Covid 19 CRISIS

The infection rate at the assisted living facility/care home where my wife’s grandmother lives is 100% for the residents at 5 out of 9 for the staff.

Having visited there during the summer, I knew that this was only a matter of time. The general attitude was far too lax in my opinion. But it sucks that it happened so close to the likely vaccination of at least the residents.
 
Hey, survival of the fittest, right? :|
 

Not that Inside Edition is hard news but it captures what it's like in America
 
Well I don't know I mean she knew it was a Satanic mask wearing ritual...
 
I can't bring myself to watch that. I'm so pissed off with people here that this won't help improve my outlook.
 
I can't bring myself to watch that. I'm so pissed off with people here that this won't help improve my outlook.
Same. I just can't handle dickheads anymore.
 
People seem to be taking the "land of the free" thing way too far.

They've been fed a steady diet of bullshit their entire lives and they believe it all. It's almost as if they have no critical thinking skills or the ability to think on their own.
 
They've been fed a steady diet of bullshit their entire lives and they believe it all. It's almost as if they have no critical thinking skills or the ability to think on their own.
The devil thinks critically, trump knows all!
 
Human Resources as updated is once again. I accidentally sent one guy to San Antonio this week.

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Did your company stop sending you to Michigan when our cases were over 8,000 cases a day?
 
I'm amazed Utah didn't make the list, I think we are the highest per capita in the US right now.
 
Did your company stop sending you to Michigan when our cases were over 8,000 cases a day?
When that was happening it was strongly against, but not flat out saying no like she is now.
 
STAT reports on a new paper regarding the South Africa mutation and vaccine escape:
But despite what he and colleagues found about E484K, Bloom noted that the mutation only reduced neutralizing activity, and didn’t eliminate it. Current vaccines, meanwhile, have shown they can generate strong immune responses. “I’m confident current vaccines will be useful for quite a while,” Bloom wrote in a Twitter thread detailing the research.
In the twitter thread, Bloom also notes that how covid mutations interact with immune response is consistent to what we know from common cold coronaviruses, meaning that we can assume the timeframe needed for full immune escape mutations will be 3+ years. If this learnings from natural immune response translate 1:1 to vaccination, we probably need booster shots every 24 months or so and some companies will get filthy rich from it.
The article goes on to emphasize that the higher transmission rate of both the UK and SA mutations are a bigger concern than hypothetical vaccine escape. So let's play by the rules, sit at home some more, and wait for the vaccines as they are coming in.

Speaking of which, Moderna's vaccine has been approved for EU use. This means that if BioNTech and Moderna keep their supply commitments, the EU has enough vaccine available to reach herd immunity within 2021. Both BioNTech's CEO and the German health minister promise vaccine availability for every German who wants it in "early summer" or "late Q2", respectively. I will be first in line when the day comes.

If J&J and/or CureVac successfully finish phase 3 trials and get approved within Q1, the situation will get even better, since these vaccines can be stored at household refrigerator temperature and thus be administered by any nurse being able to identify the pointy end of a needle.
 
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Clarkson wrote in his most recent column he believes the vaccine will provide protection "for only a little while" or whatever his words were.

Obviously he isn't an expert in the field, but what are your thoughts @Dr_Grip ?
 
Clarkson wrote in his most recent column he believes the vaccine will provide protection "for only a little while" or whatever his words were.

Obviously he isn't an expert in the field, but what are your thoughts @Dr_Grip ?
I am not an expert in the field either, but unlike Clarkson I have the patience to actually read.

The first participant in the first study on Pfizer/BioNTech received his or her first shot on May 4th, for Moderna on March 14th last year. There has been no report yet on protection waning for them (and trust me, the vaccine makers are eager to follow up on them!). So we have some anecdotic evidence from the few people in the Phase 1 trial that protection lasts six months for BioNTech and eight for Moderna. In terms of hard data, we have the 15.000 people each in the Phase 3 trials, who by now also have had their shot for four months or more, with protection intact.

Further than that - we don't know, and we can't, since we could not collect any longer term data. Pfizer's CEO said he believes the vaccine should protect for "at least a year", and independent experts like Mt. Sinai's Florian Krammer have been even more optimistic, questioning whether booster shots will be needed at all.

Thus, looking at both updating the vaccine to account for mutations, and boosters to renew protection, worst case scenario is "yearly boosters" and best case "lifetime protection", with a lot of middle ground in between ("without a booster you get covid but only as a common cold" or "booster every two to five years").
 
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I know the winter isn't over yet, but It's nice not have had received a cold from someone else this year.
 
Clarkson wrote in his most recent column he believes the vaccine will provide protection "for only a little while" or whatever his words were.

Obviously he isn't an expert in the field, but what are your thoughts @Dr_Grip ?
Do not take medical advice from an orangutan who has difficulty using a hammer.
 
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