Coronavirus (No Politics)

This has been such a long year. I've spent large part of this year at home working. I had a good summer vaccation thankfully in the countryside, but otherwise I've been in my homebase.

Christmas perhaps doesn't feel the same either since there aren't any pre-xmas parties, no concerts, having xmas beers with friends etc, but staying safe now is the utmost importance and trying to prevent this horrible disease from spreading. I hope everyone stays safe and calm, and remains vigilant! Hopefully next year life is normalized.

Oh yeah, I'll miss the christmas beer with friends.

But I guess I'll be able to dodge my usual christmas flu, due to all that wonderful isolation going on.

Maybe someone should make a calculation on how many deaths due to other communicable diseases are avoided because of Covid. Just to get some positivity for a change?

Will a vaccine give us our old lives back?

"Will a vaccine give us our old lives back?" is an article on the BBC site which explains in simple terms what the impact of the vaccine will have on the virus. There are also a few simple animations which makes it easier to understand what the problems will be.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-b6360f40-84f9-469b-b6a3-a4568e161c4f

Having read it once I think that in the UK we have some potential problems.
"In the UK, about 36% of people said they were either uncertain or very unlikely to agree to be vaccinated, a report by scientific institutions the British Academy and the Royal Society found. Similar figures were recorded by a YouGov poll last month."

Overall, the WHO estimates that between 65% and 70% of people will need to be immune before transmission is interrupted, herd protection achieved and everyone and everywhere declared safe.
With a optimistic 95% effective rate and 64% of people being vaccinated then we get 61%. It can be inferred that if all these people refused to be vaccinated then the "herd immunity" could be seriously compromised and people will still be dying just at a much lower rate.

A few caveats. I do not know how reliable the surveys are but I would expect the BBC to check their sources. Also how questions are asked will often impact the answer for some individuals.

Pre-covid days by Easter? - I some how doubt it. Yes it will be better than now but I do not expect a full return to 2019 days.

By Easter? Nah. We'll be in the really awkward danger-to-some-not-others days by then. (If I got vaccinated and the vaccine has had time to work, I don't need to wear a mask. But maybe I should just to put others' minds at ease?)

Some other things to keep in mind...

Many of the people uncomfortable with getting vaccinated will get more comfortable with it as time goes on. (Normally I would expect it to be the vast majority but...)

Unlike natural herd immunity, there's going to be some brains behind who's getting vaccinated. The folks most likely to be hurt by it and the folks most likely to transmit are going to be higher on the list.

On the less happy side...

No idea about how the vaccine works in children or pregnant women.

While we know it's effective, I don't think we really have a handle on how long it lasts. Six months? Six years? Forever? <shrug> Maybe some vaccines last a lot longer than others, maybe not.

90-year-old grandmother gets 1st dose of Pfizer vaccine as U.K. declares COVID "V-Day"

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https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-19-vaccine-pfizer-uk-first-dose-v-day/

When I read that, I was convinced it would be the Queen.

Alberta just cancelled Christmas. No indoor or outdoor gatherings period for the next 4 weeks. Sad.

About the vaccine (?):

Pfizer starting rolling out the first batches of their vaccine this morning.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/pfizer-biontech-coronavirus-vaccine-ships-to-states

Yea my neighbor, who works in health care, gets his first one on Wednesday.

He joked that if this was a big plot we will all be out of health care workers

We were due to start vaccinating around here mid-December, but heard nothing yet. It's got to be an administrative and logistical nightmare, and I think it's going to take a while to even cover the most vulnerable.

Ripper said:

We were due to start vaccinating around here mid-December, but heard nothing yet. It's got to be an administrative and logistical nightmare, and I think it's going to take a while to even cover the most vulnerable.

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The UK has started vaccinating. Only vulnerable and NHS staff first though.

Sent from my SM-G975F using Tapatalk

Fun thought vaccines are good but waiting another year to finally get said vaccine is not good. Just means the virus will continue to spread among the ordinary public.

Also a new strain of Covid is spreading and it's more contagious and deadly.

Probably like most of us I'm tired of this virus. I understand that it is dangerous for the elderly and the sick, but most of the population goes through it quite mildly. Closed eateries, gyms and everything else in my opinion will do more harm to the economy and people's psyche than this virus

Marry said:

Probably like most of us I'm tired of this virus. I understand that it is dangerous for the elderly and the sick, but most of the population goes through it quite mildly. Closed eateries, gyms and everything else in my opinion will do more harm to the economy and people's psyche than this virus

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This is the “no politics” thread, and since your post is entirely made up of US right wing talking points, I would suggest you take that into the ‘politics’ forum.

But just to remind, these are things that have been addressed many, many months ago:

Myth #1: I’m not old and I’m healthy, so I won’t really get sick if I do get infected.

Fact: We are continually seeing evidence showing that older people are not the only ones to become seriously ill, or die, from COVID-19. Coronavirus can affect anyone, regardless of age or overall health, and the results can be severe if not fatal.

While it is true that the elderly and people with chronic health conditions—such as respiratory illnesses, diabetes, heart disease, and high blood pressure—are more vulnerable and tend to become more ill with coronavirus, there are all too many cases of healthy people in their 20s, 30s, or 40s who have passed away from coronavirus. And there are even more who live through the virus, but experienced severe symptoms and suffer serious challenges with recovery.

On top of that, those who are infected, regardless of their age, can spread the virus easily to others—even if they never show any symptoms of infection. The bottom line is that no one is risk-free. Don’t assume that your age, or your current health condition, shields you from how seriously the disease could affect you, much less those around you.

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https://www.evansvillesurgical.com/4-myths-about-coronavirus-that-could-still-be-hurting-you/

https://www.jsonline.com/story/news...myth-covid-only-threatens-old-ill/6389206002/

The point that old people and those who are immunocompromised in any way are more susceptible to basically every infectious disease is blindingly obvious, but it also simultaneously says that you are quite OK having millions of people die while also completely missing out on the core science of how infectious diseases work.

Further, each month we learn more - such as the potential long term brain effects of those who have even had moderate cases, permanent cardio-vascular impacts on even those with less severe cases, and that anyone who has been hospitalized with COVID and released is at a much higher risk of death within the next year. The science is not static, and the answer to economic problems comes from economic solutions, not a massive death wave. And while the mental health toll is certainly very serious, it is objectively less serious than the fate suffered by more than 400,000 Americans in the last 10 months, including more than 4,400 just yesterday.

And it's worth repeating that with more than 2 million deaths globally it is the germ killing most people, far more than the numbers killed by the other major killer germs: tuberculosis, HIV, influenza and malaria. (Pneumonia kills more, but that one is caused by many different agents).

Also worth mentioning, this is the death toll while we have significant contagion reducing restrictions. During early spring in Sweden which at the time had fairly lax restrictions, COVID-19 was the third most common cause of death.

And one more thing: This virus mutates, we have now several different new strains, some of the newer ones more infectious than the until now most common variety. The efficacy of vaccines against all the new ones remains to be seen. And there is no guarantee that mutations won't ever affect how dangerous the virus becomes. Another coronavirus (in other words, a relative of SARS-CoV-2), the MERS virus has a case fatality rate of around 35% (Admittedly with, some uncertainty, may be lower, but it's still way more deadly than the current common strain of the Covid-19 virus).

A pibbur who sees no reason to relax.

PS. With 400 000 deaths in less than a year the US, COVID-19 should currently be the cause of between 10 and 15% of all annual deaths over there (I think around 3 million americans die each year). DS.

a pibbur said:

And it's worth repeating that with more than 2 million deaths globally it is the germ killing most people, far more than the numbers killed by the other major killers: tuberculosis, AIDS, influenza and malaria. (Pneumonia kills more, but that one is caused by several different agents).

Also worth mentioning, this is the death toll while we have significant contagion reducing restrictions. During early spring in Sweden which at the time had fairly lax restrictions, COVID-19 was the third most common cause of death.

And one more thing: This virus mutates, we have now several different new strains, some of the newer ones more infectious than the until now most common variety. The efficacy of vaccines against all the new ones remains to be seen. And there is no guarantee that mutations won't ever affect how dangerous the virus becomes. Another coronavirus (in other words, a relative of SARS-CoV-2), the MERS virus has a case fatality rate of around 35% (Admittedly with, some uncertainty, may be lower, but it's still way more deadly than the current common strain of the Covid-19 virus).

A pibbur who sees no reason to relax.

PS. With 400 000 deaths in less than a year the US, COVID-19 should currently be the cause of between 10 and 15% of all annual deaths over there (I think around 3 million americans die each year). DS.

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Yes, but the MERS fatality rate and others too are why some viruses don't spread as fast.

a pibbur said:

PS. With 400 000 deaths in less than a year the US, COVID-19 should currently be the cause of between 10 and 15% of all annual deaths over there (I think around 3 million americans die each year). DS.

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According to 2019 the US population was 328.2 million.

So 400,000 deaths would be about less then 0.5% of the population dead.

(I'm no mathematician so someone else can get a better percentage.)

It's not a large number but still a tragic loss to the family's.

I maybe wasn't entirely clear about what I meant, but here's the calculation:

In 2018 2,839,205 Americans died according to CDC, or approximately 3,000,000. 400,000/3,000,000 is 0.1333... or 13.333...%.

If 400,000 were 2-5% of the number of deaths, it would mean that between 8 and 20 million people died each year in the US.

an incarnation of pibbur who hopes he doesn't embarrass himself now.

a pibbur said:

If 400,000 were 2-5% of the number of deaths, it would mean that between 8 and 20 million people died each year in the US.

an incarnation of pibbur who hopes he doesn't embarrass himself now.

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Those are zombie plague predictions. Anyway yeah I was way off.

Pladio said:

Yes, but the MERS fatality rate and others too are why some viruses don't spread as fast.

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It is a valid point. Killing the host can reduce the chance for a germ to spread.

But, IMO for MERS it's more that the virus itself isn't very contagious. Infection requires a high dose of virus, most cases are infected from animals, and there seems to be little human to human transmission. There is concern that MERS might mutate into something readily spreading from human to human. Like Sars-Cov2. So on the one hand we have a coronavirus that is lethal but doesn't transfer easily between humans. On the other hand we have a related coronavirus that is highly contagious, but not very deadly. At the moment.

We have plenty of examples of highly infectious and at the same time very deadly germs. Smallpox, caused by the variola virus killed around 30% of the patients. And the virus was wide spread, infecting many millions of humans each year. As late as 1967 when the disease was largely under control in many parts of then world 15 million got infected by smallpox. Another example is of course the plague that spread widely in Europe back in the 14th cenrtury, while at the same time killing 30-60% of the population.

Viruses causing seasonal epidemics tend to evolve into not being very lethal. So, over time, if Covid-19 became a seasonal infection, it could very well become similar to the flu (which BTW also has/had quite deadly outbreaks). But that would not be the case here, if the virus at this stage mutated into something still highly infectious and now lethal, with still a largely not immune population it could turn into a real PIA.

There is real concern about what pandemics we might expect in the future. A highly contagious MERS is one example. Another more scary candidate is Nipah, which kills up to 90% of it's victims. Currently this one requires close contact, but secretions from the respiratory tract do contain virus, so there is potential for more extensive spreading. And we already know one Ebola species with airborne transmission, the Reston variant, which fortunately didn't cause disease humans.

an incarnation of pibbur who like that 747 pilot trusts that you are "not in too much distress" by this.