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Coronavirus COVID-19 Pandemic

Ragnarok said:
I know a guy at work that keeps saying he refuses to take any sort of vaccine until Elon Musk takes it. He says it's because Elon Musk is a lot smarter than him. And while I have no doubt that is true, Elon Musk's area of expertise lies in electronics, not the medical field. But the dumbass (the coworker) refuses to acknowledge this, sounding like a broken record and saying "it doesn't matter, Elon Musk is still smart." It's kind of infuriating.
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I mean, knowing your limitations and trusting those smarter than you isn't a bad way to live your life, but you need to be at the very least selective about who you trust to know about each subject. Steven Hawking was also 'a lot smarter' than him, but he probably shouldn't be getting his political, financial or sports related opinions from the guy.
 
Also, there's the technical quibble that Elon Musk already had the virus (and recovered), so probably wouldn't take a vaccine anyway.
 
LurkingInTheDeceit said:
I mean, knowing your limitations and trusting those smarter than you isn't a bad way to live your life, but you need to be at the very least selective about who you trust to know about each subject. Steven Hawking was also 'a lot smarter' than him, but he probably shouldn't be getting his political, financial or sports related opinions from the guy.
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In the UK, they seem to treat their royalty like tabloid celebrities.

In the USA, we seem to do the opposite.
 
MadGreenSon said:
There's some evidence that recovery doesn't give immunity.
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So far it seems really unclear. There are a few known cases of reinfection, but given the attack rate we've seen in the US, if there were no immunity we should have many thousands right now and it'd be obvious. (Immunity is not binary; conventional immunity in this case might well be similar to one of the vaccines that are 95% effective but not 100%, say.) And there are some biochemical results suggesting that stuff like antibody count drops off a few months after recovery, but the degree to which this relates to actual immunity against infection isn't known.

In any case, though, given the limited supply of vaccines and the evidence that recovery provides at least some immunity, people who have had it and recovered are going to be low on the vaccine priority list. So Musk probably won't be taking any vaccine for quite some time anyway.
 
A fatality (as in died from the virus instead of the virus exacerbating existing issues) appeared in my neighborhood. The city is back into lockdown state, and yet as the end of the year arrives people began flocking to many places outside because reasons.

This is making my head hurts.
 
My funny meme sources have stopped being funny.

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Rakdos92 said:
And do we even know if these people actually died of corona, rather than dying and getting reported of dying of the 'rona?
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TotalAbsolutism said:
Based on prior behaviour, I am upgrading ATP's threadban to one month. Let it be said for the final time:

No. Conspiracy. Theories.

Random fearmongering such as he posted with zero substantiation will be taken as such. The next offender will be permanently removed from this thread. There will be no more warnings.
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Get out.
 
Those of you who've been following the thread, and my posts in it, have probably noticed that I really, really object to the characterization of COVID as a "flu."

I recently found an article on the subject that uses that characterization in a way that I don't have any problems with... and, because it's funny, I figured I might as well share it. Y'see, the second person in Britain to get the new COVID vaccine was a man named William Shakespeare... from Warwickshire.

Predictably, the BBC had something of a field day with this. To collate some of the many, many puns:

"Is this a needle which I see before me? Much ado about nothing? Two doses, both alike in quantity, and thus begins the taming of the flu. All's well that ends well, and with this a plague on neither of your houses."
 
Aleh said:
Predictably, the BBC had something of a field day with this. To collate some of the many, many puns:

"Is this a needle which I see before me? Much ado about nothing? Two doses, both alike in quantity, and thus begins the taming of the flu. All's well that ends well, and with this a plague on neither of your houses."
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This is actually great.
 
Today in the news, some enterprising fellows have decided to incorporate coronavirus with Christmas and create something neat. Some houses have set up their christmas lights display for their houses and synchronized it to the remix of the Victorian premiers coronavirus updates. I know I'll be doing my best to adhere to the message!
 
My mother received the vaccine today. She works admin at a healthcare facility and does COVID screening for patient intake as well. She wasn't on the primary list for today, but there was a waiting list in the event of no-shows and she ended up getting it. It's a relief both when it comes to her own safety and the chance of her bringing it back to the rest of the family.
 
I'm participating in a vaccine study. As part of that, I'm wearing an electronic monitoring device which uploads various vital statistics about how I'm doing over time.

vDkPjZ0.png

So yeah, it's basically an iPod without anything fun except the cyborg-themed blinking lights on the outside, which occasionally shine through my shirt and make me feel slightly cool.


Anyway, the fun thing I'm here to say is that I technically got a tracking & monitoring chip with my vaccine shot.

It's just huge and clunky and I voluntarily re-charge it every day.
 
My grandpa died of covid a couple days ago.

I'm mostly just relieved. About 40 years ago he suffered a great deal of brain damage and since then the only thing he's done is stare at the wall for 16 hours a day and mutter nonsense. I always thought he got that brain damage from a failed suicide attempt but later I was told that it was done by the Detroit crime family. I don't want to dox myself so I'll just say I did some digging and I find the claim credible. Supposedly the mob was trying to fake a suicide but by pure luck a neighbor wandered by and 'saved' grandpa. Everyone would have been happier if that neighbor came by either 10 minutes sooner before the damage was done or 10 minutes later when he was fully dead, but it is what it is.

I'm not sure what hell on earth is like but I think being a mostly brain-dead zombie for four decades might qualify. Like Alzheimer's but for your entire adult life, and the impact on the people around you is this tragedy that just goes on and on and on with no end in sight.

I can't really tell the rest of my family that I'm grateful that covid killed him, other than vague stuff like "he's finally at peace now". Maybe they feel the same way, but maybe they don't, and either way it's not socially acceptable. So this is something I can really only say anonymously here on the internet.

Anyway that's my covid story.
 
Biigoh said:
Hopefully they hit that person to the full extent for "destroying company property".
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The bastard has been arrested, on...
NPR said:
recommended charges of first-degree recklessly endangering safety, adulterating a prescription drug and criminal damage to property.
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He is also even more of a bastard than I previously thought, as he attempted to hide the destruction so that people would actually get the now-ineffective injections. I shit you not.

NPR said:
During a teleconference Thursday, Chief Aurora Medical Group Officer Jeff Bahr told reporters that the former employee deliberately removed the vials from refrigeration on two separate occasions — on Dec. 24 overnight, then returning them to proper storage, and then again on Dec. 25 into Saturday morning.

A pharmacy technician discovered them outside the refrigerator on Christmas morning and immediately notified superiors, Bahr said.

As a result, health care workers were forced to throw out about 570 doses of vaccine. However, some people were given the medicine that had been left out.

Grafton police detectives reported 57 patients received those injections. Bahr said those vaccines were rendered potentially less effective or altogether ineffective. The patients, who have been notified, are not at any risk of adverse health effects because the doses were left out, he noted.

The pharmacist told investigators he knew "that people who received the vaccinations would think they had been vaccinated against the virus when in fact they were not," officials said.
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I have to admit, I'm a bit worried about these vaccines. Normally, vaccines go through a 10 year process, to make sure they work, and are safe. 96% fail, too.

There's no way these ones can be as safe as all that.
 
Simonbob said:
I have to admit, I'm a bit worried about these vaccines. Normally, vaccines go through a 10 year process, to make sure they work, and are safe. 96% fail, too.

There's no way these ones can be as safe as all that.
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... where are you getting your numbers?
 
Simonbob said:
Last time I looked, I found a Australian Health Dep paper on it, but that was a while ago.

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/06/vaccine-development-barriers-coronavirus/


https://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/articles/vaccine-development-testing-and-regulation


The Aust one said 96% failure rate, I think. The World Economic Forum one says 99%, that's the first link.
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Except neither of those links actually provide those numbers -- or your ten-year figure:
Simonbob said:
Normally, vaccines go through a 10 year process, to make sure they work, and are safe.
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If you actually look at either of those, you'll find that the ten-year figure was actually for the entire development process. Thus your ten-year figure is actually five.

In this case, most of the work was originally done for COVID's somewhat less scary relative, SARS, back in 2002-2004. Because SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID) is closely related to SARS-CoV-1, most of that development work was still applicable, and we had a selection of vaccines (or, more technically, vaccine candidates) by mid-March.

Then, of course, we get into time that can be cut by simply throwing resources at the problem and advancements in technology. In the trials for the Salk polio vaccine, for instance, simply analyzing the data took most of a year. Between computers and the sheer level of concentrated scientific focus (and thus available personnel), I guarantee you that the statistical analyses for the COVID trials took nowhere near that. That's also not taking into account how recruitment is typically spread out over a period of time, or how disease characteristics drive things.

Y'see, the later (and longer-taking) trials aren't the ones that tell us if the vaccine is safe (although they continue to monitor for safety, and those trials tend to find any rare side effects that the earlier phases missed); they're the ones that tell us if the vaccine is effective -- i.e. that it works and protects against the disease.

In this case, they took a fairly dramatic step and combined the Phase II and Phase III trials. That is, they said "fuck it, this is a crisis" and tested the things for safety and efficacy simultaneously. As such, you can effectively drop the year or two normally spent on Phase II trials from the timeline.

(And no, that two years isn't monitoring time -- it's usually an artifact of recruitment time and adjustments to the vaccine's delivery schedule. Believe it or not, it can take a really long time to cycle a few hundred people through a clinic while carefully monitoring their health and immune systems.)

So, in this case, that "ten year" figure is really closer to three or four... and that part is mostly spent seeing if the vaccine works, not seeing if it's safe.

Oh, and...

Simonbob said:
The Aust one said 96% failure rate, I think. The World Economic Forum one says 99%, that's the first link.
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... neither article you linked provides either number. As such, you appear to be essentially pulling it out of your ass.

Edit: Oh, and I forgot to mention that the regulatory review of a new vaccine can easily take a year or two... and those ten-fifteen year timelines include that. So, yeah, cut that 3-4 year figure down even further... and the remainder still isn't decreased safety monitoring; I'd just have to get into statistics and effect size numbers to explain it.
 
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