News COVID-19 pandemic

[mahdavi3d]

 

[Sbb1413]

It is usually true that a vaccine of a disease curbs an epidemic caused by the disease. Of course, there are several exceptions, and the most well-known are cancer, obesity, old timer's and tuberculosis. Seasonal epidemic of dengue in East India will never go away if we don't continue researching about a dengue vaccine.

 

[Sbb1413]

Also, don't expect Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to be available in India. This is why: https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/pfi...ication-of-its-covid-vaccine-in-india-2363609

 

[mahdavi3d]

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[N_Molson]

Quite horrific numbers in a nursing home in the North of France (Aisne), related to a "rare, 19B variant".

Out of 111 residents, 107 were infected and 27 died (more or less 25%). Amongst the 70 social workers and medical staff, 57 were infected, but all are fine.

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister said again that "given the current situation, there's no justification for a hard lockdown". ?

 

[Urwumpe]

Quite horrific numbers in a nursing home in the North of France (Aisne), related to a "rare, 19B variant".

Out of 111 residents, 107 were infected and 27 died (more or less 25%). Amongst the 70 social workers and medical staff, 57 were infected, but all are fine.

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister said again that "given the current situation, there's no justification for a hard lockdown". ?

Thats numbers that we had in a nursing home next to my place one year ago. of 150 inhabitants, nearly half died in the following 5 weeks. It has to be said, all there suffered from some form of dementia and had been very fragile to start with. But still it had been a terrible number, It made Wolfsburg some kind of anomaly, because we had fairly little incidence so far, but extremely many deaths.

That vulnerability of nursing homes also explains why Germany and USA have so different ways to die: In Germany, many more old people live in nursing home and you have a much higher chance to catch COVID-19 and die, if you live there. In the USA, less people live in nursing homes, so less people of this age group die there compared to Germany.

 

[N_Molson]

That vulnerability of nursing homes also explains why Germany and USA have so different ways to die: In Germany, many more old people live in nursing home and you have a much higher chance to catch COVID-19 and die, if you live there. In the USA, less people live in nursing homes, so less people of this age group die there compared to Germany.

Yes France is pretty much like Germany for that. Now those homes are not free and often private buisnesses, so the elders living there or there families still have to pay and it can be quite expensive, more than a typical rent, but there are social aids. Those catastrophic kind of figures typically happen in "EHPADs" Établissements d'Hébergement pour Personnes Agées Dépendantes, which is a bit hard to translate. They are meant for old people that are "dependent", meaning they need help, often medical or paramedical everyday. Typically those are very old people that can't wash themselves, suffer from partial or full dementia... People that work here all have some kind of medical training. So yes, very fragile people that are not "in good health". And this is not something rare, all families I know have elders living in such structures.

 

[Urwumpe]

Yeah, those elders are exactly the kind of weak people, some politicians keep talking about, when they talk about protecting the vulnerable while infecting everybody else. Its impossible to prevent this at the gates to the nursing home, you need more than one line of defense, starting at the general population.

 

[4throck]

I'm afraid there isn't much hope for older people. Their immune system doesn't respond to the vaccine that well.
And because vaccination is slow, the virus will be around for some time.... and during that time they will also get older...

Here Covid got into a special nursing home for actors and other well known artists. Many have already died.
It's sad because they could have lived for a few more healthy years. Many didn't have any serious health problems.

 

[Quick_Nick]

 

[Urwumpe]

We just got informed that 36 "experts" created a guideline, how its possible for our children to return to school. Safely is not mentioned much there and it is essentially the same damn idiotic set of actions, that got us into the current situation in first place. I REALLY want to know, which experts are responsible for that. I am almost sure, at least one of them was a Diesel engine developer, many of them lawyers, none of them a doctor or better an epidemiologist.

 

[Urwumpe]

And some new number for the statistics freaks here: It is estimated in a government paper, that 15-35 million COVID-19 rapid test kits had been used by private entities in Germany additionally to the official PCR tests in January 2021.

 

[N_Molson]

Well, here we kept the schools open and the good things is that, as I speak, children and young people mostly seem to be spared. A delicate situation for teachers that are near retirement. Now they close schools when cases are reported.

I really don't like how things are going worldwide, the South-African variant seem to be ~80% vaccine-resistant. Sure we can probably map the new variants genomes in a matter of days, but there's no way we'll be able to mass-produce safe vaccines fast enough. Or we have to completely reorganize the economy around vaccine production and forget safety standards, and I don't see that happening. ?

I have the disturbing feeling I'll be able to complete a couple of full-lunar-rockets-Orbiter-projects before all of this is over...

 

[Urwumpe]

Well, here we kept the schools open and the good things is that, as I speak, children and young people mostly seem to be spared. A delicate situation for teachers that are near retirement. Now they close schools when cases are reported.

We observe some funny paradox there: Childrens might be less often ill, but their parents are not ... Also the schools might be less problematic as everything else that happens on the way to and from school. Closing schools has a HUGE effect on the reproduction rate here.

I have the disturbing feeling I'll be able to complete a couple of full-lunar-rockets-Orbiter-projects before all of this is over...

Lucky that you can do that... I still have to finish a 35 minute presentation (and time is running out) after work, and I returned to full-time work (from home) in November...

 

[Screamer7]

Well, here we kept the schools open and the good things is that, as I speak, children and young people mostly seem to be spared. A delicate situation for teachers that are near retirement. Now they close schools when cases are reported.

I really don't like how things are going worldwide, the South-African variant seem to be ~80% vaccine-resistant. Sure we can probably map the new variants genomes in a matter of days, but there's no way we'll be able to mass-produce safe vaccines fast enough. Or we have to completely reorganize the economy around vaccine production and forget safety standards, and I don't see that happening. ?

I have the disturbing feeling I'll be able to complete a couple of full-lunar-rockets-Orbiter-projects before all of this is over...

Despite this resistance, the second wave in South Africa seems to be over. And we did not even start with vaccination.
And it looks like we will use the J&J vaccine instead of the AstraZeneca vaccine. So there is still hope.

 

[N_Molson]

@Screamer7: speaking of which, did the Southern Summer help with the pandemic ? Right now its mid/end Summer for you, right ? Here in Europe many hope that thing will ease in Summer...

 

[jedidia]

They hoped the same last year...

 

[Urwumpe]

They hoped the same last year...

And since saisonality depends more on human behaviour than on the actual properties of the virus, its no surprise that the effect is minimal for COVID-19, if at all.

Also, what many people forget: The second wave of the spanish flu 1918 started in mid-august - even if its a typical influenza virus, it did not wait for winter.

 

[4throck]

t there's no way we'll be able to mass-produce safe vaccines fast enough.

Indeed, but that was expected. Natural selection brings out a mutation rate of around 6 months, parallel with the flu * .
So the notion of vaccinating the entire world with the same, unchanging vaccine makes no sense.

* - 6 months are indeed due to human activity changes. In winter people stay indoors and close to each other.

 

[Face]

@Screamer7: speaking of which, did the Southern Summer help with the pandemic ? Right now its mid/end Summer for you, right ? Here in Europe many hope that thing will ease in Summer...

Many people in Europe behave like mules... the governments put some carrots in front of them so they carry on with the trot, unable to realize that they will never reach their goal, simply because the goal post is moving all the time. Evidence? Changes next week. Metrics? Numbers will move willy-nilly. Medics or vaccines available? New mutation or viruses pop up suddenly.
I fear that this situation will not end before massive violence breaks out. And I don't think that the world will look better after the fallout settles.
Fortunately, there is some humor in it: nowadays I can't quite distinguish real news media from satire media anymore. Time and again I have to double-check the address-bar if I'm on the right portal...