How COVID-19 is affecting society

[Innula Zenovka]

An appreciation of Martin Kenyon

Lost your faith in humanity? Covid vaccine patient Martin Kenyon might restore it

The 91-year-old greeted his new, corona-repelling superpowers by complaining about his lunch and asking Piers Morgan who he was – and it was a delight to see

www.theguardian.com

The best bit, though, was all the points he made just by existing: the clear human benefit of a public-health system where the only priority status you need to get a vaccination is being a person who needs it the most; the fact that right-thinking humans don’t prowl around Facebook looking for conspiracy theories – they go out, have a prawn sandwich, then get a vaccine so they can hug the people they want to hug, and this makes them delighted. But they don’t make a song and dance about it.

 

[Rose Karuna]

Lengthy piece by one of my favourite curmudgeons (present company excepted, of course) on how Covid-19 has shaken some certainties, or at least changed some assumptions, or how he thinks it has, anyway:

The year of the Great Humbling

Covid-19 has pricked the bubble of human supremacy and revealed our fragility. And the economic destruction means we cannot return to the free-market capitalism that made the pandemic inevitable.

www.newstatesman.com

Evernote link because paywall

A quote from the article really struck me:

The country that has been most successful in controlling the pandemic is probably Taiwan, which has a population of nearly 24 million and eliminated community transmission without lockdown by rapidly curtailing international air travel, early screening, publicly funded quarantine, efficient tracing and universal mask use. (Other Asian democracies have also done well. China’s record is difficult to assess because of controls on the flow of information.) New Zealand claims to have stamped out the virus, but at the cost of lockdown. However, no society can permanently eliminate Covid-19 while it is circulating in the rest of the world.

Every damn thing this country could have done to save people early on but didn't, because we have [had] a mendacious, cruel, blowhard, monster for president.

 

[Sid]

NL should follow suit in this IMHO. The climbing numbers become worrisome.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Has a year of living with Covid-19 rewired our brains?

The pandemic is expected to precipitate a mental health crisis, but perhaps also a chance to approach life with new clarity

www.theguardian.com

 

[bubblesort]

U.S. Marshals will protect COVID-19 vaccine during rollout

The news comes as the Food and Drug Administration is expected to approve Pfizer's vaccine for emergency authorization.

www.cbsnews.com

This is not a good idea. The marshals providing support for the rollout is only going to complicate the logistics, which is the last thing we need.

I just hope it doesn't make people sick. All it takes is a few prople in the manufacturing plant to infect the product, or some human error in manifacturing and distribution, for this to become massive disaster.

 

[Sid]

All it takes is a few prople in the manufacturing plant to infect the product, or some human error in manifacturing and distribution, for this to become massive disaster.

This goes for every vaccine, flue, rabies, tetanus, rubella, you name it. And it very rarely happens with those. Why should it be different with this one?
So I think that is no reason whatsoever not to vaccinate.

The massive problem with these two vaccines is to keep them long enough deep frozen. Normal refrigerators ain't good enough.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

U.S. Marshals will protect COVID-19 vaccine during rollout

The news comes as the Food and Drug Administration is expected to approve Pfizer's vaccine for emergency authorization.

www.cbsnews.com

This is not a good idea. The marshals providing support for the rollout is only going to complicate the logistics, which is the last thing we need.

I just hope it doesn't make people sick. All it takes is a few prople in the manufacturing plant to infect the product, or some human error in manifacturing and distribution, for this to become massive disaster.

From the report:

The U.S. Marshals on Thursday said it would protect a COVID-19 vaccine as it travels throughout the country. The news comes as the Food and Drug Administration is expected to approve Pfizer's vaccine for emergency authorization.

"Deputy Marshals are working hand-in-hand with Operation Warp Speed personnel to provide security for COVID-19 vaccines from the facilities where they are manufactured to distribution sites," the U.S. Marshals said in a statement.

Deputies will be stationed at several points in the distribution process to protect storage stockpiles, manufacturers, transports, and receiving facilities. The agency is responsible for disseminating medical materials and pharmaceuticals to the American people in a time of crisis, according to the Strategic National Stockpile Security Operations Program.

What's not a good idea? Who do you say should be providing security for the shipments, and why would they do a better job than the US Marshals (the answer might be obvious to someone more familiar with the situation than am I but, not being American, I don't see it)?

 

[Casey Pelous]

U.S. Marshals will protect COVID-19 vaccine during rollout

The news comes as the Food and Drug Administration is expected to approve Pfizer's vaccine for emergency authorization.

www.cbsnews.com

This is not a good idea. The marshals providing support for the rollout is only going to complicate the logistics, which is the last thing we need.

...

US Marshals provide security for shipments constantly -- many times the logistics people never even see them. (They might see their black SUV's, but not the Marshals.) How do you think truckloads of guns and ammunition get safely across the country to Cabela's?

 

[bubblesort]

This goes for every vaccine, flue, rabies, tetanus, rubella, you name it. And it very rarely happens with those. Why should it be different with this one?
So I think that is no reason whatsoever not to vaccinate.

The massive problem with these two vaccines is to keep them long enough deep frozen. Normal refrigerators ain't good enough.

The problem is the entire process of developing and distributing this vaccine is rushed. I trust the vaccines for the flu, measles, etc, but I don't trust this one yet.

From the report:

What's not a good idea? Who do you say should be providing security for the shipments, and why would they do a better job than the US Marshals (the answer might be obvious to someone more familiar with the situation than am I but, not being American, I don't see it)?

It's still more administrative overhead. When things are being rushed, administrative overhead makes me nervous. It creates more potential points of failure.

US Marshals provide security for shipments constantly -- many times the logistics people never even see them. (They might see their black SUV's, but not the Marshals.) How do you think truckloads of guns and ammunition get safely across the country to Cabela's?

I hope you're right.

 

[Arkady Arkright]

The problem is the entire process of developing and distributing this vaccine is rushed. I trust the vaccines for the flu, measles, etc, but I don't trust this one yet.

Make sure you wear your mask and stay away from other people - why should they suffer for your mistrust ?

 

[Innula Zenovka]

The problem is the entire process of developing and distributing this vaccine is rushed. I trust the vaccines for the flu, measles, etc, but I don't trust this one yet.

I think the question of speed is to do with a simple calculation.

The goal is to save as many lives as possible.

Normally, when they're developing a vaccine, there's no great hurry -- they want to do their best to eradicate the disease, but the disease is usually under control already, and since they'll be administering the vaccine to whole populations, the potential benefits in terms of lives saved should they detect some extremely rare side effect are very great.

So they spend as much time as they need, because the known harm done by delaying the vaccine is very small compared with the potentially grave harm done by missing a very rare side-effect.

However, that's not the case here. The known harm done by Covid-19 is immense, so it's a question of balancing the certainty of tens or hundreds of thousands of deaths a day worldwide for every day the vaccine is delayed vs the possibility of a far smaller number deaths that might hypothetically be caused by unknown but extremely rare risks that might be missed by not taking several years to conduct every possible study.

I have every confidence that the British medical authorities would not have authorised the vaccine if they were not satisfied it's perfectly safe, or at least a hell of a lot safer than not having a vaccine at all.

 

[Plurabelle Laszlo]

There is another aspect people tend to forget when talking about the 'rushed' process. Normally reducing costs is a big factor in the development process of a vaccine, too. And that means, certain tests are done one after the other - you test a certain aspect of the vaccine, then decide if it's worth to start testing the next aspect. if a problem occurs, further tests will not be done till you have found a solution (or not), simply because you don't want to waste time and money on a product that might turn out to be useless. As far as I understand (after listening to virology podcasts - who would have thought tthat I d ever do that on a regular basis), this time tests have been run simultaneously because the urgency of the pandemic justified the higher financial risk. Of course that doesn't mean that there can't be longterm sideeffects they haven't found yet, but at least it explains why a process that normally might take a decade could be reduced to less than a year without being totally unsafe.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

US Marshals provide security for shipments constantly -- many times the logistics people never even see them. (They might see their black SUV's, but not the Marshals.) How do you think truckloads of guns and ammunition get safely across the country to Cabela's?

The world witnessed in Ollie North you international gun running assholes sending, oh, Cabela's, not Canada, nevermind and forget I said anything.

 

[Jolene Benoir]

South Mpls has had helicopters going overhead for days on end. I am north so haven't really seen or heard it. People are irritated by it.

Speculation is that it is one of two things: monitoring our outrageous carjacking incidents (the criminals are beating the hell out of their victims even when they turn over the keys and in general they are choosing women, especially those that are older) OR that the State Patrol is running simulation exercises for the vaccine. It has to be kept at a certain temp and testing for timing and protection from theft. For their part, they are saying it isn't anything that would endanger the public, so I lean toward the latter explanation.

 

[Aribeth Zelin]

My only concern about the vaccine is; if its a short term one like flu vaccines, people might just assume they are 100% safe forever and they aren't.

For that matter, and I warned my mom this since she's in the 3rd group of people, barring her heart doc moving her up, the vaccines aren't supposed to be 100% anyway. And people in the early groups still would need to be careful, until everyone's been vaccinated.

 

[Arkady Arkright]

the vaccines aren't supposed to be 100% anyway.

My understanding of at least the Pfizer vaccine is that, even if it doesn't protect 100%, any infection you may get will be far less serious anyway.

 

[Aribeth Zelin]

My understanding of at least the Pfizer vaccine is that, even if it doesn't protect 100%, any infection you may get will be far less serious anyway.

Yes, and that's better, but... I think we still don't know the full extent of what even a less serious infection can do long term and I don't want to learn first hand, or risk my 76 yr old mom to it either. I've already got multiple friends who have gotten it, and at least two are long termers.

 

[Luisa Land]

Yes, and that's better, but... I think we still don't know the full extent of what even a less serious infection can do long term and I don't want to learn first hand, or risk my 76 yr old mom to it either. I've already got multiple friends who have gotten it, and at least two are long termers.

My information is that of the approximately 20,000 people who were vaccinated with the agent, 8 fell ill with corona, one of them severely.
Of the placebo group, 162 people fell ill.
Whether the vaccination had a positive effect on the severity of the disease of the sick people cannot be determined from this, in my opinion.
But anyhow these figures look very good.., I think

 

[Sid]

I hope everybody understands that it takes weeks after the 2 vaccinations, before the protection has reached its optimum. Just as with the flue vaccines.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

I hope everybody understands that it takes weeks after the vaccination before the protection has reached its optimum. Just as with the flue vaccines.