Covid 19 CRISIS

68 in my county and 72 in the county my office is in. Yay. :|
 
75 for us, but dropping. Let's see what it looks like in a week once all the Thanksgiving superspreader events start hitting the numbers.
 
I knew this bullshit was coming. Won't be flying with them.
Qantas boss’ push for ‘no jab, no fly’ rule sparks backlash
Why should a company put their customers (including those who can't get vaccinated for health reasons) at risk by letting selfish, irresponsible people on board? I'd make vaccination a hard requirement for crossing any kind of border.

In related news, Moderna shows how important it is to wait for final efficacy numbers to come in, showing a drop in their vaccine's protection from 94.5 percent in the earlier readout to... 94.1. While at the same time preventing 100% of severe covid cases.

We got this, people. Hang in there and get your shot asap, whenever that may be.
 
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But now for something completely different... CNN is running a hit piece on how China mishandled the early phase of the covid outbreak and reported intentionally misleading lower numbers to the West:
CNN hit piece said:
On February 10, when China reported 2,478 new confirmed cases nationwide, the documents show Hubei actually circulated a different total of 5,918 newly reported cases. The internal number is divided into subcategories, providing an insight into the full scope of Hubei's diagnosis methodology at the time.
"Confirmed cases" number 2,345, "clinically diagnosed cases" 1,772, and "suspected cases" 1,796.
While all this is nice, dandy, factual and true...

...the article goes on to claim that...
The strict and limiting criteria led ultimately to misleading figures, said analysts. "A lot of the suspected cases there should have been included with the confirmed cases," said Huang, from the Council on Foreign Relations, who reviewed the documents and found them to be authentic.
This clearly is motivated by a political agenda, because reporting only PCR-confirmed cases is exactly what every single western democracy does.
 
Why should a company put their customers (including those who can't get vaccinated for health reasons) at risk by letting selfish, irresponsible people on board? I'd make vaccination a hard requirement for crossing any kind of border.
Greed. Out here in Colorado there are bars, restaurants, gyms... They openly oppose all restrictions and refuse to follow any guideline. Colorado has a color code of a stop light and then added some colors BLUE , ORANGE, and PURPLE. Right now we are in RED which isnt as bad as PURPLE. Which is to say they are bending over backwards to avoid a shutdown and businesses are just ignoring the rules. People are not wearing mask I doubt that people will grow a brain in time to get a vaccine.

Let's see what it looks like in a week once all the Thanksgiving superspreader events start hitting the numbers.

I took a drive... stores are packed. Wait till December 10th that's when we will start to see the Christmas testing panic, the spike, and people half quarantined saying at the grocery store how they are flying for Christmas but its ok they haven't been sick for the past 14 days.
 
But now for something completely different... CNN is running a hit piece on how China mishandled the early phase of the covid outbreak and reported intentionally misleading lower numbers to the West:

While all this is nice, dandy, factual and true...

...the article goes on to claim that...

This clearly is motivated by a political agenda, because reporting only PCR-confirmed cases is exactly what every single western democracy does.


Serologic testing of U.S. blood donations to identify SARS-CoV-2-reactive antibodies: December 2019-January 2020​

findings suggest that SARS-CoV-2 may have been introduced into the United States prior to January 19, 2020.
https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid/ciaa1785/6012472


Coronavirus Was In U.S. Weeks Earlier Than Previously Known​

https://www.npr.org/sections/corona...eeks-earlier-than-previously-known-study-says

https://www.rawstory.com/2020/12/am...-19-far-earlier-than-first-us-case-cdc-study/
 
I have lots of musician and actor friends and they’re trying to get by as best they can, as they have over the past year. Some of them were starting the dress rehearsal for a Christmas concert tour that was supposed to open tomorrow. Half the normal number of seats, etc. They had worked years to put this show together. That was when the local authorities decided to drop the news that gatherings with more than 20 people are off. No exceptions. Starting tomorrow, or 11 hours from the time of the press release.

Fucking hell.
 
I have lots of musician and actor friends and they’re trying to get by as best they can, as they have over the past year. Some of them were starting the dress rehearsal for a Christmas concert tour that was supposed to open tomorrow. Half the normal number of seats, etc. They had worked years to put this show together. That was when the local authorities decided to drop the news that gatherings with more than 20 people are off. No exceptions. Starting tomorrow, or 11 hours from the time of the press release.

Fucking hell.
Working in the event industry, and looking ahead to another summer with no events, I can relate. It sucks, and it's economically awful. I fully expect to get 100% furloughed before the year is over.
 
I have lots of musician and actor friends and they’re trying to get by as best they can, as they have over the past year. Some of them were starting the dress rehearsal for a Christmas concert tour that was supposed to open tomorrow. Half the normal number of seats, etc. They had worked years to put this show together. That was when the local authorities decided to drop the news that gatherings with more than 20 people are off. No exceptions. Starting tomorrow, or 11 hours from the time of the press release.

Fucking hell.
That's tragic.

Covid-19 has razed to the ground my hobby/passion/side-job with theatre right away in March. And my very small non-profit on board-games. I jope it will be possible to resume it next march, but an entire year has been wiped out completely, and the blow has been hard.

I am lucky because I didn't have to earn a living through those things. Many friends who do have suffered and are suffering. As do many who worked in gyms, courses, non-profit associations, etc...
 
And while all cultural events are on hold for the foreseeable future, the Covidiots in Germany continue to spread the virus at their protests and out of ignorance/arrogance.

That's what angers me the most: until recently, large motley crews of ignoramuses, right-wingers, anti-vaxxers, malcontents and the like could get together in the streets for some bellyaching, mostly without masks or physical distancing, and the police would generally just let them be. They either didn't care or they didn't have anywhere near enough officers to disperse those crowds. But heaven forbid that some other people started a counter-protest! They got the full water cannon treatment.

AFAIK, this has recently started to change and a few of the Covidiots have been subjected to small amounts of force when they refused to disperse, but the message is still: the streets are yours if you're against the public health measures, but don't you dare stage a show or open a restaurant!
 
Meanwhile, NSW is on 25 days with no detected community transmission.
I believe all of our internal border restrictions have now been lifted, including QLD and WA.

Restrictions are being further eased before Christmas, and our outdoor stadiums are now allowed to have 100% capacity.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-12...tions-eased-for-christmas-from-today/12914194

Current projections are for the first vaccines to be available here from March 2021, and that there may be some international border movement allowed from June, if the roll-out goes well.
 
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Working in the event industry, and looking ahead to another summer with no events, I can relate. It sucks, and it's economically awful. I fully expect to get 100% furloughed before the year is over.

For me it's a hobby, but I get to work with a lot of professionals. They're some of the most passionate people you can find anywhere. You have to be because it's a lot of work and you don't get rich doing it.

I'm not angry at the pandemic (we're all in this shit) but at the authorities that change things around without thinking about what their actions cause. The tour manager even called on monday to make sure everything was ok and got lied to his face when they gave him the thumbs up.
 
Welcome to rant time with Dr_Grip. It seems like German politicians since Merkel's "We can do this" during the 2015 Refugee crisis and it's echo (rise of the Right, etc) are being deadly afraid of saying anything remotely optimistic.

So, sitrep. We are fucked, as a continent. We blew the covid response and while Australia and Asia will have a normal Christmas, we are stuck in lockdown. People are getting sick, ICUs are overworked, the economy is tanking. We really need a ray of hope.

And here it is. After months of "expectation management" by politicians telling us it is unclear if vaccines will be possible, and then telling us it is unclear if they will be effective enough to break the pandemic, we now got vaccines, and they indeed are much more effective than anyone dared to hope. They will end the pandemic. So there's reason for hope, right, enthusiasm even?

NOPE. Not in Germany. Enter the head of the "Ständige Impfkommission" (permanent vaccination commission, the government body recommending who should get which vaccine) warning before "vaccine euphoria" (Impf-Euphorie). So, why is he so negative? He say, it'll take until 2022 to vaccinate everyone. While his maths checks out as a reasonable worst case (60 centralized vaccination centers with a capacity of 120K people per day will need more than a year to vaccinate 83 Mio Germans, if we assume capacity will not rise, and there will be no further vaccine developments that will allow one to get a shot at a regular GP's practice), it still ignores the fact that once we got the 25% of over-60 year olds in Germany plus medical workers vaccinated, we are out of the worst.
There might not be reason for euphoria, but please, let us have some hope.
 
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Vials of the BioNTech vaccine.


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