Covid 19 CRISIS

I have refrained from posting about the vaccine mandates and the resistance to them, but, this will further strain the healthcare workforce.


 
This is beyond idiotic. How did the US end up in such a shit state?
Seeing any kind of common sense, or sense of self-preservation, or sense of duty, fail in the face of partisanship, a complete and utter misunderstanding of the concepts of Freedom and Liberty, and conspirational science denialism, is disturbing.

Happy 9/11 guys, the terrorists won.
 
Happy 9/11 guys, the terrorists won.

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This is beyond idiotic. How did the US end up in such a shit state?
Seeing any kind of common sense, or sense of self-preservation, or sense of duty, fail in the face of partisanship, a complete and utter misunderstanding of the concepts of Freedom and Liberty, and conspirational science denialism, is disturbing.

Happy 9/11 guys, the terrorists won.


Science denialism, as you call it, goes back at least to the late 40s when the tobacco industry started spreading the narrative that cigarettes were healthy. Later the fossil fuel industry joined in using the same tactics.
 
Derek Lowe said:
There is, then, every reason at both the population and individual level to expect that vaccination will strongly decrease the chances of a more dangerous coronavirus strain taking hold. If we'd had them earlier and were able to deploy them quickly and widely enough, we never would have seen the Delta variant in the first place. If we keep deploying them now, we will keep worse variants from even being able to form. Anyone who tells you that vaccines will make things worse is at best deeply misinformed and at worst lying to you for profit.

 
The NSW Opposition leader scheduled a press conference for 11am this morning in the newly vacated spot left by the NSW Premier, to "discuss the Covid numbers and response in NSW". It was viewable on his facebook page, but didn't get mainstream media coverage at the time.

Miracle of miracles, the Premier turned up at 11am to do a nationally televised briefing and announce numbers, even though she said that yesterday's one was the last one. When someone called her out on it her response was: "I always intended to be here today".

Well played to the Opposition Minister. Either way he wins. She turns up - he can say he forced her hand. She doesn't turn up - he can say that she's abandoned her constituents just as we head into the projected peak of the outbreak. Today's case numbers were 1257 new, 7 deaths.


Also, TIL that the Opposition Minister's name is Chris Minns. Because prior to today he's been completely invisible.
 
Our public broadcaster announced that in the face of rising vaccination rate they will move out of crisis reporting for covid-related issues and focus more on the bigger picture and return to normalcy than on daily infection numbers.

This emphasizes that the EU as a whole is not too different from the US, sadly - there are those countries that manage a high vaccination rate (the Nordics and also Southern Europe except Greece), those in the mid-field who will still run into problems (Germany and Austria) and those who are fucked, with low to very low vaccination uptake (all of Eastern Europe and the Balkans, Grecce). Return to a normal life has happened for some and will happen for more in the weeks to come, but for others it's far away still.

In the meantime, two papers are circulating, both with a lot of uncertainty and methodological flaws attached: Once claims Delta is only a few key mutations away from becoming a supervirus that fully escapes vaccines and is even more contagious. The other claims that Delta basically is end of the evolutionary line for covid and worse mutations are highly improbable, if not impossible. This illustrates that those scientists who answer the future mutations question with "we don't know" probably are right. I join forces with Derek Lowe in opting to belive the second paper in the meantime.
 
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The German vax data is getting worse and worse... and I'm not talking about the vaccinations, but rather the data itself. Some examples:

https://impfdashboard.de/ claims more 18-59 year old people have been fully vax'd than had at least one shot:
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30.5M with two shots / J&J, but only 30.2M with 1 or more shots? :no:



https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/Neuartiges_Coronavirus/Daten/Impfquoten-Tab.html with the most official (I guess) Excel spreadsheet of data claims implausible totals or partials:

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If the two figures for 18+ year olds at 77.3% and 72.9% are correct then the partialy for 18-59 (68.6 / 67.2) and 60+ (85.7 / 83.4) can't be correct.
The overall figure has a delta of 4.4 percentage points, but both segments have a delta of 1.x/2.x percentage points? Does not compute, there is no age distribution that would yield such a total.
If the partial figures were correct, 18+ combined figures would be 74.5% and 72.8%... the former is off by about three percentage points, the latter is just a rounding error away.


Dafuq, Germany?
 
That is unexpected for Germany. Also, quite unwelcome.
 
German media by now is treating spending winter in lockdown more or less as a given, already calculating the economic cost. When did Germany join the US in being a failed state?
 
German media by now is treating spending winter in lockdown more or less as a given, already calculating the economic cost. When did Germany join the US in being a failed state?
Ugh, that's frustrating. I wouldn't call it failed until you've got overloaded ICUs thanks to the ignorant, though.

For once I've got to say what we're doing is something they should follow: toss out a broad vaccine mandate, ZFG, haters and losers piss off. I hate that my first thought is "maybe they're waiting until after the election," though. None of this should be political! Zero! None!
 
German media by now is treating spending winter in lockdown more or less as a given, already calculating the economic cost. When did Germany join the US in being a failed state?

That sounds a bit dramatic. How many of Germany's leaders are legitimizing conspiracy theories and activly trying to work against scientific knowledge or your media agencies glorifying being uneducated and stupid?
 
When did Germany join the US in being a failed state?
My impression is that exaggerated scepticism against (which you can often call “rejection of”) anything new is one of the major issues that the two countries have in common. Exceptions apply for e.g. status symbols, obviously.
 
That sounds a bit dramatic. How many of Germany's leaders are legitimizing conspiracy theories and activly trying to work against scientific knowledge or your media agencies glorifying being uneducated and stupid?
Right now, I’ve only got time for one word: homeopathy. That nonsense is far too widely accepted in Germany.
 
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