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Thread: Pandemic Thread (CoronaVirus etc.)

  1. #2861
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    Quote Originally Posted by Crazed_Insanity View Post
    What I'm interested to know is why is India playing 'catch up'? Did they shut their borders for a long time and did a great job wearing masks and social distancing and contact tracing at 1st? And then relaxed and became complacent?

    Or is this current wave mostly due the mutant variant?

    My guess is more of the later.
    I think its both but seems its more complacency.
    They did go relatively hard, shutting down stuff, encouraging workers to go back to their villages (a risk, but seemed to work out)
    Now its opened up, more gatherings and religious events.
    Its hard to stay locked up for long periods, real hard. Esp if it seems that covid is not that big a deal, which it wasnt for most of the last year in India.
    They now have exponential growth that we havent really seen since March last year.
    Im sure new strains are helping. And the death toll is up due to overloaded hospitals.

  2. #2862
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    George, I think most Americans who want one probably have already gotten their shots.

    Walk ins will make it easier for those found it inconvenient to make online appointments perhaps?

    I really do hope we’re not letting excessive vaccines expire at our local grocery stores while rest of the worlds waiting in dire situations…

    We were already storing AZ vaccines unnecessarily because it’s not even approved by FDA to be used in US still… and now South African variant has already rendered them AZ vaccines useless…

    Hope Biden admin will provide the global leadership the world needs to contain this. America is looking much better, but the whole world is in this together.

    My only remaining wish is for there to be a vaccine for kids under 12.

  3. #2863
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    Quote Originally Posted by George View Post
    I've been to Ralph's a few times. The first was in the 1990s. I lived in the Bible Belt then and was amazed to see hard liquor for sale in a grocery store. And it wasn't in the back of the store on aisle 37; it was right inside the front door, next to the produce department. I stick to beer, so it didn't really matter to me, but it was surprising to this barefoot hillbilly on his first trip west of the Mississippi.
    Reminds me of my first trip to Utah - it was in the winter of 1999, I think, my work (one of the biggest online toy retailers at the time) shipped a bunch of us engineers out to Provo to work in the Fingerhut distribution center there because they couldn't get their shit together and were falling behind on Christmas shipments. Went to a grocery store and found out they could have Corona Light but not Corona because that was too strong, and you could buy margarita mix but you couldn't buy tequila.

    What a world.

    Thankfully right next to the hotel we were staying at in downtown Provo was "A Beauford Gifford Club", which was a members-only place, which meant hooch. We never got a membership though, I always went with two attractive women I worked with and somehow we always got sponsored for the night. I have the distinct feeling it would not have gone the same way if I just showed up on my own.

    Anyway, way off topic.

    Agreed - there's certainly some moral issues around essentially hoarding a bunch of the vaccine because you're a rich country, but there are definitely ones when we're literally trying to bribe people into taking them and throwing them out when nobody uses them rather than shipping them to other parts of the world. I have no idea how well the Pfizer/Moderna ones ship though, given they have a lot more difficult to work with refrigeration requirements.
    Last edited by Tom Servo; May 13th, 2021 at 02:46 PM.

  4. #2864
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    Quote Originally Posted by Crazed_Insanity View Post
    Maybe India will reach herd immunity naturally?
    No place gets herd immunity via infection without having a death toll that is thru the roof.
    The worst hit places are still not close to herd immunity levels. Not even 1/10th of the way.
    You need something like 70% of your population to be immune.
    For India at the moment they are at... 1.7%. India would need around 800 million cases and probably a death toll of 10+ million to reach herd immunity.
    Yes less than 2% of the population and its a crisis and you are suggesting going past 50% and up to maybe 80%.

    Stop saying "herd immunity naturally" - its crazy talk and is basically condemning millions to die. Its not an option for any county with a virus that is so deadly. Ok so it might only be 1-2% of cases that die. But when thats across the majority of your population that is staggering.
    The worst places at the moment have a death rate across the entire population of about 0.2% (the USA is getting close to that). Also factor in that the death rate goes up when the hospital system is overwhelmed and you could easily have 10 or 20 times the current amount of deaths to reach herd immunity. Thats on places that are already the most affected. Which is NOT India, it could end up with 20-50 times the death rate to reach this mythical immunity.

  5. #2865
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    Quote Originally Posted by George View Post
    Iwas amazed to see hard liquor for sale in a grocery store.
    And that reminds me of being on vacation in Vegas and asking a beer store clerk on Saturday if they were open the next day.
    Jumping on this sidetrack...
    Growing up in Australia in the 70s a "drive thru" meant just one thing - alcohol!
    We didnt have drive thru fast food (had KFC, Maccas etc, just not drive thru) but we had drive thru alcohol sales for a while, so that was what meant when you said "going to the drive thru". They were attached to a pub, they had a license to serve alcohol as well as sell. Some in more inner urban areas with no room for a drive thru would have a small store. But out in the burbs... drive thru baby!

  6. #2866
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dicknose View Post
    I think its both but seems its more complacency.
    They did go relatively hard, shutting down stuff, encouraging workers to go back to their villages (a risk, but seemed to work out)
    Now its opened up, more gatherings and religious events.
    Its hard to stay locked up for long periods, real hard. Esp if it seems that covid is not that big a deal, which it wasnt for most of the last year in India.
    They now have exponential growth that we havent really seen since March last year.
    Im sure new strains are helping. And the death toll is up due to overloaded hospitals.
    People all over the world are getting complacent or fatigued…

    Hope future variants won’t get too much ahead of our vaccines…

    Coronavirus will probably just be part of our seasonal flu in the future… or maybe year round flu…

    Also, wonder if virologists have figured anything useful yet with their research… I really hope this was not caused by our own millions of dollars of viral research.
    Last edited by Crazed_Insanity; May 13th, 2021 at 02:57 PM.

  7. #2867
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    Quote Originally Posted by Crazed_Insanity View Post
    My only remaining wish is for there to be a vaccine for kids under 12.
    You start to get to cost/benefit with kids.
    If they are at a very low risk of getting a serious infection from covid, is it more risk from the side effects of the vaccine?
    Are you trying to protect the kids? Or reach a higher percentage of people vaccinated?

    If most of the adult population is vaccinated and the cases drops significantly, we shouldnt need kids to be vaccinated to contain this.


    re cost/benefit - in Australia we are at a stage where covid is effectively non existent. But there have been people with serious side effects from the vaccine. Blood clots and anaphylaxis. So its actually more of a personal risk to have the vaccine than not. But that balance only holds while we are shut off from the rest of the world.

  8. #2868
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    Looks like there's still a lot of communication work to be done - Many Unvaccinated Latinos in the US Want The Shot [but] Issues of access and fears of employment and immigration consequences have kept their Covid vaccination rates low: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/13/h...-hispanic.html

  9. #2869
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    DN, schools used to require kids to have all their shots before they’re allowed to attend. We didn’t just relying on parents getting their vaccines in order to protect kids. Are you saying such requirements are outdated?

    Vaccines definitely have risks. This is why we don’t vaccinate our cats… but as you said, since we shut them off from outside world, that’s not a problem.

    I can’t just lock my kid up like rapunzel. Covid could have longterm lingering effects. Yeah, my kid could get lucky, but I really don’t want to risk it. Especially knowing that half of our adult population don’t believe in this virus nor vaccines.

  10. #2870
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    Quote Originally Posted by Crazed_Insanity View Post
    DN, schools used to require kids to have all their shots before they’re allowed to attend. We didn’t just relying on parents getting their vaccines in order to protect kids. Are you saying such requirements are outdated?
    If you are talking about things like measles, its because its a common infliction for children and potentially deadly. Ditto polio, mumps, rubella and any other number of things we vaccinate against.
    covid is unusual in that it is not as serious for children.

    Im sure you could arrange to have your child vaccinated. But current advice is that this is not necessary for either the childs protection or elimination of the virus. This may change if they find that children end up being an ongoing reservoir for the virus.

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