NorthHawk wrote:I'm glad for you. We aren't getting a regular supply up here. We're supposed to get more this month, but in BC we are vaccinating based on age so it looks like I won't get my 1st shot until around May at the earliest provided the supplies aren't interrupted. The J&J vaccine looks like it could be a real help. With the early results of no deaths or hospitalizations of those getting the vaccine, it could make it so all of the remote areas of different countries can be vaccinated
quickly with only 1 shot required. Keeping people out of the hospital is one of the biggest goals and that vaccine seems to be on the right track.
Aseahawkfan wrote:We'll see how it goes. Right now we're plateaued at 61,000 new cases a day, but we're re-opening. We can't afford to stay shut down any longer. I really hope this vaccine works and reduces the cases. Right now we're at about 1.5 per 1000 deaths in the United States, mostly in the upper age ranges and those with comorbidities. But we're economically headed for a technocracy where everything runs through a handful of enormous tech companies like Amazon for most commerce. We went from 5% of sales online to 20% during the pandemic. That is a very skewed economy. We can't allow that to continue as the job damage to a variety of industries is immense.
So more vaccines coming online the better. But it sure would be nice to see a greater reduction in cases than 61000 a day. Deaths is more important and we definitely would like to see a reduction in the death rate.
Regardless the freight train of re-opening is rolling. Government can't afford to stay shutdown.
RiverDog wrote:I don't mind the re-openings as much as I mind governors suspending their mask mandates. I think there's many businesses that have been shut down or severely limited that can operate safely, especially now as outdoor temperatures are rising. There's going to be private stores like Walmart and Starbuck's that will maintain mask requirements while the state says it's unnecessary, putting retail stores and restaurants in a very difficult position of having to defend a policy that their state claims is unnecessary. Even if they kept them in place one more month, it might have been long enough to where enough people got vaccinated they could get ahead of the variants. I expect to see another surge, at least in places like Houston.
We're up to 2 millions shots in the arm per day, twice what Biden had established during his inauguration, which was a lame goal even back then. From what I've seen, most are very well run, and now that the complication of the weather is subsiding, they should be able to push even more people through. I still don't like how they're managing the eligibility requirements, but so long as they keep jabbing people, it doesn't make any difference anymore.
I saw an article in the NYT that noted how much better much poorer countries in Asia and Africa are doing against the pandemic than the US and western Europe are faring. It shoots in the butt the theory that a better health care system results in fewer deaths. The poorer countries have younger populations, spend more time outdoors, and many got on top of the disease much earlier by implementing protocols earlier and with better compliance than occurred here and in Europe.
Aseahawkfan wrote:It helps when you don't have an idiot as your leader politicizing a virus like it gives a crap about politics. I'm surprised someone didn't keep track of who the virus killed more Republicans or Democrats to further engage in idiocy.
Hawktawk wrote:Greg Abbott needed a diversion after his disastrous failure to protect the power grid . So whoop dee do let’s give the trumplican freedom fighter Covid deniers a bone . The bimbo Christine Noem from Dakota allowed a maskless 500k sturgus rally that’s led to many deaths and spread the virus all over the country . I don’t know if more republicans or democrats have died but the trumplican cult has surely been most responsible for spreading it around . Then they are the first to scream about being locked down . Better stfu about being pro life when you can’t be bothered to wear a mask and in fact burn them on capital steps. Flat earth society is alive and well.
Hawktawk wrote:As for my vaccine I’m 61, moderate copd , hypertension etc, married to a medical provider and I still don’t qualify yet so whatever .
Hawktawk wrote:I truly fear a 4 th wave right around the corner with cases plateauing even with REDUCED testing and now masks off, spring break etc.
c_hawkbob wrote:Just got my first moderna shot today, get the second April 6. Yay!
c_hawkbob wrote:Zero side effects so far. didn't even feel the needle.
It was through work and my wife was on the standby list in case there was a no sho, she wound up getting hers today too. Now we'll have both had our second shot a week before we travel.
Aseahawkfan wrote:That AstraZaneca vaccine sounds shady. I will make sure to stay away from that one.
c_hawkbob wrote:Just got my second dose of Moderna, my wife gets hers in about an hour. Now I feel safe to drive to WV to see my brand new granddaughter!
NorthHawk wrote:Regarding the 2nd dose, isn't there a 2 week space after vaccination before you are fully protected? I thought there was some type of time frame for the body to charge up
its defenses after the 2nd dose.
NorthHawk wrote:Regarding the 2nd dose, isn't there a 2 week space after vaccination before you are fully protected? I thought there was some type of time frame for the body to charge up its defenses after the 2nd dose.
c_hawkbob wrote:My Dr. didn't mention it. He did say that it takes a while for the body to build up the immunity but generally after the first shot I'm about 80% protected and after the second "you'll have zero percent chance of dying of covid". I told him we were travelling a week after the second dose and he just said congratulations. My impression was that it took more time after the first than the second but I could be wrong.
Aseahawkfan wrote:I'm looking at the death chart. Doesn't appear to be dropping substantially yet. Hopefully by September it will drop. Either way we're re-opening. I don't think many can take this any more regardless of how it goes. We should have a baseline idea of the annual death rate from COVID soon. The government will start to operate with an idea of how many will die a year from COVID much like the flu. What is considered normal and what they have to watch out for.
RiverDog wrote:What "death chart" are you looking at? In early January, our 7 day average number of deaths was over 3,000 deaths per day, now they're under 1,000 per day.
At this point, despite the fact that the new variants are more contagious and more deadly and that our number of cases are on the rise again, I'm feeling pretty good about our war against the virus. The vaccines are proven to work, the rollout is going extremely well with supply catching up with demand and nearly 3 million jabs per day, and the weather is warming up so people will migrate outdoors. Over 75% of the US population over 65 has had at least one shot, so the rise in infection rates shouldn't manifest itself in the same number of hospitalizations and deaths as previous surges. The economy, although changed by the pandemic, is well on its way to a full recovery.
Despite our dismal performance against the virus over the past year, something that we can't really blame on the medical community, we're absolutely nailing the vaccine rollout. We've vaccinated roughly twice as many people per capita as other industrialized nations. No other large nation has come close to what we've achieved.
It's a feather in our hat to our health care system. These vaccines were developed and manufactured in this country by the evil "Big Pharma", distributed by private companies like FedEx and UPS, and administered by a hugely complicated network of hospitals, pharmacies, and clinics. In the meantime, countries with socialized health care systems such as Canada, western Europe, and Japan, haven't come close to matching our performance even though we've face much larger logistical challenges due to our geographic and population differences.
Aseahawkfan wrote:The deaths have dropped from the worst of it, but I'm talking a plateau. A 1000 deaths a day is still 365 thousand dead a year. This is where I'm getting the data. https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html What we don't want to see is a rise in the death rate followed by the plateau. We want it to keep dropping.
Aseahawkfan wrote:We are at roughly 560 thousand deaths from COVID since last March. I'm hoping by September we're well under 365 thousand deaths a year. I don't want that to be our vaccinated rate of death. I doubt you want that to be our vaccinated rate of death either.
Aseahawkfan wrote:My point is regardless we are reopening. As I told you a while back, it's a matter of finding a baseline acceptable death rate and then going with that. We have to reopen and get the economy going again. I hope by September it is far lower than a 1000 a day. A 1000 a day would obliterate yearly flu totals.
Aseahawkfan wrote:I'm hoping we get to the flu baseline with COVID. Though these vaccines are supposed to be much better than the flu vaccine, so hopefully much lower death rate than we are at right now.
t's a feather in our hat to our health care system. These vaccines were developed and manufactured in this country by the evil "Big Pharma", distributed by private companies like FedEx and UPS, and administered by a hugely complicated network of hospitals, pharmacies, and clinics. In the meantime, countries with socialized health care systems such as Canada, western Europe, and Japan, haven't come close to matching our performance even though we've face much larger logistical challenges due to our geographic and population differences.
It's a feather in our hat to our health care system. These vaccines were developed and manufactured in this country by the evil "Big Pharma", distributed by private companies like FedEx and UPS, and administered by a hugely complicated network of hospitals, pharmacies, and clinics. In the meantime, countries with socialized health care systems such as Canada, western Europe, and Japan, haven't come close to matching our performance even though we've face much larger logistical challenges due to our geographic and population differences.
NorthHawk wrote:It was a world wide effort with scientists sharing information and data that led to an early development of the vaccines. It doesn't hurt that "Big Pharma" has sites in many different countries that assist in development/production.
NorthHawk wrote:The problem with Canada is lack of supply. We have to wait for the generosity of producing nations to get our supply and so we've only received about 10M doses so far.
NorthHawk wrote:The UK is doing extremely well with their program and I think is much further ahead than the US, but a much smaller population in a concentrated area unlike Canada with a sparse population spread across the 2nd largest country in the world.
NorthHawk wrote:I, too wonder about why the US doesn't release more Astrozenica vaccine as it isn't yet approved in the US. It looks like the Biden gov't is saying we don't want or need it but you can't have it either. If they do think of it as a strategic resource, they should set a floor of how many doses they want in reserve and let the company that produces it send the excess out around the world to countries that need it. In the mean time trade and travel between countries will be curtailed until those countries that aren't yet vaccinated catch up to those that are.
NorthHawk wrote:The problem is the preceding governments that did not value pharmaceutical production at home. The socialized medicine has been in place since the 1960's but the drug companies began moving out after the 1980's when our gov'ts embraced smaller government and began relying on international supply chains. It's fine when things are moving normally, but when extraordinary occurrences happen countries tend to close their doors. We've been pretty stupid about how we've managed our life requirements in my opinion. We had a plan to avoid this after SARS and Ebola scares but didn't follow the recommendations and squeezed out the pharmaceutical industry. We're now paying the price for ignoring the plan. It doesn't have much to do with overall socialized medicine as it's just a part of it and had our previous Governments been forward looking, we wouldn't be in this situation nor discussing it. But those were political decisions, not medical decisions.
NorthHawk wrote:Distribution is a fact. We don't have the supply to really test it, but getting vaccines into places where there are 4 or 500 people is a difficult issue considering the earliest vaccines needed extreme refrigeration. If we had the supply equal to that of the US, we would be on par, and that I am sure of. Btw, my wife's brother and sister in law are getting their 1st shots tomorrow at Costco. I haven't heard yet when we will get ours but because of the lack of supply we won't get our 2nd shot for 7 or 8 weeks later as the decision matrix determined that it was better to have 70% of the population have 80% protection than 35% of the population having 95%. We'll see how it goes.
NorthHawk wrote:Playing politics often costs lives. This pandemic has shown us two sides - the inaction of Trump early and the political moves over the years in Canada that have left us dependent on others for a vaccine supply. Neither were good decisions for people.
RiverDog wrote:That's not what you originally said, but I agree with what you're saying now. The death rate has leveled off at an otherwise alarmingly high rate, but it is down over two thirds of what it was a couple months ago. There isn't near the pressure on the health care system as there was this past winter, so it's much more manageable. Most of the increase in cases are in just 5 states, so it's not widespread. With one exception, Florida, home of most of the spring break parties, the large increase has been confined to the northern tier states. Most of those infected and admitted to ICU's are 25-50 and more likely to survive. They need to start targeting vaccines to these hot spots and make a big push to get as many needles into arms as fast as they can.
I'm not sure what you're referring to when you say "vaccinated rate of death." As far as I know, there hasn't been a documented case of a vaccinated person dying of Covid. The vaccines are that good.
There's no question about the efficacy of the vaccines. All of the approved vaccines work extremely well, even against the variants. They've been in the field for over 3 months and have verified the results of the clinical trials. In places like Israel, which has fully vaccinated nearly 60% of their population, they've seen their active cases and deaths plummet. Side effects are minimal and a non factor. The rollout in the US is going extremely well, much better than anyone expected. The weather is warming up, so the environment for the virus will get worse. We've vaccinated over 75% of those 65+. People are moving outdoors, making transmission less likely. Hesitancy to get the vaccine has been steadily dropping, with over 60% saying that they have either gotten or will get the vaccine ASAP. Combine those numbers with people that have had Covid and recovered thus have a natural immunity and we're approaching a very high percentage of people that have some sort of immunity. There's plenty of reason to be optimistic.
At some point, we need to turn our attention to the rest of the world. We have 100 million doses of Astra Zeneca that the government owns just sitting in a warehouse. I'd release them immediately and donate them to a hard hit country like Brazil, which is so bad that it's a virtual petri dish, a breeding ground for variants that will keep popping up that we'll have to deal with if they don't get their situation under control. A/Z hasn't asked for US approval, we don't need it, and even if we did approve it and start distributing it, the bad PR that it's received, whether it deserves it or not, will undermine confidence in the other vaccines.
RiverDog wrote:There's lots of blame to spread around, that's for sure. IMO Donald Trump is responsible for AT LEAST 100,000 lives that were unnecessarily lost simply due to his failure to advocate mask wearing. China's failure to reign in their wet markets and other practices was likely was the root cause of the virus. The US CDC made some critical mistakes early in the pandemic by not adapting the WHO test kits that were offered to them. The disjointed and wildly varying responses from state governments sowed confusion and mistrust.
Despite my taking a few shots at Biden, I do think that overall he's doing a very good job of handling the pandemic, much better than that of his predecessor.
Aseahawkfan wrote:I could have worded that better. That is my bad. But the rise and plateau is common in infectious disease. What we want is no rise and a continuous drop from the vaccine as more get vaccinated. The 3000 was a peak, but we had dropped to near 1000 a day prior to vaccination as the various waves hit. We're still too high. But I think we're only at 30% vaccination so we have a ways to go to reach that 70 to 80% herd immunity vaccination rate. I'm hoping by September we see the huge plummet Israel has reached.
I'm not sure what you're referring to when you say "vaccinated rate of death." As far as I know, there hasn't been a documented case of a vaccinated person dying of Covid. The vaccines are that good.
Aseahawkfan wrote:I'm pretty sure you can understand that I mean rate of death with full vaccination like we have with the flu. As in even with a flu vaccine we have an expected rate of death from the flu within a range. We will likely have the same for COVID19 unless it is eradicated. The danger of dying from COVID19 will be reduced, but not eliminated unless it is eradicated along with its variants. It would be nice to reach a similar rate to the flu or lower given the efficacy of the vaccines.
There's no question about the efficacy of the vaccines. All of the approved vaccines work extremely well, even against the variants. They've been in the field for over 3 months and have verified the results of the clinical trials. In places like Israel, which has fully vaccinated nearly 60% of their population, they've seen their active cases and deaths plummet. Side effects are minimal and a non factor. The rollout in the US is going extremely well, much better than anyone expected. The weather is warming up, so the environment for the virus will get worse. We've vaccinated over 75% of those 65+. People are moving outdoors, making transmission less likely. Hesitancy to get the vaccine has been steadily dropping, with over 60% saying that they have either gotten or will get the vaccine ASAP. Combine those numbers with people that have had Covid and recovered thus have a natural immunity and we're approaching a very high percentage of people that have some sort of immunity. There's plenty of reason to be optimistic.
At some point, we need to turn our attention to the rest of the world. We have 100 million doses of Astra Zeneca that the government owns just sitting in a warehouse. I'd release them immediately and donate them to a hard hit country like Brazil, which is so bad that it's a virtual petri dish, a breeding ground for variants that will keep popping up that we'll have to deal with if they don't get their situation under control. A/Z hasn't asked for US approval, we don't need it, and even if we did approve it and start distributing it, the bad PR that it's received, whether it deserves it or not, will undermine confidence in the other vaccines.
Aseahawkfan wrote:We will have more information about the efficacy of the vaccines as the year goes on. A 1000 deaths a day is still far too many. We need that to drop to a 100 a day at most once vaccinated, hopefully even lower. But we'll see. Flu season is generally 30 to 60 thousand and these vaccine companies are hoping for a yearly vaccine for the revenues. The flu vaccine is only 40 to 50% effective. If this is 90%, I still don't understand why it wouldn't eradicate like other 90% vaccines. It's a matter of time until we find out.
Aseahawkfan wrote:AstraZeneca seems to have known clotting issues at this point. I guess we can pass on the Astrazaneca to a desperate country like Brazil even with the clotting issues. I won't be taking the Astra Zaneca vaccine myself if offered. I will get the Moderna preferably soon once it opens up for everyone mid April.
I'll use the beneficial article. The reality is they definitely had an issue with clotting, but they're not precisely sure why.
https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/news/covid-19-vaccine-astrazeneca-benefits-still-outweigh-risks-despite-possible-link-rare-blood-clots
They stopped the JnJ vaccine in North Carolina for some issues. Hopefully nothing important. I know the manufacturing process can cause issues as well. They have to monitor that. EBS may have had problems at one of their plants.
Aseahawkfan wrote:A monkey could have done better than Trump. And the monkey wouldn't have been tweeting and saying all the stupid. About the only thing his administration did right was getting the vaccination program going fast, which likely wasn't his idea anyway.
RiverDog wrote:You're not taking into consideration those that have already contracted the virus and recovered. It is known that they will have at least some natural immunity to the virus, so we may not need to get all the way to 70% or 80% to, if not achieve herd immunity, be able to contain it and end the pandemic.
Apples and oranges. Only about 45% of all adults get an annual flu shot, and the vaccine is only 40%-60% effective. We've already vaccinated over 75% of 65+ adults and the Covid vaccines have proven to be much more effective against the coronavirus than flu shots are against influenza.
The biggest threat of the coronavirus isn't its mortality rate, it's the ability of it to spread and infect others.
We've administered a huge number of Covid vaccines, so there's already a lot of good information on their performance. The only unanswered question is how long will they last.
I don't think they've been able to find a direct link to the reported blood clotting issues, but it's received enough bad press that they've poisoned the well with a lot of people. If it were the only vaccine available and the choice was it or nothing, I'd take it in a heartbeat.
The J&J issue is nothing to be concerned about. They had an unusually large number of people experience side effects that they already knew about. No one was admitted to the hospital. It's an overblown issue. Had the reactions been to a flu shot, we would have never heard about it. But since the press is keyed in on everything related to the coronavirus, it makes national news.
RiverDog wrote:You're not taking into consideration those that have already contracted the virus and recovered. It is known that they will have at least some natural immunity to the virus, so we may not need to get all the way to 70% or 80% to, if not achieve herd immunity, be able to contain it and end the pandemic.
Aseahawkfan wrote:Irrelevant since the death rate is still at a 1000 a day, which is far too high.
Apples and oranges. Only about 45% of all adults get an annual flu shot, and the vaccine is only 40%-60% effective. We've already vaccinated over 75% of 65+ adults and the Covid vaccines have proven to be much more effective against the coronavirus than flu shots are against influenza.
Aseahawkfan wrote:Not in the slightest apples and oranges. The flu and COVID are spread the same way, which is why the measures taken to reduce COVID were effective against the flu.
We've administered a huge number of Covid vaccines, so there's already a lot of good information on their performance. The only unanswered question is how long will they last.
Aseahawkfan wrote:But we're only at a roughly 30% vaccination. We'll know far more at 70 to 80%. We should easily hit that by September. I want to see the numbers then. This real world science experiment is extremely interesting.
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