It’s funny that Kangaroos actually have muscular arms like the way Garrison draws Trump’s arms. So of course he gives the kangaroo a stick arm. Skinny femboy powder blue nazis!
Yeah. Cases there are ticking along at around the 2 to 2.5K a day mark (2501 today). The hospitalized cases will be Delta still, but Omicron is now a majority of new cases in the state.
Well it’s confusing, because male kangaroos are the ones with muscular arms, but the depicted kangaroo has a pouch, so it must be a female, but it’s been drawn kind of masculine. Perhaps its a trans or non-binary kangaroo that, after imprisoning Australians in its pouch, is going to compound the humiliation by going and using the wrong bathroom, that would make some sense. I feel like the situation could have been clarified with a bit more labelling.
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You might see a new Australia over the coming months, by the way. Australians had a deal laid out for them, obey the rules for the moment and get vaccinated and we will return things to normal when vaccination rates hit 80%. It is going to be politically fraught to be like “actually Omicron tho so we need to do lockdowns again” and no far no Australian leader has suggested re-introducing restrictions.
Not only that, the Premier who guided NSW through most of the pandemic resigned in a corruption scandal and her replacement, Dominic Perrottet, is striking a more permissive tone. NSW doesn’t even have a mask mandate in retail stores, which SA had for months even with no community transmission happening. Perrottet said this today:
NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet is continuing to resist calls to expand mask mandates, saying people must start taking responsibility for themselves.
“We are treating the people of our state like adults,” Mr Perrottet said.
“If we need to tailor our responses from time to time, we will.”
Well, I guess we’ll see. Daily cases were down in the low hundreds and are now rapidly increasing and majority Omicron:
One thing we have going for us of course it’s that it’s summer, which might keep a lid on case growth a bit. But it’s summer in South Africa too. I wonder what will happen in NSW if hospitals do start getting hit hard. I guess there will be lockdowns, but people won’t be very happy about it.
Moderna says booster of its vaccine appears to protect against Omicron
Moderna Inc said on Monday that a booster dose of its COVID-19 vaccine appeared to be protective against the fast-spreading Omicron variant in laboratory testing and that the current version of the vaccine would continue to be Moderna’s “first line of defense against Omicron.”
The vaccine maker said the decision to focus on the current vaccine, mRNA-1273, was driven in part by how quickly the recently discovered variant is spreading, Reuters reports. The company still plans to develop a vaccine specifically to protect against Omicron, which it hopes to advance into clinical trials early next year.
“What we have available right now is 1273,” Dr. Paul Burton, Moderna’s Chief Medical Officer, said in an interview. “It’s highly effective, and it’s extremely safe. I think it will protect people through the coming holiday period and through these winter months, when we’re going to see the most severe pressure of Omicron.”
The company said a two-dose course of its vaccine generated low neutralizing antibodies against the Omicron variant, but a 50 microgram booster dose increased neutralizing antibodies against the variant 37 fold. A higher, 100 microgram booster dose of the same vaccine drove antibody levels even higher - more than 80 times pre-boost levels.
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The NFL has 97% vaxxed according to reports.
Rounding up to 2,000 players (32x53+8-10 practice squad), that’s on the order of 60 unvaxxed players.
All of them are getting Omicron? We’ve got to be drawing live to a serious illness if we assume 1% in that age range? Maybe a coin flip?
And of course this is ignoring the collateral damage to their friends & family which likely overrepresent as unvaxxed?
It’s intense, isn’t it?
Last year, I had a similar feeling but I was at least working from home during a lockdown at that time. Despite being boosted about 6 weeks ago, I’m less confident now in passing a covid test than I was last year due to going to work in person regularly.
It’s just a short hand that @iron81 is using to assert that we shouldn’t reside so much in our bubbles. To be totally fair, I think that he has a point and I am generally much more sympathetic to @iron81 's views than others here. I disagree with him broadly, but if we’re being honest with ourselves we are probably getting the whole story of what’s going on filtered through a selective lens, just like everyone else on the internet.
But I still assert that governments are being too accommodating to antivaxxers because they lack the courage to publicly make the connection between antivaxxer actions and government actions like lock downs. Lest I be accused again of Social Media Brain, here is the actual statement posted by the Ontario government about their restrictions being announced just before the holidays.
https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/1001366/ontario-further-strengthening-response-to-omicron
Now, if you read that you will not find any messaging saying that these things are happening to responsible people because irresponsible antivaxxers are assholes. For people that already know that is what’s really going on, you can read between the lines and see that’s happening. But the official government notice, the one that is amplified in the media, contains about 25 bullet points on specific restrictions, 3 pathetic appeals to antivaxxers to pretty pretty please with a cherry on top get vaccinated for the greater good and the health of your neighbors, 2 references to hospitals being overwhelmed, 2 statements that the government needs to buy time so it can ramp up vaccine availability, and ZERO statements about how it is the voluntarily unvaccinated that are more likely to suffer adverse health outcomes from Omicron and ZERO statements connecting this to the problem of hospitals being worried about running out of ICU beds.
Maybe these measures would be necessary with every single people fully vaccinated anyway. But no matter which way you cut it the antivaxxers are making this worse for everyone all around. And the government won’t call them out on it. The Premier’s fucking daughter is an antivaxxer for fuck’s sake.
IMO, you should no longer be considered vaccinated if you haven’t received a booster in some countries.
nice little article about anxiety
Sounds like some hospitals are stopping MAB use for Omicron as most are no longer effective. The one that is being allocated due to scarcity.
Yikes. Let’s get the antiviral(s) available.
Months away per Fauci
Regeneron not looking so good but there’s this one…
Sotrovimab is a monoclonal antibody given as a transfusion to transplant recipients, cancer patients and other high-risk groups.
If given quickly after symptoms develop it should help prevent people from falling seriously ill with the disease.
Initial tests suggest it should still work against the Omicron variant.
“These new drugs have an important role to play,” said Prof Steven Powis, the national medical director of NHS England.
“If you test positive and are at high risk then we will be contacting you, and, if eligible, you will be able to get access to these new treatments.”
Initial clinical trials suggest sotrovimab, developed by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and Vir Biotechnology, is thought to reduce the risk of hospitalisation in high risk patients by 79%.
Might not have much choice but to jam thru Pfizer’s at least. The surge is coming now.
In other news:
6 year old grandson has his two shots in. Mind you he had his heart completely remodelled at 5 months and his cardiologist said the myocarditis risk from the virus was much greater than from the vaccine.
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I heard that booster is most effective after 14 days. Any idea on what the effectiveness profile post boost looks like?
Yeah that’s the one still being used, but it is on allocation.
Process and holiday tho
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How long until the guidance of “wait 6 months for your booster” changes?
With the current guidelines it would take an unvaxxed person 6 months and 2 weeks to be protected against omicron (from their first shot today) which seems… Long.
I also have family and friends who are waiting for their 6mo, and if I were them I’d be itching to get it asap.
I’m sure they’ll get on that right after they recommend a wider dose spacing for Pfizer and a lower dosage for the initial Moderna shots.
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Today they changed it to 3 months in Ontario.
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