Covid-19 Vaccine - Where, How & Costs

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shedofdread said:
I don't often comment on things like this so read into my post what you will...

The facts [as they appear to me] are that the Chinese government knew they had a problem (and I make no speculation as to the source) long before they went public. That is immoral and unforgivable.
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They did not.

Chinese actions during the lunar new year were clearly panic driven. The correct time to lock down Wuhan was either after the Chinese New Year holidays (the politically safe choice; so people could have finished all their holidays before the lockdown and been happier with the whole mess), or better yet, before it, before everyone went around on holiday spreading the virus.

Only people in a panic, with inadequate information, lock down a major transport hub during the biggest holiday of the year, with attendant gargantuan economic and political hits (people were all in the middle of vacations and visiting relatives!). It is not coincidence that HKU published a really panicky paper around the same time projecting a hundred thousand infected nationwide.

If the US, for instance, had a novel disease outbreak around December, when people were unpacking advent calendars and suchlike, do you think an unprecedented lockdown on Dec 23 would be politically acceptable? No. In a logical world, if you had the necessary data to justify a lockdown, you'd choose to lock down Chicago either on Dec 20-21, before people board those flights to have their Christmas dinners with relatives, or on Dec 28-Jan 2, after the holiday season ends and everyone's gone home. The Chinese decision was pure panic, pure damage control, and I never ever in my life thought any government would do anything like it. Not even the CCP.

What quality data do you think you would need to back up a decision to CANCEL CHRISTMAS?

The Chinese knew very little, and went public after barely a week or so of back-and-forth at the local level to round up the necessary figures at the end of December. If you think their reaction in early January slow, they were only guilty of waiting for the hard, compiled data to confirm interpersonal spread before declaring an emergency, instead of going off half-cocked on the mere suspicion of interpersonal spread... and it took until Jan 19 to find and compile cases that had not been to the market.

How confident would you be that a new outbreak was not purely zoonotic, when nearly all cases were workers and customers of a wildlife market? Was it a sneezing pangolin?

And even if it wasn't zoonotic, what were the Chinese to do? They already had infra-red cameras set up at all airports to pick up feverish people. Chinese cities like Hong Kong were already mandating temperature checks to enter government buildings just in case.

We did not know about COVID-19's long incubation period in early January 2020.

Lockdowns were not standard procedure to deal with outbreaks before China panicked and locked down Wuhan.

Hindsight is 20/20 as usual.

The "normal" measures - temperature screenings, healthcare workers on alert, etc - were already in place across East Asia the week the news broke across every news channel in the region. I watched the news for a week, and bet on "purely zoonotic". Forum threads had titles like "Nopedemic" and people were laughing at those who were fearmongering about human-human transmissibility because "we needed to wait for the data before being alarmist".

Test kits were produced starting from Jan 21 or so. China panicked and locked down Wuhan on Jan 23, two days after it started testing people and went oh shit oh shit oh shit.

Seattle had strategic warning from China, they knew they had a few imported cases, they even had friggin test kits (which didn't work) - and it took six weeks for Seattle to notice it had a COVID outbreak back in late February after it missed a carrier in mid-January.

Given that various bits of research point to COVID jumping the zoonotic barrier in mid-November, Wuhan picking up an outbreak in late December is entirely reasonable competence on the part of the Chinese - it's identical to Seattle's performance, but without any strategic warning whatsoever.

www.nytimes.com

Coronavirus May Have Spread in U.S. for Weeks, Gene Sequencing Suggests (Published 2020)

Two cases detected weeks apart in Washington State had genetic links, suggesting that many more people in the area may be infected.
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com
 
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Again, I condemn the media for speculation. This may have happened. That may have happened. As it was during the Cold War, a central reporting system that is not susceptible to nonsense created by the media that only fuels people's anxiety. Not helpful. Not helpful at all.

Vaccinations for those 16 and older are slowing in the United States. Again, the media shows its lack of usefulness due to its bizarre focus on creating an us vs. them mentality. The government got it wrong or what they call 'vaccine inequity' or underserved parts of the population. There is a genuine distrust of the vaccines by some groups but short of forcing them to take them, or actually driving them down to a vaccination center, all they've got is their anxiety producing narrative. Do something practical I say, or shut up.

And I sincerely doubt that the US military does not have the capacity to collect and evaluate information in a timely manner.
 
chimeric oncogene said:

If the US, for instance, had a novel disease outbreak around December, when people were unpacking advent calendars and suchlike, do you think an unprecedented lockdown on Dec 23 would be politically acceptable? No. In a logical world, if you had the necessary data to justify a lockdown, you'd choose to lock down Chicago either on Dec 20-21, before people board those flights to have their Christmas dinners with relatives, or on Dec 28-Jan 2, after the holiday season ends and everyone's gone home. The Chinese decision was pure panic, pure damage control, and I never ever in my life thought I would see anything like it.
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Good post. I just wanted to pick up on the paragraph above, because of the parallels with what the UK did at Christmas 2020 when it realised the threat of the B.1.1.7 variant (before that the plan was for 6 days of unlimited travel and mixing) and even when they did react (19th Dec) that was still compromised, and there was still ridiculous political posturing on the lines of "the schools are definitely going back on the 4th January" as late as the 3rd January, only to change 24 hours later to a national lockdown we still haven't fully emerged from. And that was after pretty much a year of politicians getting their minds used to Covid realities. China may have lost a couple of weeks because of systemic weakness in their system at the local level, but it did allow them to react decisively when it was realised they needed to act at the national level.
 
The Indian variant B.1.167 looks like it may be an escape variant for natural immunity from prior infection. But possibly not against vaccine immunity. Yet again proving that natural immunity just isn’t going to cut it against the increasingly aggressive variants.

www.reuters.com

Explainer: What we know about the Indian variant as coronavirus sweeps South Asia

India has recorded the world's sharpest spike in coronavirus infections this month, with political and financial capitals New Delhi and Mumbai running out of hospital beds, oxygen and medicines.
www.reuters.com www.reuters.com
 
Flyaway said:
The Indian variant B.1.167 looks like it may be an escape variant for natural immunity from prior infection. But possibly not against vaccine immunity. Yet again proving that natural immunity just isn’t going to cut it against the increasingly aggressive variants.

www.reuters.com

Explainer: What we know about the Indian variant as coronavirus sweeps South Asia

India has recorded the world's sharpest spike in coronavirus infections this month, with political and financial capitals New Delhi and Mumbai running out of hospital beds, oxygen and medicines.
www.reuters.com www.reuters.com
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If India had learnt from China, concentrate on dealing with coronavirus, build hospitals and makeshift hospitals, than the coronavirus pandemic won’t be that worse
 
Variants are not aggressive. People are. International travelers going to the UK will have to follow the necessary precautions. Those attempting to sneak in will be barred.
 
Guess there’s a few million Americans who need to note this judging by recent news reports.

www.reuters.com

Risk from virus variants remains after first Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, UK study finds

A single dose of Pfizer's (PFE.N) coronavirus vaccine may not generate a sufficient immune response to protect against dominant new variants, except in people who have already been infected with COVID-19, according to a UK study published on Friday.
www.reuters.com www.reuters.com
 
The wealthy Americans already have a list of countries they can go to, with moderate restrictions.

The point is that without waterproof borders, meaning without people arriving on private jets after hopping from country to country, then the variants will spread as viruses do.

I am confidant that the British PM understands this and will make every effort to protect the people of the UK. My God, if they can catch foreign spies, they can catch some revelers who decide to take a boat out for a bit of fun to somewhere they shouldn't. Because we all know who will suffer the consequences.

I hope to see the same situation in the US. A high level of surveillance, a waterproof border for international travelers and no private planes traveling through international airspace with the express purpose of ignoring the very necessary rules.
 
edwest2 said:
The point is that without waterproof borders, meaning without people arriving on private jets after hopping from country to country, then the variants will spread as viruses do.
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France already has detected the said-so Indian variant.
 
They’ve now hit the grim statistic of reporting over 400,000 cases in a day. Many areas are still desperately short of vaccines. They aren’t the only country to report surges of cases, so perhaps next time some smug faced U.K. based media individual talks about the end of the pandemic they might try looking outside our borders.

www.reuters.com

India’s daily COVID-19 cases pass 400,000 for first time as second wave worsens

India recorded more than 400,000 new COVID-19 cases for the first time on Saturday as it battles a devastating second wave, and the country's massive new vaccination drive was hampered in some areas by shortages of the shots.
www.reuters.com www.reuters.com
 
This is the outbreak from hell that had the WHO so worried back in February 2020. They expected developed nations to be able to contain their own outbreaks, and so the WHO's focus was mainly on the highly vulnerable developing world.
 
I see that it's time for another "It's The End of the World" Weekend. Brought to you by the media.
 
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edwest2 said:
I suspect this will not go well... I do hope that it does.

www.bbc.com

Clubbing comes back: 'This is the best day of my life'

For the first time since the pandemic began, a nightclub opens its doors.
www.bbc.com www.bbc.com
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It's part of a test to see how large events can be organised - and everyone has got to show a negative Covid test result before entering.
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The idea is to see how reliable are measures in place. Large scale experiment in multiple locations (and variable type of event to not draw the same type of population) like they do in England and elsewhere will help refine realistic prediction models for re-opening.
 
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I really do hope this goes well. However, youth, a bit of drinking before or after or on location, and the possibility of a fake ID gaining entrance. Again, I do want to see this work.
 
edwest2 said:
www.bbc.com

Covid-19: Scientist urges patience before 17 May lockdown relaxation

Government adviser Prof Sir Mark Walport says there is "good news" but the virus could "reignite".
www.bbc.com www.bbc.com
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As we’ve seen in India & Brazil human behaviour is a big factor going forward in this pandemic. I was thinking if Afghanistan falls back into the hands of the Taliban and with their well known opposition to vaccination I imagine that will be one large home for the virus. One of the leading experts in eradicating smallpox said that they would have probably not been able to eradicate it if they had carried out the vaccination campaign ten years later, as they did it in the years just prior to the soviet invasion of the country.
 
Several states in India have now run out of vaccines with the vaccination centres in Mumbai closing for three days. Also the death toll is believed to be 5-10 times that of the official total meaning the real death total could between one and two million.

www.reuters.com

Overwhelmed India running short of COVID-19 vaccines

Several states in India have run out of vaccines against COVID-19, exacerbating a dire second wave of infections that has left hospitals and morgues overflowing while families scramble for increasingly scarce medicines and oxygen.
www.reuters.com www.reuters.com
 
They know this could cause another wave as it shakes out of the system so to speak vaccine failures and the non-vaccinated. I am guessing they are hoping the hospitals will be able to cope better in the summer than winter and the wave won’t be too large. That said it depends on people’s behaviour and if they are scrapping mask wearing as well plus what new variants like the Indian one do.

www.reuters.com

UK on course to ditch social distancing rule in June - PM Johnson

Britain is on course to ditch the COVID-19 social distancing rule requiring people to stay at least one metre apart towards the end of next month, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Monday.
www.reuters.com www.reuters.com
 
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