Share your experience, tips, advice, questions…
As it seems most communities world-wide are going into voluntary or enforced quarantine that involves staying at home and avoiding physical contact as much as possible, I thought we could have a thread where we could try a bit of mutual support by cheering each other up over the next few days, weeks, months… Who knows?
I don’t know: suggestions on films to watch, books to read, gardening tips, exercise ideas
Usual rules apply plus a guideline. Let’s be kind and supportive to each other.
North or South? North Korea claim no cases yet are locked down as tight as an Uighur retraining camp. S Korea is effectively an island due to the border with the North.
When France locked down a few days ahead of us, and harder, many on the Left spent the next year bashing the Johnson government for this differential, pointing to the power of exponential processes. Now France is struggling and we’re not (yet), it must be something else! To be clear, I despise the Johnson government, and lean far more Left than anywhere else. Political decisions are obviously not irrelevant (Brazil!) but there’s a bunch of circumstantial stuff to factor in too. They can only play the hand they’re dealt in terms of genetics, existing serology, mutations arising, population attitudes to compliance and vaccination, practicalities of enforcement, etc. It’s a complex game to which people love to offer simplistic solutions. “Be like China!”. What, just like that? OK.
All that said, Macron’s reported Trumpian assumption of expertise is a bit jaw-dropping.
Allan Miller,
Sure. All politicians fall prey to “events”. But Macron can’t be excused for his unevidenced remarks about the Astra-Zeneca vaccine.
Alan Fox,
I see France are now offering under 55’s a different vaccine for 2nd dose. It’s probably fine, but I’d be a bit nervous about untrialled faffing about, myself, unless the concerns were on a firmer footing.
I understand all the issues so far have been 1st-dose ones – and affect a smaller proportion than the clots associated with combined contraceptives, willingly prescribed and taken. It’s not impossible that those, or antagonistic effects involving those, underlie the problems seen, given the group most affected.
Really? I have my name down and should be a priority being of a certain age but not a sign of anything happening. I was asked by my doctor if I was happy to receive the AZ vaccine and I said no problem thinking France would be awash with it after Macron discouraging people but apparently not.
Is there a downside, assuming it is possible, to getting vaccinated with two or three different vaccines?
Alan Fox,
Probably not, but then I’d have said these vaccines probably won’t cause blood clots, so I’m not the best guide! There is a possibility it could give a better response overall, by covering more of the spike. It’s just that this wasn’t how the trials were conducted.
Equally, there was nervousness about extending the interval from 3 to 12 weeks. It’s starting to look like a long gap is better.
Allan Miller,
France is basically an island, but it has countries next to it. And besides some countries in Africa speak French. The word garage is also French in origin.
News update: the Santa Clara study that we were de-bunking in May has received much thorough fisking and turns out to be a piece of crapulous advocacy by J.P.A.Ioannidis funded by the
CEO<insert>founder </insert>of JetBlue (who is anti-lockdown, for some reason…)Back then, Ioannidis was pushing estimates of total US deaths in the 10,000 range.
E2 fix Neeleman’s role at JetBlue
DNA_Jock,
Interesting, and disturbing. People with legitimate claim to an alternative prefix to “Mr” or “Ms” have a particular duty of care in their public pronouncements, given the tendency to credential-mongering among the pseudoscience fraternity, such as we see on a regular basis in these pages.
The idea that doctors are over-counting Covid hits particularly close to home, given my daughter’s role in the first wave as both clinician and certifier. Death certification is a ‘serious professional duty’. They give an honest assessment of cause – Covid is not primary; it’s organ failure, or pneumonia, typically brought on by cytokine storm, but you’d have to mention Covid, else why the cytokine storm? The popular confusion over this is exacerbated here by our simple daily metric, which is any death within 28 days of a positive PCR. But that’s just to keep the stats ghouls happy; it does not feed through to certification, which takes longer to process. The mythical ‘car crash counts as Covid’ is bollocks.
Something was causing an endless procession of ambulances pouring patients into a system already under great strain. The idea that this was a tsunami of comorbidity is laughable. Even people with comorbidities tend not to die in waves, and are entitled to expect to survive. Everyone on the ward at that time has been offered PTSD counselling.
Particularly ironic that the prediction finally gets published at a time when real data shows it to be false. I’m not the world’s most vocal supporter of the hardest versions of lockdown, but I think the error bars on estimates justified caution. If incoming data justified relaxation, then that’s what you’d do. Whoops, we overreacted. But betting the farm on low-end estimates being the right ball-park runs an enormous risk if they aren’t. The genie’s out the bottle.
Allan Miller,
Don’t know if you can access it, but there’s a 15 minute movie about an ICU in AZ, “Death through a nurse’s eyes” by the NYT.
A close friend is an OR nurse in Boston, and was ‘the wrong side of the plastic’ for months. Now returned to her regular job, thankfully. The hospital made counseling available for everyone.
Well, hear what happened to me today. I’ve been trying without success to book an appointment for a vaccination as the national website continually returns fully booked, try later on inquiring and has been doing for weeks.. Then I heard at lunchtime from an acquaintance that a particular pharmacy was taking bookings in person. I was in town so I called in. The guy behind the counter said he could do it straight away if that was OK. Picking myself up from the floor I readily agreed. Not only that, I called my wife, who was also in town shopping. Result: we are both now vaccinated with AZ.
I remarked to the pharmacist that I needed to revise my opinion of M Macron. He replied “No need, he’s still an arsehole.”.
This article is quite relevant and encouraging.
Congratulations!
All my immediate family in the USA booked vaccinations through the ‘CVS shuffle’ (thanks to my wife): you start the booking process for an appointment in Mississippi, keep the tab open, and then when appointments open up at a CVS near you, you are three steps ahead of the crowd.
Some of my daughters’ friends, however, succeeded by hanging around Walgreens at closing time: “Got any spare?”
It is a mess.
DNA_Jock,
A lottery!
Wow, he hooked you up quicker than an Israeli soldier taking potshots at Palestinian toddlers!
phoodoo,
What point are you making, phoodoo?
That China can’t be called out for their behavior because other people are also doing bad things. A 5 year olds response when called out on their behaviour
The problem is that the right people need to be oppressed, or phoodoo is against it.
Palestinian toddlers being oppressed? phoodoo is against that!
People being oppressed who ‘deserve’ to be oppressed? phoodoo won’t say a word against it. He’ll even note they must be in the camp for a good reason.
https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/uk-and-its-allies-put-sanctions-on-chinese-officials-who-have-helped-lead-oppression-of-the-uighurs-925397
Sanctions have already started.
That Israeli soldiers don’t shoot Palestinian toddlers fast enough for phoodoo’s liking?
Well, OM and Mung, thanks for your explanations. I’m still struggling to see the particular connection between me getting a vaccination and “an Israeli soldier taking potshots at Palestinian toddlers!” Not that I think taking potshots at children between 1 and 4 years old is ever defensible behaviour that should be tolerated. Well, perhaps other toddlers.
ETA maybe phoodoo would like to explain further here.
I’m noticing news stories about temporary waiving patents on Covid vaccines. Seems that allowing vaccine to be manufactured generically could dramatically improve the vaccination rates and speed the arrival of normality for us all.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.republicworld.com/amp/world-news/us-news/us-senators-urge-biden-to-support-indias-proposal-of-covid-vaccine-patent-waiver.html
Back from the dead, you lucky things.
First things first. Yes, I was completely wrong about the second wave. No excuses.
Sadly wrong also about the pace of vaccination. It takes two months to get an appointment on VAMS. I was lucky to have gotten flu shots at CVS. They emailed me the weekend before I was eligible, and I got both shots in February. My wife has not been so fortunate, and will get her second shot Tuesday.
petrushka,
Welcome back.
And there we have ID in a nutshell.
When explanations are requested, unlike almost every other person on this forum, phoodoo responds with insults rather then clarifications.
Out of the two of you, when one person is asking reasonable questions and the other person’s response is to call that person dumb, then who comes off worst in that scenario?
Hint: It’s not Alan.
OMagain,
Explain what you mean. I can’t understand anything you just wrote.
I think we should all bow down to China’s obvious superiority. They are so good that they haven had a single covid case in over a year.
petrushka,
There have been one or two cases, as you can see if you zero in close to the graph. But yes, its very impressive.
It’s no surprise that you believe that, given you also believe a man can bend spoons with his mind alone and that dogs can predict when their owners are about to arrive home at random times…..
The complete lack of covid in China is the biggest news of the 21st century.
Possibly the biggest medical story of all time.
And yet no newspapers or news networks are covering it.
Ha. I think an even bigger news story is that you think you can’t read in the news that covid has been completely controlled in China for almost a year now. That should write a conspiracy piece about you writing about a fake conspiracy, because its not that hard to find.
In the province next to Hebei, where the outbreak is said to have begun, there have been I believe 2 covid deaths. The population of Sichuan province is 81 million give or take. In fact EVERY case that appears in China is very closely followed. Anyone can find out about them. Even me. But here is the really amazing part. You can read about it! I know, crazy, right? In places like pubmed and plos.
Now I do realize that those outlets are probably a wing of Qanon to your mind, but probably there are other places you can read about it. Like the New York Times or such.
Not sure if it is on Newsmax though. So you could be right. Huge conspiracy.
I guess when the US police aren’t busy tackling fourth graders and 73 year olds with dementia, they might help with the pandemic one day. Haha, just kidding, of course they won’t.
But you won’t read about this in the news willya? Unless you read the news I guess.
Shows what you can do with a consistent public health policy firmly applied on a
commentcompliant population.Or a compliant press.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/12/28/china-2020-major-stories/