COVID-19/Coronavirus Information and Support Thread (see OP for useful links)

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novcze
I wanted to be done with it asap but I don't mind waiting longer, because it extends immunity more into fall/winter season.
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I know, everyone wants it in the rear view mirror. But it's not binary. Based on the studies I dug up for Pfizer, your immunity grows over time from the first dose, really starting to be noticeable after 2 weeks. After 3 weeks your immunity from the 1st dose is substantial. Not as good as 2-doses, but better than, for example, a typical flu vaccine. 1-dose of Pfizer might actually rival J&J effectivity. I'm not sure on that one but it wouldn't surprise me. The 2nd dose is not really for the purpose of boosting short-term immunity, it's to make sure that immunity is retained for a decent period into the future. If you made it to 21 days after the 1st dose, your immunity statistics are respectable. To give you a feel for it, look at fig. 2 here.

Immunity from the 2nd dose can be expected to be noticed in that chart at about 7 days after the 2nd dose (which is 21 days in that study), in other words, at about 28 days the 2nd dose is having an effect. So check how the slope of the curve is not really changing that much going into and coming out of the 28 day mark or thereafter. There's no big boost in immunity starting at 28 days or starting after.

Anyway, the immunity you get by 21 days is the cake, at least in the short term - maybe not the long term. The 2nd dose is the icing.
 
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ROAD_DOGG33J
There are studies out that immunity may last longer than thought before and could also possibly be good news for the vaccines as well.

https://thehill.com/changing-americ...new-studies-find-immunity-from-covid-19-could
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From what I read.
Is that if you had covid you wouldn't need the booster shot come a year.
If you haven't then you still would need.

I heard that if you had covid you wouldn't need the vaccine.
This really doesn't say much outside of what we already knew?
 
I've been feeling a bit suspect for the last week or so... an annoying cough that has now become more like a chest infection, and I'm also getting hot flushes but not what I'd call a 'fever'. Fortunately, I have a pack of lateral flow tests and have now tested myself twice, and come up negative both times. That said, the test is a bitch. You're supposed to scrape both tonsils 4 times without touching any other part of your mouth... nigh on impossible, not least as it makes me gag. Then you insert the same swab into your nose and swirl it about, but in both cases it's hard to tell if you are doing it right.

The test has at least produced a negative result (as opposed to no result/void) so I am hopeful that it has at least worked, and two negatives is more reliable than one.
 
Meanwhile, Porto has been, in the last few days, flooded with football "fans" (the city is the host of the Champions League final).

Countless groups of people are gathered all over the city, all drunk and without masks (I'm not even mentioning social distancing, which, as you'd imagine, is non-existant in these cases).

As a citizen of Portugal, it's really sad to see this happening, after all the sacrifices we went (and keep going) through. Especially considering we're still very late in the vaccination program.

Seriously, **** all the disrespectful holligan baboons who are currently here, just to get drunk and create havoc.

And, most importantly, **** every one in our government who allowed for this to happen (meaning, letting the UCL final be hosted here - once again!).
Not that I'm surprised by any of this, as I've long lost any hope in this corrupt Banana's Republic that is my country.
 
35mm
Meanwhile
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Also,

The Dutch Squad in Portugal for a week of training and a game against Scotland in Faro. And on Sunday they play a game against Georgia in Enschede.

Let's see how all the traveling for the EC will spark a new massive wave through Europe because football is important.
 
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Another remarkable football and Corona story.

The Copa America was close to being cancelled after Colombia withdrew because of the political tension in the country, Argentina was the remaining host but now that the number of infections is rising they also cancelled their bid.


As an incredible gesture of hospitality, Trump of South America, Bolsonaro has announced that his country will be the host, because of course, there's no such thing as the virus from Wuhan.
 
Dennisch
Another remarkable football and Corona story.

The Copa America was close to being cancelled after Colombia withdrew because of the political tension in the country, Argentina was the remaining host but now that the number of infections is rising they also cancelled their bid.


As an incredible gesture of hospitality, Trump of South America, Bolsonaro has announced that his country will be the host, because of course, there's no such thing as the virus from Wuhan.
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The deaths are completely random, and have nothing to do with a pandemic.
 
JKgo
This popped up in my feed this morning. Sounds... reasonable, I guess?
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Well meaning at least, but with the exception of the obvious ones ("China Virus", "WuFlu", etc) I don't believe any of them are used maliciously or in a derogatory way at all, and generally people in the places concerned don't take it that way.

---

WHO renames UK and other variants with Greek letters

"The World Health Organization (WHO) has announced a new naming system for variants of Covid-19.
From now on the WHO will use Greek letters to refer to variants first detected in countries like the UK, South Africa and India.
The UK variant for instance is labelled as Alpha, the South African Beta, and the Indian as Delta.
The WHO said this was to simplify discussions but also to help remove some stigma from the names."
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Seems to me that it won't simplify discussions at all, making them more obscure, and stigma won't be removed if this format is followed:

On Monday, a scientist advising the UK government said the country was in the early stages of a third wave of coronavirus infections, in part driven by the Delta, or Indian variant.

It is thought to spread more quickly than the Alpha (UK; Kent) variant, which was responsible for the surge in cases in the UK over the winter.
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I mean, I'd rather there wasn't a 'UK' variant, but it is what it is - a strain that arose and became dominant here. Stigma or not it's short and descriptive, people know what it means, and it can be built upon. Saying, for example, that "the South African variant is present in the UK but hasn't become the dominant strain" tells someone quite a lot about the variants involved in just a few words. Of course it's imprecise, so for scientific purposes there are PANGO lineages etc. For everyday communication and reporting I can't think of any alternative that is readily accessible that would avoid stigma.

The Greek letters will always be dragging behind events - there isn't one for the variant recently discovered in Vietnam yet. Reporting of new variants will anyway have to say where they were found, and I'd say it's at that point that their colloquial name is cast.

They seem somewhat illogical with the UK/Kent variant being 'Alpha' even though it wasn't the earliest of the named variants. Frankly they should've skipped Alpha as it has a stigma all of its own.

It doesn't seem to be catching on fast at the BBC, with this article today using the geographical names only, no mention of Alpha or Delta (they may edit it later).
 
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Outspacer
Well meaning at least, but with the exception of the obvious ones ("China Virus", "WuFlu", etc) I don't believe any of them are used maliciously or in a derogatory way at all, and generally people in the places concerned don't take it that way.

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WHO renames UK and other variants with Greek letters



Seems to me that it won't simplify discussions at all, making them more obscure, and stigma won't be removed if this format is followed:



I mean, I'd rather there wasn't a 'UK' variant, but it is what it is - a strain that arose and became dominant here. Stigma or not it's short and descriptive, people know what it means, and it can be built upon. Saying, for example, that "the South African variant is present in the UK but hasn't become the dominant strain" tells someone quite a lot about the variants involved in just a few words. Of course it's imprecise, so for scientific purposes there are PANGO lineages etc. For everyday communication and reporting I can't think of any alternative that is readily accessible that would avoid stigma.

The Greek letters will always be dragging behind events - there isn't one for the variant recently discovered in Vietnam yet. Reporting of new variants will anyway have to say where they were found, and I'd say it's at that point that their colloquial name is cast.

They seem somewhat illogical with the UK/Kent variant being 'Alpha' even though it wasn't the earliest of the named variants. Frankly they should've skipped Alpha as it has a stigma all of its own.

It doesn't seem to be catching on fast at the BBC, with this article today using the geographical names only, no mention of Alpha or Delta (they may edit it later).
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It may take a while to catch on, sure, since we've been using the country name + variant for over a year now. However, I'm thinking that it could be easier to name the new variants moving on - for instance, I heard a new variant was discovered in Vietnam - but rather than calling it the "Vietnam variant", it could be called Delta 2.0 or something, since I heard it's similar to Indian variant.
 
A 90 day investigation of the origin of the virus by US intelligence agencies has apparently been requested by US President Joe Biden.
 
JKgo
It may take a while to catch on, sure, since we've been using the country name + variant for over a year now. However, I'm thinking that it could be easier to name the new variants moving on - for instance, I heard a new variant was discovered in Vietnam - but rather than calling it the "Vietnam variant", it could be called Delta 2.0 or something, since I heard it's similar to Indian variant.
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It's got the notable mutations of both the Indian and UK/Kent variants, so some have been calling it a "UK-Indian" variant.

Saying "UK Variant" is simply a shorthand for saying "B1.1.7, the variant first sequenced from samples taken in Kent, UK". Actually a bit more than that, since it also implies that the strain became dominant. Sure, "Alpha variant" is just as short, but likely to be qualified with something like "that originated in Kent, UK" making it longer and failing to remove the supposed stigma.

My thought is mainly just that in practice the Vietnam variant is already that, and calling it Lambda¹ at some later time will just mean a translation step in your head to enable processing whatever is being said about it (Lambda¹? oh, the Vietnam).

¹ Just using Lambda as a placeholder. It's likely that it will become a VoC and possible that could happen swiftly enough for it to take the next available letter.

Let's have a tryout with something I was going to say about the new variant:

How the new variant, first sequenced in Vietnam, arose is something of a mystery. Although I think both Alpha and Delta variants had been detected in Vietnam, case numbers were extremely low. So the likelihood that Alpha and Delta variants managed to create the new one within Vietnam by chimeric means (both variants infecting the same person) is also very low. If that was how it was created, it's perhaps more likely that said combination happened elsewhere and travelled to Vietnam. The alternative would be that random mutation of either Alpha or Delta variants added the mutation(s) of the other, but again very unlikely to happen locally with case numbers as low as they were.

How the new Vietnam variant arose is something of a mystery. Although I think both UK and Indian variants had been detected in Vietnam, case numbers were extremely low. So the likelihood that UK and Indian variants managed to create the new one within Vietnam by chimeric means (both variants infecting the same person) is also very low. If that was how it was created, it's perhaps more likely that said combination happened elsewhere and travelled to Vietnam. The alternative would be that random mutation of either UK or India variants added the mutation(s) of the other, but again very unlikely to happen locally with case numbers as low as they were.
 
@Outspacer Agreed, I don't think this is helpful, and it probably won't catch on.

I can see the rationale behind it - to some extent anyway... a cynic might say that it will help drive the narrative away from 'blaming' countries for variants, but as you rightly say, that wasn't happening anyway - well, except for the original strain of course, which (ironically) is not a 'variant'.

Note, therefore, that this handy list of 'variants' doesn't even include the ancestral lineage, starting as it does with 'Alpha', the UK variant... :rolleyes:
 
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Touring Mars
@Outspacer Agreed, I don't think this is helpful, and it probably won't catch on.

I can see the rationale behind it - to some extent anyway... a cynic might say that it will help drive the narrative away from 'blaming' countries for variants, but as you rightly say, that wasn't happening anyway - well, except for the original strain of course, which (ironically) is not a 'variant'.

Note, therefore, that this handy list of 'variants' doesn't even include the ancestral lineage, starting as it does with 'Alpha', the UK variant... :rolleyes:
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Assigning them chronologically would've made more sense perhaps, starting with this one:
A variant of SARS-CoV-2 with a D614G substitution in the gene encoding the spike protein emerged in late January or early February 2020. Over a period of several months, the D614G mutation replaced the initial SARS-CoV-2 strain identified in China and by June 2020 became the dominant form of the virus circulating globally. (WHO)
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I don't think it ever got a geographical name, because nobody really knows where it started. And now seems not to have a greek letter either, despite its obvious significance. "Alpha variant" would have been perfect!
 
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Whitestar
I was wondering about that, why the "original" virus isn't called Alpha instead.
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That I can understand by it not being a variant; 'original' is sufficient to identify it, and in a neutral way.

---

The BBC is giving it a try in this article today:
However, there has been concern over a small rise in cases recently linked to the spread of the more transmissible variant first identified in India, now known as Delta.
...
In Wales, the health minister has said the easing of restrictions - due to be reviewed on Thursday - could be affected by a "very serious" cluster of the Delta variant in Conwy county.
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Since the article only refers to one variant, "now known as Delta" and the later "Delta" are completely redundant.

The article linked to in that quote (last edited 2 hours ago, but may be older) refers to "Indian variant" three times (and Delta zero times) with a mention of the renaming a little after the second use:
Updated figures on the spread of the Indian variant are expected to be published by Public Health Wales later this week.

The UK government has said up to three-quarters of new cases in England could be of the variant, which has been renamed Delta by the World Health Organization.
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I'll give that one a D- for lack of effort :)

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Of course the Daily Mail is loving the renaming attempt... as 'confirmation' of the rightness of their prejudices. :rolleyes:
 
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The government decided to follow the advice of the Dutch Health Organisation and to only use Moderna and Pfizer for everyone under 60. Over 60 still get poked with Astra Zeneca, Johnson is no longer needed.

And it looks like that I can make my appointment for the chip shot tomorrow. Fina****inglly.
 
Large scale sporting events may be on the way back. The Indianapolis Motor Speedway reported attendance of 135,000. It is rumored the actual number is closer to 200,000. The track has an ultimate capacity of 350,000. We are clawing our way back to normalcy - or is it normality?
 
I am hoping that as more of the richer countries start relaxing on it and giving out the extra doses to other developing countries, that I can get my trip to the Philippines in without having to quarantine even though I Have been vaccinated with Pfizer. :banghead:

Yet here.
We are under like 700 cases a day.
Governor still has his powers.
:grumpy:
 
Dennisch
And it looks like that I can make my appointment for the chip shot tomorrow. Fina****inglly.
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June 22. Second shot a month later.

Mr-Burns-Saying-Excellent.gif
 
Dotini
A 90 day investigation of the origin of the virus by US intelligence agencies has apparently been requested by US President Joe Biden.
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Honestly people think the development of chemical weapons and biological weapons have stopped not true one bit they are today being put away under secrecy for testing.

So the wuhan lab leak may not be farfetched.
 
I use Twitter for professional purposes - I basically only follow people who I've worked with or are in this industry, and I use the Lists feature to curate news for posting here on GTP :D

That means I rarely get to see Twitter's dank underbelly, because almost nobody I follow is part of the insane world. However sometimes I do, and this week it's COVID, and vaccines.

One of my colleagues, early on in the pandemic, volunteered at a COVID testing centre. Terribly altruistic, and to be lauded. However, this seems to have turned him into a COVID-19 expert, on every topic from masks to death rates, and especially vaccines. He's a blogger turned motoring writer with roughly the same virology experience as a bag of rocket lettuce, but that hasn't stopped him from pontificating across the subject.

A while back he started posting about "morons" wearing their masks out and about, rather than just in confined spaces. Personally, knowing that SARS-CoV-2 is droplet spread and hangs around in the air for periods measurable in units of hours, and knowing that the external surface of your mask should be treated as contaminated, and the fact that I'm extra lazy, I just don't take mine on and off repeatedly when I go into an out of shops. This apparently makes me a moron.

More recently he kicked off about an article from Johns Hopkins which said "Is the COVID vaccine is safe?". The reason for his bitching was that there's several COVID vaccines using different technologies and they work differently and we shouldn't be lumping them together - which he'd have read in the first line of the article if he'd bothered to look past the headline (unforgivable for a professional writer). In fact if you want to play semantics, technically only the mRNA vaccine is a vaccine, and the others are inoculations (inoculations contain inactive - inocuous - forms of the thing you want immunity to) but simply called vaccines due to convention. That's also the convention we use for "the COVID vaccine" in the same sense as we do for the 'flu vaccine, which also isn't one thing.

However the reason I've now unfollowed him (and several other people have too; he also took great glee in being unfollowed and blocked by a professional racing driver) is Lisa Shaw.

Lisa Shaw was a popular radio personality in the north-east, and she died last week aged 44. At the moment it's not known how or why, but it appears to be an AZ vaccine-linked CVST (the blood clots you keep hearing about). "Oh great", he said, then went on to state that she was never at risk from COVID as only 2,000 women aged 40-59 have died from COVID and was basically killed by the AZ vaccine.

Firstly, there's only 7.8m women that age in the UK, making the death risk - if his figure is accurate - from COVID-19 1 in 4,000.

The risk for a CVST is around 0.5 in 100,000 in general population. The risk for a CVST in women is around 1 in 100,000. The risk for a CVST with the AZ vaccine globally is around 2.5 in 100,000 (it's just under 1 in 100,000 in the UK). The risk for a CVST in women of reproductive age taking the contraceptive pill is around 4 in 100,000. The risk for a CVST from COVID-19 itself is around 40 in 100,000. The aforementioned risk of death from COVID-19 of a woman in the age range mentioned is 25 in 100,000.

Lisa Shaw's choice to be vaccinated actually cut her chances of a CVST to between 2 and 10% (the higher figure only if she was on the pill) of what it would have been had she caught COVID-19, and her chance of a CVST post-vaccination (which isn't necessarily fatal, though not great) is a tenth of her chance of dying from COVID-19 - not to mention the chances of a serious long-term condition from COVID-19 - which is included in the CVST odds.


I think that using a woman's death and statistics that prove the opposite of what you think they do in order to promote your agenda is not only unbecoming of someone claiming to be a journalist, it's straight up ghoulish. I really hate unfollowing people, because I'm picky about who I follow in the first place.
 
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Famine
Lisa Shaw's choice to be vaccinated actually cut her chances of a CVST to between 2 and 10% (the higher figure only if she was on the pill) of what it would have been had she caught COVID-19, and her chance of a CVST post-vaccination (which isn't necessarily fatal, though not great) is a tenth of her chance of dying from COVID-19 - not to mention the chances of a serious long-term condition from COVID-19 - which is included in the CVST odds.
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This paragraph is conveniently ignored by the anti-vax crowd and the media types looking to stir hysteria, and is really starting to tick me off. It is really unfortunate that the person who rolled snake eyes on the vaccine side effects is a public figure, as that will just add fuel to the crackpot fire.

I wonder if this guy also rails on airline safety records while zinging down B-roads at 80mph.
 
Famine
Firstly, there's only 7.8m women that age in the UK, making the death risk - if his figure is accurate - from COVID-19 1 in 4,000.
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Could also factor in an estimate of how many people have had covid so far, likely somewhere between 20% and 25% of the population, so that death risk would actually be something like 1 in 1,000. And most other factors I can think of that might bias that stat one way or the other make it worse...

'have had covid' stat is lower in that age group (highest in teens and yound adults).
behavioural changes bias towards protecting the more vulnerable.
vaccination of clinically at risk groups relatively early on in the program.
 
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What I don't understand is some of the people I work with that have grumbled about having to wear a mask and I'm almost sure aren't vaccinated, now they are upset that the company that builds storm shelters can't get theirs built quickly enough.

You complain about wearing a mask and getting a vaccination but want a storm shelter? You want one form of protection but not the other? Seems a little odd.
 
From smooth-brained garbage-people to Laika the dog. That was an entertaining read.

But why are the smooth-brained garbage-people (and since that's rather cumbersome, I'll instead refer to them as "Tuckers") fixated on chips?

If I was a Tucker and I was convinced some sinister somebody was squirting something into me, something like a poison makes much more sense. But I've been stuck twice with no confirmation on future stickings and I'm very much alive, so it seems the hypothetical poison has failed to do me in.

What about a high concentration drug (higher still for the single-stick formulations) to lull the stupid Tuckers into compliance? There's no pesky death to give the game away and a Tucker that will do what he's told is undoubtedly more useful than one that can do nothing at all.
 

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