https://www.irishtimes.com/news/wor...to-december-as-covid-19-cases-surge-1.4393421

 

LOlOL!

I can see that twat likes to quote 2 week old news. The fact now is that cases have come down for the last week and the stay at home order is having the right effect.

Our R0 is now 0.9.

Not so much fake news as old news.

Thick american thinks the Dutchman does not look at the date.

Thinskin

 

Just for those of you reading two week old newspapers this is the siutaion in the US as of today.......protect yourselves!

US records more than 1m new Covid cases in past 10 days as infections surge

Texas becomes first to record a million cases as a state as experts warn White House appears to be doing little to control pandemic

Wed 11 Nov 2020 22.10 ESTFirst published on Wed 11 Nov 2020 11.38 EST


Medical workers put on personal protective equipment before starting shifts at a Covid-19 testing site in El Paso, Texas, on 9 November. Photograph: Joel Angel Juarez/Bloomberg/Getty Images
The US has recorded more than 1m new coronavirus cases in just the past 10 days as the national total soared past 10m cases amid a widespread surge – while Texas on Wednesday became the first to record a million cases as a state.

The soaring figures came as the US also recorded its highest single-day total of new cases, and experts warned that even though successful vaccines are coming into view the White House appears to be doing little to contain a pandemic increasingly out of control.

“In the last couple of months you have seen the federal government basically throw in the towel,” Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health told NBC on Wednesday morning.

He added: “There’s been no new guidance, very little effort coming from the federal government and I think that is definitely contributing to a nationwide surge.”

Daily cases for the country have steadily climbed throughout November to record a total of 1,129,463 cases in the last 10 days alone, figures from Johns Hopkins University show.

On Wednesday, the US saw a record 136,325 new cases, according to Johns Hopkins.

Meanwhile, Texas, America’s second-most populous state, has recorded 1,010,364 cases since the start of the pandemic in March and 19,337 deaths.

No other state has alone reached the 1m figure. And New York, which was the worst Covid-19 hotspot in the world during the initial cascade of US cases in the spring, then used restrictions to squash infections, is now seeing rates creeping up again.

On Wednesday afternoon, New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, said all restaurants, bars and gyms will have to close at 10pm across the state in the latest effort to curb the spread of the coronavirus. He added that people will be barred from hosting private gatherings with more than 10 people, when the new restrictions go into effect on Friday.

Speaking earlier, Jha said “people are getting tired” of taking precautions, even as warnings abound about family gatherings in the fast-approaching holiday season becoming spreader events.

He added that with what appears to be the good news that the world is on the cusp of approving successful vaccines, all Americans could expect to be inoculated relatively soon.

“We are about three to six months away from widespread availability of a vaccine, people need to hold on … we’re so close to actually turning the corner on the virus,” he said.

But he warned that in the meantime Americans need to restrict their Thanksgiving plans at the end of November. “This is a bit heartbreaking, because it just can’t be a normal Thanksgiving,” he said.

On Tuesday there were 111,433 new cases and 590 deaths in the US, according to data from Johns Hopkins. This brings total cases for the country up to 10,252,129 and overall death toll to 239,671.

Hospitalisations also reached record highs. According to the Covid Tracking Project, a record 62,000 people were hospitalised on Tuesday and 17 states reported single day records for hospitalisations.

Joe Biden has already warned the US is “facing a very dark winter” and that even with Pfizer’s announcement that it has a vaccine it believes is 90% effective, 200,000 more lives could be lost in the US in the next few months.

Experts say cases could rise exponentially in the coming weeks. Michael Osterholm, director of the Centre for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota and a member of the president-elect’s Covid-19 advisory board, told CNN daily cases could soon double.

“We are watching cases increase substantially in this country far beyond, I think, what most people ever thought could happen,” he said, adding: “It will not surprise me if in the next weeks we see over 200,000 new cases a day.”

Meanwhile, Donald Trump has not made any public comments in almost a week and was golfing at the weekend while his top public health expert, who serves on the White House coronavirus taskforce, Dr Anthony Fauci, said he has not spoken to the Trump since the president had coronavirus himself and was in hospital early last month.

Trump has been complaining baselessly about a fraudulent election on Twitter and his only public outings since Biden was declared the election winner on Saturday morning have been to the golf course.

On Wednesday, he attended an event to honor fallen soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery just outside Washington DC, despite accounts in September that he had previously called fallen and captured US service members “losers” and “suckers”.

By this week, Texas had surpassed California, which as of Tuesday had 989,432 cases, to record the highest number of positive coronavirus tests of any US state.

If it were a country, the state would be ranked 10th in the world for recorded cases, CNN reported.

In El Paso, on the Texas-Mexico border, mobile morgues have had to be brought in and field hospitals set up as hospitals are inundated with patients.

El Paso has 1,076 people hospitalised – more coronavirus patients in hospital than most states.

“We discharge one patient, and there are two that come in,” said Wanda Helgesen, executive director of regional advisory council BorderRAC, told the New York Times.

Illinois’ governor, JB Pritzker, implored people to wear a mask and not to gather in private homes, saying his state is “locked in a struggle” with Covid-19.

“I know many of us hoped not to still be fighting this deadly pandemic nine months after it revealed itself. But as winter approaches, we are locked in a struggle with the virus,” he tweeted.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/11/us-covid-cases-deaths-record-texas

Thinskin

 

Here's a summary as of two hours ago......

Summary
Here are the key developments from the last few hours:

• The US confirmed its highest 24-hour infection total to date – with a world record of 136,000 cases recorded in one day. The US also suffered its highest death toll since early May, with 1,984 coronavirus deaths.
• Texas passes 1m cases. Texas on Wednesday became the first state with more than 1 million confirmed Covid-19 cases, and California closed in on that mark as a surge of coronavirus infections engulfs the country.
• Auckland, New Zealand asks people to work from home tomorrow. The department of health has asked all New Zealanders who live or work in Auckland central city to stay home tomorrow after further details emerged of the mystery case of Covid-19, whose point of infection is as yet unknown.
• Athletes arriving at Tokyo Olympic Games will be exempt from isolation requirements. Athletes arriving in Tokyo for next year’s Olympic Games, postponed from 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic, will be exempt from the 14-day isolation period Japan has imposed on anyone arriving from overseas to help stop the virus spreading.
• Cyprus has announced partial lockdowns in the towns of Limassol and Paphos to curb a surge in Covid-19 cases. The local measures, which include a ban on travel into and out of the towns and a nightly curfew, will take effect from Thursday and last until the end of November.
• Sweden’s PM, Stefan Lofven, said his government plans to ban nationwide the sale of alcohol after 10pm in bars, restaurants and night clubs from 20 November in an effort to curb the spread of Covid-19. Sweden has witnessed record numbers of new coronavirus infections in past weeks, which is burdening the country’s health care system and intensive care wards.
• Spain’s coronavirus death toll surged to over 40,000 with infections passing the 1.4 million mark, while the rate of new cases continued to grow, health ministry data showed. A further 349 people died in the past 24 hours, bringing the death toll to 40,105 in Spain - the fourth-highest within the European Union after the United Kingdom, France and Italy.
• South Africa will open up travel to all countries and restore normal trading hours of alcohol, despite having the highest number of confirmed Covid-19 cases on the continent, in an effort to boost the tourism and hospitality sectors, the president Cyril Ramaphosa said.
  
• Officials and doctors in Pakistan urged people to stay at home as the air quality in Lahore deteriorated to hazardous levels, putting an additional burden on the fragile healthcare system amid a surge in coronavirus deaths and new infections.
• The New York governor Andrew Cuomo imposed a new round of restrictions aimed at curbing the spread of the coronavirus as the infection rate climbed and hospitalisations soared in the state. Taking effect on Friday, Cuomo ordered bars, restaurants and gyms in the state to shut down on-premises services at 10pm nightly, and capped the number of people who could attend private parties at 10.
• Turkey banned smoking in crowded public places to slow a recent surge in symptomatic patients with coronavirus, as the government warned citizens to abide by protective measures. It comes as daily cases surged to 2,693 on Wednesday.
• Greek authorities announced stricter restrictions on movement, extending a curfew nationwide after infections broke fresh records, reporting 2,752 new cases on Wednesday. Four days after the country went into a second lockdown to curb the surge in cases, the government said all circulation would be banned between 9pm and 5am.
  
• Spain will demand a negative Covid-19 test for all travellers arriving from countries with a high risk for coronavirus from 23 November. Visitors will need to show evidence of a negative PCR test result within the previous 72 hours to be granted entry and officials will be allowed to ask for proof of the test results.

Thinskin

 

As of three hours ago.......

The United States continued to notch up grim records on Wednesday as it battles through the coronavirus pandemic, with a worsening outbreak in the northeast of the country adding pressure on top of an already reeling Midwest, Reuters reports.

New Covid-19 infections of 142,279 were at an all-time daily high for a second day in a row and above 100,000 for an eighth consecutive day, according to a Reuters tally.

The number of people hospitalised with the virus also surged, to at least 64,939 by late Wednesday, the highest ever during the pandemic. The death toll rose by 1,464.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo was the latest state official to impose a new round of social distancing restrictions on Wednesday, in an attempt to protect a state that was the epicentre of the US outbreak in its early stages.

The US has reported a total of about 10.4 million cases and 241,809 deaths throughout the pandemic.

Thinskin

 

This is our corona dashboard for the Netherlands which confirms the R0 of covid 19 is back below 1.

https://coronadashboard.rijksoverheid.nl/

Thinskin

 

This morning a new case we as confirmed
(must have been after the morning news , last aired at 8.30) ,
and with no apparent/known contact.

Therefore it is considered a new comunity case of unknown origin.
Hence it is all hands to the pumps .
Stay home , isolate if any symptoms etc etc.

They had on sight testing stations set up at her place of work , and residence , fortunately only a few hundred yards apart ,
and comunity testing stations on the streets and in a park , local ,
within one hour of notification.

They will have the gnome sequence tomorrow ,
and then will know if there's a connection with any previous ,
or if it is from a new previously unknown incursion.

If it is connected to known existing cases ,
then hopefully it's just a matter of minimal disruption ,
and rapid contact tracing ,
which of course already started immediately the positive test was known.

If it's a new gnome , then we've got a serious problem ,
unless they find it in current tests in process.
Then we may be headed for an area partial lockdown ,
or at least some very strict restrictions ,
at least untill the source is traced.

Unfortunately , she one of those stupids , who seems to think comunity rules and authority instructions don't apply to them ,
just like those church going Pacifica in our last outbreak.

She got symptoms , and went and got tested ,
excellent .
But she was then instructed to stay at home , and "isolated" .

Oh but !

She rang her employer , and he told her no , don't stay home , you can come to work ,
just wear a mask.

WHAT THE FUCK ?

Why do people think it's ok to move here ,
but local law and rules of our society don't apply to them ?

Kiwi are going to quickly get pissed off with arrogant immigrants who don't think ALL our rules apply to them.

Many of us already are , and
pretty soon there's going to be a major backlash , and political moves to limit certain immigrants again .

That would be a shame ,
but hardly surprising , because the costs are just to high.
Not just financial cost either .
Lives and health also.

 

We've had other "stupids" to.

A day or two of ago , it came to light that an Auckland university "student" was posting on line
that they "wanted to become a covid Super Spreader"
and
asking for advice on "how to become a super spreader" ,
claiming they'd been in contact with a recent isolation related case ,
and had just tested positive.
She should most definitely now do her isolation time , doubled , just to be sure ,
in Prison.

and I'll risk betting she is not a genuine kiwi kiwi either.
Most likely a privaledged student , probably on a student visor , or recent immigrant or something of that ilk

* * * *

Then there's "stupids" sports people to.

The Pakistani cricket team obtained consessions to come here and isolate as a group (for the standard 14 days) with arrangements for isolated training included.

Then some where discovered breaking thier isolation ,
socialising , and sharing food , outside of their managed isolation area.

How did they think that having been allowed the privilege of special exemptions , to come to one of the few places in the world where they can safely have matches with open access for public spectators at the grounds ,
And
with a safe isolation ground set aside for them to practice train and exercise on ,
that it was OK to break the rules ?

Well , now they're in strict managed isolation , with no access to anything .
No training , exercise , or practice till the time is up ,
and bloody lucky they weren't on the first plane out of her , within hours.

Plenty wanted them booted.

We are all fucking sick of people getting special exemptions ,
and then breaking quaratine/isolation arrangements they had to agree to to get the privaledge.

There are many , who many of us believe far more deserving , waiting to fill any quaratine space available ,
any time there is one.

Personally , I'm with the ones who say ,
isolation breakers should be jailed for 14 days isolation ,
then immediately put on a flight back where they belong.
No second chances , no excuses.

A few of those and the privileged will soon learn . Fuck up , and you Fuck Off

If you can apply , you can read the rules you agree to.

 

Boot 'em. They broke the rules.

 

From the Guardian covid-19 blog.....

Germany is seeing tentative signs that a surge in coronavirus infections may be easing, officials said today, crediting anti-transmission measures they warned would have to be maintained through winter and beyond.

“The curve is flattening,” said Lothar Wieler, who heads the country’s disease control agency, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI).

Falling daily new infection figures show “we are not helpless against this virus” and that restrictions such as social distancing and mask wearing can help halt the march of Covid-19, he added.

Germany reported 21,866 new cases of Covid-19 over the last 24 hours, according to RKI data.

The key reproduction figure (r) has fallen below 1 to 0.89, meaning that 100 people are passing on the virus to 89 others - a sign that transmission is slowing.

Despite the encouraging data, the RKI chief said the situation could worsen in coming weeks in hospitals, which may “reach their limits”.

“We must prevent the situation from deteriorating,” he said, stressing Germany’s aim is to bring infection numbers down to a level that the healthcare system can cope with.

Wieler urged Germans to keep social contacts to a minimum, saying the so-called AHA-L measures would still be necessary even if a vaccine is available because it will take time to roll out the jabs.

Under Germany’s AHA-L rule mantra, individuals are urged to maintain distances of at least 1.5m (5ft), wash their hands regularly, wear masks in indoors or crowded outdoor places as well as airing out rooms.

Germany reimposed tough curbs this month to help slow the outbreak, with leisure and cultural centres closing and restaurants and bars only allowed to offer takeaway.

Chancellor Angela Merkel is due to hold a new round of talks with regional leaders of Germany’s 16 states on Monday to examine if the restrictions should be maintained or toughened.

Taking questions during a citizens’ dialogue, Merkel told a Bavarian hotel manager that if people behaved “reasonably,... we might have a chance” of slowly re-opening in December.

With an eye on rising infections in schools, several German states have mooted the idea of lengthening the Christmas vacation to keep the population home and break the chain of transmission.

Merkel has warned that only when 60% to 70% of the population has achieved immunity can Covid-19 be deemed to have been “more or less overcome”.

Thinskin

 

I cannot find any published data yet for the Pfizer/BioNtech candidate covid-19 vaccine but there is a news article with some numbers in Nature dated 9th November! This technology has only ever been used to target cancers before the virus so the reults are very welcome but I find the numbers very small ouit of 40.000+ trial participants.

MMaybe a challenge trial should be considered?

What Pfizer’s landmark COVID vaccine results mean for the pandemic
Scientists welcome the first compelling evidence that a vaccine can prevent COVID-19. But questions remain about how much protection it offers, to whom and for how long.

It works! Scientists have greeted with cautious optimism a press release declaring positive interim results from a coronavirus vaccine phase III trial — the first to report on the final round of human testing.

New York City-based drug company Pfizer made the announcement on 9 November. It offers the first compelling evidence that a vaccine can prevent COVID-19 — and bodes well for other COVID-19 vaccines in development. But the information released at this early stage does not answer key questions that will determine whether the Pfizer vaccine, and others like it, can prevent the most severe cases or quell the coronavirus pandemic.

“We need to see the data in the end, but that still doesn’t dampen my enthusiasm. This is fantastic,” says Florian Krammer, a virologist at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, who is one of the trial’s more than 40,000 participants. “I hope I’m not in the placebo group.”

The vaccine, which is being co-developed by BioNTech in Mainz, Germany, consists of molecular instructions — in the form of messenger RNA — for human cells to make the coronavirus spike protein, the immune system’s key target for this type of virus. The two-dose vaccine showed promise in animal studies and early-stage clinical trials. But the only way to know whether the vaccine works is to give it to a large number of people and then follow them over weeks or months to see whether they become infected and symptomatic. These results are compared with those for a group of participants who are given a placebo.

In the press release, Pfizer and BioNTech said they had identified 94 cases of COVID-19 among 43,538 trial participants. The companies did not indicate how many of those cases were in the placebo group or among those who got the vaccine. But they said that the split of cases between the groups suggested that the vaccine was more than 90% effective at preventing disease, when measured at least one week after trial participants had received a second vaccine dose 3 weeks after the first. The trial will continue until a total of 164 COVID-19 cases are detected, so initial estimates of the vaccine’s effectiveness could change.

Although the vaccine might not turn out to be quite so effective once the trial is complete and all the data have been analysed, its effectiveness is likely to stay well above 50%, says Eric Topol, a cardiologist and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in La Jolla, California. This is the threshold that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says is required for a coronavirus vaccine to be approved for emergency use. “I think this is an extraordinary achievement, even without many details, because there was no assurance of vaccine efficacy before we got the first read-out from a trial,” Topol says.

Questions remain
What’s missing, say Topol and other scientists, are details about the nature of the infections the vaccine can protect against — whether they are mostly mild cases of COVID-19 or also include significant numbers of moderate and severe cases. “I want to know the spectrum of disease that the vaccine prevents,” says Paul Offit, a vaccine scientist at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania who sits on a US Food and Drug Administration advisory committee that is set to evaluate the vaccine next month. “You’d like to see at least a handful of cases of severe disease in the placebo group,” he adds, because it would suggest that the vaccine has the potential to prevent such cases.

It’s unclear whether the vaccine can prevent people who show no or only very mild symptoms of COVID-19 from spreading the coronavirus. A transmission-blocking vaccine could accelerate the end of the pandemic. But it will be difficult to determine whether the Pfizer vaccine, or others in late-stage trials, can achieve this, says Krammer, because it would involve routinely testing trial participants. “You can’t do that with 45,000 people,” he says.

Another missing detail is how well the vaccine works in different groups of trial participants. “We don’t know yet if it works in the population that needs it most, which is elderly,” says Krammer. Because of the small number of cases it will accrue before ending, the Pfizer trial is unlikely to conclusively determine the vaccine’s efficacy in particular demographic groups, such as over-65s or African Americans, says Offit. But he adds that if the trial enrolled enough participants from such groups, it could be possible to generalize the vaccine’s probable effectiveness in them from its overall efficacy. In the press release, Pfizer and BioNTech reported that 42% of participants had “racially and ethnically diverse backgrounds”.

Lasting immunity?
One key unanswered question is how long the vaccine’s effectiveness will last. On the basis of when the trial started and previously published data on immune responses in early-stage trials, many trial participants are likely to still have high levels of protective antibodies in their blood, says Rafi Ahmed, an immunologist at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. “To me, the main question is what about six months later, or even three months later,” he says.

There will be a chance to answer that question if the trial continues for several more months, says Ahmed. Answers could also come from analysis of the immune responses of people who took part in early-stage trials of the Pfizer vaccine, some of whom might have been given the vaccine up to six months ago. And although little is known about the vaccine’s long-term effectiveness, that is unlikely to hold up its use, says Ahmed. “I don’t think we should say, ‘Well, I’ll only take a vaccine that protects me for five years.’ I mean, that could be crazy.”

The results are a boost for other COVID-19 vaccine candidates. That includes an mRNA vaccine being developed by Moderna, a biotechnology company in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Maryland, says Krammer. “I expect Moderna stocks will go up today.”

Shane Crotty, a vaccine immunologist at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology in California, thinks that Moderna isn’t the only developer that should celebrate Pfizer’s preliminary results. Several other candidate vaccines triggered immune responses similar to those elicited by Pfizer’s vaccine in early-stage trials, so they should work well, too.

One thing about Pfizer’s vaccine is certain: regulators will soon decide whether it’s ready for roll-out. The company said it would seek an emergency use authorization from the FDA around the third week of November, at which point half of the participants will have been followed for two months — an FDA safety requirement for COVID-19 vaccines.

And although researchers want to see the data behind Pfizer’s vaccine trial, they are prepared to accept caveats that come with them. “Right now, we need a vaccine that works,” says Krammer, even if it works for only a few months or doesn’t stop transmission. “That’s what we need in order to get half-way back to normal.”

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03166-8

Thinskin

 

Hopeful .

Overnight , early results from yesterday's testing indicate a possible link for the new mystery case yesterday ,
from yesterday's testing.

They expect to know when the gnome sequencing is completed later today.

One way or the other ,
this is an excellent result already ,
because it proves the regime of rapid action
for testing and tracing , and gnoming is operating as we're led to believe.


People were already lining up in numbers again this morning by the opening of busines. (for testing , again good to see , because the risk of covid weariness is ever present
the old ho hum here we go again , and that could quickly backfire we all know)

This is literally slap in the middle of Auckland city central , halfway up mainstreet , worked just of one side , lives just off the other and socialises along it.


let this be yet another lesson to those inner city vertical troglodytes.
you are not immune.
not to the law or the virus.
Shape up or Ship out.
Jail or Deportation

 

Oh shit !

No sooner had I posted above , and news comes through ,,,

People are comming n going from the building (high rise apartment block) she lives in .
WHAT THE FUCK

yet again no-one's there doing their job .

That building's occupants have been ordered to isolate , stay in place untill the tracing is complete .

For fuck sake , two days is much better than 4 weeks , surely.
That's what the CBD can expect if they create a new cluster.

And.
What the fuck are the authorities doing ?
Not Monitering the building ?
untill the media discovers the continued movement of people in n out.

Have Princess Jacindas team been caught napping yet again ,
after so many previous failings.

So frustrating .
They do a great job , mostly ,
then let themselves down on the basics to often.
They have the laws and orders in place.
They have the defence force on the job and available 24/7.
Why were none at that building ?
continually since at least lunchtime yesterday

Shakes fucking head in disbelief

 

Yeee Haa !

the myster comunity case is linked to what is known as the defence force cluster
(which involves them managing managed isolation units)
by gnome sequence.


Big sigh of relief all around.
Was always most likely scenario ,
but you just never know until you know.

That means no big scale lockdown or restrictions nescassary at this stage.
We'll here more on exactly what more measures are taken soon ,
and obviously , if more new cases pop up , restrictions may be increased ,
but for now it's minimal and very local.

Excellent to have all that achieved within about 30 hours of testing .

Though there undoubtedly will be a few more connected , it seems likely she never traveled or socialises far outside that very small area between work n apartment.

*
Meanwhile , were fucking overrun with dorklanders suddenly again.
Seems the fuckers all headed outa town n here soon as they heard of new case ,
while they could

can't blame them
and great for local businesses
I even had t queue for a beer for lunch

 

Protect yourselves guys because 300,000 new cases a day will test all of your resources!



Thinskin

 

The fact that doctors are getting better at treating Covid is, in shooter's opinion, the real news of the day.
He came across this, and will just leave it here. Certainly not the answer all everyone hopes for, but still very good news.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/why-covid-19-kills-certain-100211975.html
'Breakthrough finding' reveals why certain Covid-19 patients die

 

@shootersa

1. • Your article below was interesting and thanks for posting it.......but what is discussed in ts's vid is more important and a MUST watch.
     
     Yes there's some trump bashing but get past that and listen to the doctor.
     
     Going by the numbers the US could hit 200,000 new cases for today.....
     
     69magpie, 20 minutes agoReport
     See, Shooter thinks it misses the real point.

Trump did not create or invite Covid.
Virtually every other country has failed to control Covid, just like the US.
The exceptions have either had cultural advantages, like Taiwan, or took draconian measures like New Zealand, that would not be reasonable or tolerated in the US.
If you look at the charts on this site,
https://www.google.com/search?sxsrf=ALeKk02tvu8kAFJWQYwRgrUkX99g-6pXQw:1605313958398&source=hp&ei=piWvX-bSFeaC9PwP0aSIkAc&q=covid+update&oq=&gs_lcp=CgZwc3ktYWIQARgBMgcIIxDqAhAnMgcIIxDqAhAnMgcIIxDqAhAnMgcIIxDqAhAnMg0ILhDHARCjAhDqAhAnMgcIIxDqAhAnMgcIIxDqAhAnMgcIIxDqAhAnMgcIIxDqAhAnMg0ILhDHARCjAhDqAhAnUABYAGCXO2gBcAB4AIABAIgBAJIBAJgBAKoBB2d3cy13aXqwAQo&sclient=psy-ab#wptab=s:H4sIAAAAAAAAAONgVuLVT9c3NMwySk6OL8zJecTozS3w8sc9YSmnSWtOXmO04eIKzsgvd80rySypFNLjYoOyVLgEpVB1ajBI8XOhCvHsYuL2SE3MKckILkksKV7EKpicX5Sfl1iWWVRarJCcWJxaDACDgo3bgQAAAA

comparing the world new cases with the US new cases, the trend is identical.
We are not, as a world, controlling this fucking thing.
If you compare deaths worldwide with deaths in the US the trend is much the same, except the US line is flatter.
What this tells us is that quarantine and distancing does not eliminate covid; it delays infection. It also tells us that the medicos are learning how to treat this thing, so we don't die from it.

So the question comes back to;
are we as a society willing to destroy our economy, kill somewhat fewer people in other ways, and still not get Covid under control, all in the name of feel good?
Because that's what it is.

It makes zero sense to say gotta wear a mask, but not make it mandatory.
Can't say Covid runs rampant in restaurants, but only close restaurants after 8PM.
Cant say Home Depot is an essential business and keep it open, then not demand that everyone wear a mask and distance, while literally shutting down some health care facilities.
Can't moan 300,000 deaths and then say "but if we shut down the economy that would be worse."

 

See, there is that.
Want to see New Zealand and revisit Australia.

Do not want to have it complicated with covid and quarantines.

 

There are some very large conclusions being made from some very small numbers here for the efficacy of this vaccine especially considering the very large number of dollars made by the head medic for Pfizer liquidating share options worth $6 million a day after the announcment of a 90% efficacy of the Pfizer vaccine.

This national geographic nederland article poses more of less the same questions as the nature letter above!

https://www.nationalgeographic.nl/w...ovend-ondanks-zorgwekkend-gebrek-aan-gegevens

Thinskin