COVID-19: Chapter 7 - Brags, Beats, and Variants

https://twitter.com/skarlamangla/status/1345148683101245440

https://twitter.com/latimes/status/1346347702553104385

I would vote to repeal he first amendment. Perhaps less extreme making up or spreading fake news is a felony. 1st offense: hefty fine. 2nd offense : jail time.

Every fb or twawter acc has to be verified by their security. Picture ID and contract needed to post. It sounds extreme but how the fukkk else do we stop the madness? It’s only going to get worse.

If these morons couldn’t pump the net w poison we would have saved countless lives not to mention immeasurable pain and suffering. If I gave your kids a lollipop laced w poison and they died I would get the chair, but hey constantly reshape info that will kill 10s of thousands and u get to accumulate likes and friend requests, maybe even a day or 2 on someone’s boat telling each other how right you are. This country is toast.

So this seems legit terrifying at first:

https://twitter.com/Pervaizistan/status/1346283751861608449

Thing is… that’s kinda what they should be doing anyways. Still the fact that they think they’re that low is pretty terrifying.

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How many is that a day on average. I’m usually good at guessing at this stuff but I don’t know if it’s 30? 300? 1200?

https://mobile.twitter.com/ImIncorrigible/status/1346420368769216512

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Scientists in South Africa say there is a “reasonable concern” that the new variant of Covid-19 sweeping across the country might prove to be more resistant to current vaccines being rolled out in the UK and elsewhere, and warn that it makes the need for a global roll-out of vaccines “even more critical”.

“It’s a theoretical concern. A reasonable concern… that the South African variant might be more resistant,” Prof Shabir Madhi, who has led trials for the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine in South Africa, told the BBC.

Prof Madhi was responding to comments by the UK government and scientists. He said a definitive answer would probably come in a matter of weeks, with extensive testing already under way in South Africa.

https://mobile.twitter.com/Kevin_Maguire/status/1346399540077858816

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That describes it perfectly. The same people pushing for schools are the same people indoor dining (in the general public, not those itt). At least according to the local news interviews a few weeks back.

It’s such circular logic- all kinds of pressure put in to allow indoor dining, the government relents, “hey the government says its ok to dine indoors, therefore it must be safe”

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My wife’s post work social media post last night follows. If you want to know why I am incredibly quick to fire back at anyone criticizing anti-Covid measures like lockdowns by using pie in the sky alcohol, drug and suicide numbers this is it. As I said in previous posts I am quite sure all those things are up in the last year somewhat. But it is mostly because the virus is raging, not because Chili’s was closed for indoor dining for 4 weeks in March/April.

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Thoughts after another covid icu stretch:

Guys… I sat and watched these oxygen sats all day on a patient (in addition to having 2 other patients). I know that probably means nothing to many of you, but to me it’s incredibly anxiety inducing when you can’t do much about it and dread what’s to come. Tell the patient to keep fighting as hard as they can, patient nods head and squeezes my hand in an exhausted yes. Sats drop to 60s, sustained, patient slipping away. Intubate (place on the ventilator) because there is no other option. Then the inevitable asystole (heart stopping because it can’t take it anymore). Code blue. CPR. Patient back. Watch the inevitable decline back to asystole. Code blue. Patient barely hanging on. Have chaplain call family to get there asap. Whisper “I’m so sorry” in your patient’s ear, hoping they will know you tried your hardest. Try to keep patient alive long enough for family to say their goodbyes. Family arrives, stay strong and composed for the family. Go to my car after charting. Sob inconsolably on the drive home. Have fitful sleep of work nightmares. Wake up exhausted. Go back to work. Repeat something similar.

That’s been many of my shifts the last 6 months. You’d think it would become numbing at some point, but it still hasn’t. Each patient death still hurts.

I. Hate. This."

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Denmark allows six-week delay for second vaccine dose

Like the UK, another European country is to allow a longer period between administering the two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

The Danish health authorities have said they will allow a wait of up to six weeks before administering a second dose of the vaccine, Danish news agency Ritzau reports.

“We can see in the documentation that it can take up to six weeks between each injection. We will add this to our updated guidelines,” Soeren Brostroem, head of the Danish Health Authority, told Ritzau.

“If you go longer than six weeks, we cannot see the scientific evidence that you are protected with certainty.”

The original guidelines of waiting only three to four weeks to deliver a second shot should be followed whenever possible, officials added.

On Monday, we reported that Germany was also looking into delaying giving the second dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to make supplies go further.

The UK has said it will give both parts of both the Pfizer and the Oxford vaccines 12 weeks apart, having initially planned to leave 21 days between the Pfizer jabs.

The country’s chief medical officers have said the “great majority” of initial protection came from the first jab.

Pfizer has previously said it had tested the vaccine’s efficacy only when the two vaccines were given up to 21 days apart.

Seems reasonable if six weeks is tested. Still not sure which is better from an epi standpoint.

Scottish travel rules also apply to Trump - Sturgeon

Commenting on reports that Donald Trump might come to Scotland within the next few weeks, she said non-essential travel was not allowed.

That rule applied to the president as much as anyone else, she added.

Sturgeon said she didn’t have any knowledge of his travel plans but she didn’t view playing golf as an essential reason to travel.

Trump owns golf courses in Scotland and a second course at his Aberdeenshire resort was approved in October.

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Who decides if the news is fake?

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They forgot to add “and people should stop YOLOing it”

It’s like these people have never even heard of the central dogma of molecular biology!

I didn’t realize that WHO is still not fully on board with the aerosol/inhalation route of infection.

Excellent quick read. Have not dived into the references yet.

I think we’re going to see a push from Republicans at the state level to try and ban employers from mandating that their employees must get vaccinated, using standard libertarian anti-government claptrap as justification. Corporations generally want to be able to do that and will push back.

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Really good article. One of the takeaways is you shouldn’t believe a word from Fauci and the NIH about if this thing came from a lab or not. They were giving huge grants to this dumb gain of function research. The NIH gave that Baric guy $8.3 million in 2015 and $10.5 million in 2016? Those are huge grants. And this dude was collaborating with the Wuhan institute to do gain of function research in coronavirus. The fuck?

Early in 2016, Baric and Shi again collaborated. Shi sent Baric a fresh bat virus spike protein, and Baric inserted it into the backbone of a human SARS virus and then used that infectious clone to attack human airway cells. “The virus readily and efficiently replicated in cultured human airway tissues, suggesting an ability to potentially jump directly to humans,” reported the UNC’s website. This time, they also used the bat-human hybrid virus to infect transgenic humanized mice that grew human ACE2 protein. The mice, young and old, lost weight and died, proving, again, that this particular bat virus was potentially “poised to emerge in human populations.” It was “an ongoing threat,” Baric wrote. But was it? Civets and camels that are exposed to a lot of bat-guano dust may be an ongoing threat and a manageable one. But the bats themselves just want to hang in their caves and not be bothered by frowning sightseers in spacesuits who want to poke Q-tips in their bottoms. This 2016 “poised for human emergence” paper was supported by eight different NIH grants. Massive. In 2015, Baric’s lab received $8.3 million from the NIH; in 2016, it received $10.5 million.

In May, an interviewer from the People’s Pharmacy website asked Baric if he had any thoughts on whether the coronavirus began with a natural bat-to-human transfer. “Or was there something a little bit more, perhaps, insidious involved?”

“Well, of course the answers to those questions are in China,” Baric replied. “Exactly how they work in that facility is something that would be very difficult for a Westerner to know,” he said. “The main problems that the Institute of Virology has is that the outbreak occurred in close proximity to that Institute. That Institute has in essence the best collection of virologists in the world that have gone out and sought out, and isolated, and sampled bat species throughout Southeast Asia. So they have a very large collection of viruses in their laboratory. And so it’s — you know — proximity is a problem. It’s a problem.”

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The gain of function research is absolutely batshit (pun intended) insane. Also, going into remote areas to catch bats and collect their viruses. Seriously stupid.

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