growing proportion of cases have no known source — a trend experts say is likely related to the province's reopening.

According to provincial data, contact tracing had been unable to pinpoint a source of transmission for 39 per cent of active cases (246 of 624 active cases) and 40 per cent of those identified in the past week (125 of 312 cases between July 5 and July 11).

Those numbers were hovering in the low 30s in early June

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/ ... -1.6099765

[PluggyRug]

Interesting article.....

$1:

While the latest research suggests that antibodies against Covid-19 could be lost in just three months, a new hope has appeared on the horizon: the enigmatic T cell.

Full text here https://www.bbc.com/future/article/2020 ... m-covid-19

[Strutz]

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

CDN_PATRIOT CDN_PATRIOT:

You'd think that businesses would want to drop masks with the mandate and go back to normal rather than dragging it out. I get the whole 'herd immunity' thing, but haven't we all had enough of this damn pandemic? Don't we all want to get back to normal (if we haven't done so already)?

I'm confused as to why businesses want to prolong all of this. We all did our time, so let's get back to normal and live again.

Does that make sense?

-J.

(P.S. I'm not trying to be an a**hole by any means. Just don't get some of this)

Want is not the same as able. This pandemic is not over. People want to get back to normal, but normal won't happen till the other 6 billion people on the planet get fully vaccinated. Until then, the virus will circulate and mutate and come back on us.

In the mean time, masks and distancing in addition to herd immunity are our only weapons. We've seen every major variant enter Canada, despite travel restrictions and quarantines. Because people aren't taking the health measures seriously. So if some people aren't going to take it seriously, then the rest of us must do extra in order to make up for their ignorance.

It's not businesses 'prolonging' it, they are just trying to protect their workers so they still have staff to remain open and hopefully don't go bankrupt. That is the balancing act, they have to open to remain viable, but they also need staff to stay open.

Exactly. Well stated DrC.

The last couple of days I've had several customers expressing frustration at the rising number of unmasked people in stores. It is such a brief period of time when one is in a public space such as a store so wtf is the big deal?

[DrCaleb]

Strutz Strutz:

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

CDN_PATRIOT CDN_PATRIOT:

You'd think that businesses would want to drop masks with the mandate and go back to normal rather than dragging it out. I get the whole 'herd immunity' thing, but haven't we all had enough of this damn pandemic? Don't we all want to get back to normal (if we haven't done so already)?

I'm confused as to why businesses want to prolong all of this. We all did our time, so let's get back to normal and live again.

Does that make sense?

-J.

(P.S. I'm not trying to be an a**hole by any means. Just don't get some of this)

Want is not the same as able. This pandemic is not over. People want to get back to normal, but normal won't happen till the other 6 billion people on the planet get fully vaccinated. Until then, the virus will circulate and mutate and come back on us.

In the mean time, masks and distancing in addition to herd immunity are our only weapons. We've seen every major variant enter Canada, despite travel restrictions and quarantines. Because people aren't taking the health measures seriously. So if some people aren't going to take it seriously, then the rest of us must do extra in order to make up for their ignorance.

It's not businesses 'prolonging' it, they are just trying to protect their workers so they still have staff to remain open and hopefully don't go bankrupt. That is the balancing act, they have to open to remain viable, but they also need staff to stay open.

Exactly. Well stated DrC.

The last couple of days I've had several customers expressing frustration at the rising number of unmasked people in stores. It is such a brief period of time when one is in a public space such as a store so wtf is the big deal?

People don't have a lot of self control. If the government takes off the restrictions, then they will too. They don't think the problem through, and for some reason they will trust the government to do the right thing, this time.

I prefer to listen to the Public Health Doctors, and do what they recommend, not what the government does in order to get re-elected.

[xerxes]

Tennessee Fires Vaccine Chief for Promoting Vaccines

$1:

If you want a clear and dangerous sign of how far down the anti-vaxx rabbit hole Republicans are going these days, look no further than the shenanigans going on in very red Tennessee the last month. The backstory, as reported by the Nashville Tennessean, is pretty simple:

In May, the state health department’s vaccine chief, Dr. Michelle Fiscus, was asked for guidance on how to deal with vaccination requests for older adolescents. In response, she circulated to providers a memo concerning a well-established state judicial ruling that minors aged 14-17 can obtain medical services without explicit parental consent. (The memo was secured from her agency’s attorney and blessed by the governor’s legal counsel.) One of the providers receiving this memo let Republican legislators know that evil state bureaucrats were undermining “parental authority” and pushing their infernal vaccines on kids. This blew up into a major brouhaha at a June 16 legislative hearing in which lawmakers threatened to shut down the entire state health department over this obvious violation of personal liberty and God’s Law. It got heated:

Sen. Janice Bowling, R-Tullahoma, who repeatedly has spread vaccine misinformation during legislative hearings, insisted the state was misinterpreting its legal authority.



Bowling urged [State Health Commissioner Dr. Lisa] Piercey to “take action” to “remove the fear, the concerns and the anger that has gone across the state as a result of (Fiscus’) letter.”

Piercey did take action, not just on COVID-19 vaccinations, but all of them intended for minors. “The agency halted all online vaccination outreach to teens and deleted Facebook and Twitter posts that gently recommended vaccines to anyone over the age of 12,” the Tennessean reported. “Internal emails obtained by The Tennessean revealed agency leaders ordered county-level staff not to hold any vaccination events intended specifically for adolescents.”

And then having inadvertently stirred up this right-wing hornet’s nest by doing her job, Fiscus got the ax this week. She did no go quietly, releasing a statement that made it pretty plain she thought the legislators who indirectly forced her firing were destructive yahoos, and that her agency superiors were cowards for shutting down vaccination education efforts that had nothing to do with COVID-19.

I was told that I should have been more “politically aware” and that I “poked the bear” when I sent a memo to medical providers clarifying a 34 year old Tennessee Supreme Court ruling. I am not a political operative, I am a physician who was, until today, charged with protecting the people of Tennessee, including its children, against preventable diseases like COVID-19.



I have been terminated for doing my job because some of our politicians have bought into the anti-vaccine misinformation campaign rather than taking the time to speak with the medical experts.

Now it’s true we have no absolute proof Fiscus was fired for the reasons she claims. But her former employers refused to give the Tennesseean any comment on her termination, and the bang-bang-bang timing of it all leaves little doubt about the chain of events.

The sad truth is that Tennessee Republican legislators are just reflecting a national trend in their party of making the unvaccinated a constituency group that needs to be “protected” from efforts to save their lives (not to mention the lives of those they may infect, and of an entire nation needing herd immunity). But Fiscus says it best:

I am deeply saddened for the people of Tennessee, who will continue to become sick and die from this vaccine-preventable disease because they choose to listen to the nonsense spread by ignorant people.



At this point, you are going to get vaccinated or you are going to get sick. Yes, not getting the vaccine is a personal choice. It’s true that you are likely to survive COVID-19. It’s the 1 out of every 542 people surrounding you that will suffer the consequences of an unfortunate decision to remain vulnerable to this horrible disease.

In the unlikely event that she doesn’t find another job in public health, Dr. Fiscus may have a calling in opinion journalism.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/07/tennessee-fires-vaccine-chief-for-promoting-vaccines.html

Meanwhile Covid cases in Tennessee are up 400%. At some point, there is going to have to be a Cordon Santiaire put in place around either Republican counties or states to contain the virus. Fucking ridiculous.

[Scape]

A win for Darwinism.

[CDN_PATRIOT]

In Ontario, we're entering Phase 3 of re-opening a week early this Friday, and three weeks after that, all the other restrictions (including masks) will be gone.

People can do what they want, as we are all free too choose. Personally, now that I'm fully vaccinated, I can't wait to be done with masks. If my local grocery store still wants to play the game at that point and want masks, whatever. I'll put it on for the 20mins I'm there, and carry on. 20mins a week isn't a big deal.

Hopefully, most businesses will embrace the withdrawal of the mandate. There's been enough fear to go around, and it's well beyond time we all started treating each other as human beings again.

-J.

[DrCaleb]

COVID's R-value (or ability to spread) is once again rising in Alberta

[llama66]

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

COVID's R-value (or ability to spread) is once again rising in Alberta

Pfft. It can't. Jason Kenney said we were out of the woods.

Although, maybe this time the Delta and Lambda variants can help us with "deepening the gene pool" by taking some of these anti-vaxxers out of the population.

I am reminded of what George Carlin once said:

“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”

[DrCaleb]

Yup. Half the people you meet are of below average intelligence.

[xerxes]

llama66 llama66:

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

COVID's R-value (or ability to spread) is once again rising in Alberta

Pfft. It can't. Jason Kenney said we were out of the woods.

Although, maybe this time the Delta and Lambda variants can help us with "deepening the gene pool" by taking some of these anti-vaxxers out of the population.

I am reminded of what George Carlin once said:

“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”

I hate to be so callous, but I’m starting to feel the same way. If people are too dumb to take a vaccine that can save your life, then it is time for Darwin to do his job. And if the anti-vaxxers die off due to their own willful ignorance then society will be better for it.

Also, at some point we are going to have to after the spreaders of disinformation. I remember reading there’s twelve people on FB responsible for all of the anti-vax BS. And that needs to be dealt with. Free speech is one thing but willfully spreading lies to the gullible needs to be prosecuted.