~*Official #COVID-19 Thread of Doom*~ Revenge of Omicron Prime

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

 

 

 

[PaladinSolo]

Of course a travel ban will work, just not if its already inside your borders, lol.

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

1 minute ago, PaladinSolo said:

Of course a travel ban will work, just not if its already inside your borders, lol.

the rules we had were evidence free lol

 

[Greatoneshere]

India looks like a shit show right now Jesus.

[AbsolutSurgen]

I know that the numbers in the US are going down -- however, the numbers where I live are higher than they have ever been.  Our ICUs are now completely full, and we are in the process of setting up field hospitals.

We've been in some form of lockdown since November 23rd -- restaurants have had indoor dining closed since then.  Non-essential retail has been closed for all of it except for ~1 month.  And the definition of non-essential retail has been severely limited.  Stores are currently only allowed to sell grocery items, cleaning supplies, healthcare supplies  -- still numbers are higher than they have ever been.  Even opening up a little bit has causes a spike in the numbers.  

Our reporting rates in most of the cities are currently ~8x higher than the first wave.  [The slight drop on the right is due to a couple of days of lower reporting, the last few days are spiking up again.]  We are now ~2 weeks into a stay-at-home order -- and have just closed our provincial borders.

More people with COVID-19 are quickly deteriorating, dying before seeking medical care: Ontario's chief coroner

Quote

Provincial health officials are now investigating an alarming new trend of people with COVID-19 who are rapidly deteriorating and dying before seeking medical care, Ontario’s chief coroner and coordinator of the province’s outbreak response team said Thursday.

“We have been seeing a number of people dying in the community outside of the hospital, which is new, unfortunate, and sad,” Dr. Dirk Huyer told reporters during a news conference at Queen’s Park on Thursday afternoon.

“These people have not been able to obtain health care because the disease affected them so quickly and so seriously, leading to deaths in the community, which we did not see in the Office of the Chief Coroner in the first wave.”

Huyer noted that officials are now trying to investigate further to determine all of the circumstances surrounding these deaths.

“We are still trying to understand and evaluate. What I can tell you is the numbers have been certainly elevated, in the range of approximately two per day over the past two weeks and that is in excess of anything that we saw during Wave 1 and over Wave 2,” he said.

He added that in all of these instances, the people were symptomatic and had either tested positive or were a close contact of a positive case.

“Symptoms have been present, not to the extent that were recognized as necessarily requiring hospitalization, and then they were found deceased later in the day or in the morning,” Huyer said.

“These are not people that ambulances have been called because they had been deteriorating... it is not that people were ignoring symptoms from what I’ve read. I need to drill down a little bit deeper, but these were people who did have stable conditions and then deteriorated very quickly.”

Huyer said the people who died ranged in age from in their 30s to in their 70s.

“Certainly it is notable in the fact that this is a younger population. This is population in the community. This is a population who are suffering serious consequences in the form of death in a quicker period of time than we saw in the past,” he said.

“I think it amplifies and recognizes the importance of what we need to do to ensure that we reduce the potential for people having infections.”

The number of virus-related deaths in Ontario has been steadily rising over the past month, with 40 more deaths confirmed by the Ministry of Health on Thursday, the highest daily death toll reported since Feb. 19.

Ontario is now seeing an average of 27 virus-related deaths each day, up from 22 last Thursday, and 15 two weeks ago.

 

[AbsolutSurgen]

Canada had confidence that a travel ban wouldn't work, and we had other measures that would control the spread of the virus.

Recently, despite calls to shut down air travel to India -- it took weeks for our government to do it.

 

My brother-in-law in Taiwan tells me that life has pretty much been normal throughout the pandemic -- they put in a travel ban.

[AbsolutSurgen]

18 minutes ago, PaladinSolo said:

Of course a travel ban will work, just not if its already inside your borders, lol.

A travel ban would have prevented the variants that developed in other parts of the world from coming in -- which is largely driving the higher transmission rates.

[Chairslinger]

Today is the one the one year anniversary of inject bleachgate.

 

 

If you wanted to sum up Trump's presidency in one example this is probably high up there on the list of candidates.

 

It's got that mixture of laughable stupidity and yet stone cold serious danger that Trump did so well. It's got the off the cuff random and yet completely self assured confidence that can only come from being a rich white fuck who failed upwards his whole life.

 

And of course it is about COVID which will define his legacy as one of the worst presidents in American history.

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

23 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

Canada had confidence that a travel ban wouldn't work, and we had other measures that would control the spread of the virus.

Recently, despite calls to shut down air travel to India -- it took weeks for our government to do it.

 

My brother-in-law in Taiwan tells me that life has pretty much been normal throughout the pandemic -- they put in a travel ban.

Helps that the VP or president (I forget) of Taiwan is an epidemiologist

[AbsolutSurgen]

1 minute ago, b_m_b_m_b_m said:

Helps that the VP or president (I forget) of Taiwan is an epidemiologist

Vice-president I think.

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

My employer (big company) will officially have a "two tiered approach" to getting back to the office, including more flexibility on social distancing and masks for those who are vaccinated, subject to local laws and regulations. Not requiring vaccinations as of yet. Starting July 1 we will have a hybrid schedule for one year, 3 days a week in the office as a target. More details coming but looks like things are going somewhat back to in person.

[Jason]

18 minutes ago, b_m_b_m_b_m said:

My employer (big company) will officially have a "two tiered approach" to getting back to the office, including more flexibility on social distancing and masks for those who are vaccinated, subject to local laws and regulations. Not requiring vaccinations as of yet. Starting July 1 we will have a hybrid schedule for one year, 3 days a week in the office as a target. More details coming but looks like things are going somewhat back to in person.

 

How are they going to handle keeping track of who is and isn't vaccinated?

[Guest]

This is the bigger test of both the federal and state governments than the 220 million doses given to date. Bribe people if need be.

[marioandsonic]

So, in other words...we're fucked.

[Joe]

5 minutes ago, marioandsonic said:

So, in other words...we're fucked.

 

 

[Guest]

5 minutes ago, marioandsonic said:

So, in other words...we're fucked.

Not at all. The next month will see a significant shift in the ability of the virus to replicate and our numbers will decline sharply. But we will continue to have a moderate number of infections and low levels of deaths for the rest of the year.
 

Mostly annoying because if everybody got on board we could simply end this thing in another 3 months and then turn our attention towards the developing world.

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

29 minutes ago, Jason said:

 

How are they going to handle keeping track of who is and isn't vaccinated?

 

But also the company is administering vaccines to employees as well 

[Joe]

Covid-19 Vaccine Rollout: County and State Tracker - The New York Times

WWW.NYTIMES.COM

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See where doses have gone, and who is eligible for a shot in each state.

 

Crazy to see the difference between Republican and Democrat states. The difference is honestly insane.

[Jason]

2 minutes ago, b_m_b_m_b_m said:

 

But also the company is administering vaccines to employees as well 

 

It just seems like a shitshow for the people who aren't vaccinated yet to have to just take it on faith that someone walking around maskless really is vaccinated and not just an anti-masker douchebag. 

[Guest]

12 minutes ago, Joe said:

Covid-19 Vaccine Rollout: County and State Tracker - The New York Times

WWW.NYTIMES.COM

---

See where doses have gone, and who is eligible for a shot in each state.

 

Crazy to see the difference between Republican and Democrat states. The difference is honestly insane.

It really isn’t. Separate from any issues of hesitancy, red states invest less money in public health infrastructure generally. It’s why even in a lot of heavily blue counties in Texas you’ll still see below national average vaccination rates, as an example. One of the best managed cities for public health in the state is El Paso, which unsurprisingly has above national average rates so far. Local public health machinery is critical here

[Joe]

1 minute ago, sblfilms said:

It really isn’t. Separate from any issues of hesitancy, red states invest less money in public health infrastructure generally. It’s why even in a lot of heavily blue counties in Texas you’ll still see below national average vaccination rates, as an example. One of the best managed cities for public health in the state is El Paso, which unsurprisingly has above national average rates so far. Local public health machinery is critical here

 

I was asking myself seeing those numbers if it was a question of hesitancy or a question of just the way the states are run. Or a combination of both of course, but I was wondering what was the bigger factor.

[CitizenVectron]

 

[CitizenVectron]

7 minutes ago, sblfilms said:

It really isn’t. Separate from any issues of hesitancy, red states invest less money in public health infrastructure generally. It’s why even in a lot of heavily blue counties in Texas you’ll still see below national average vaccination rates, as an example. One of the best managed cities for public health in the state is El Paso, which unsurprisingly has above national average rates so far. Local public health machinery is critical here

 

In Canada we are seeing the same thing—in provinces where the government chose to use existing (strong) public infrastructure, vaccine rollout is going very smoothly (example: Saskatchewan, with a single booking system and all sites run by Sask Health Authority). In others (like Ontario) that have chosen to largely distribute via private companies (pharmacies, grocery stores, etc) the effort is much more chaotic and difficult. 

 

Having said that, the distribution becomes less important as supply matches or exceeds demand. But as long as demand is higher than supply, it makes far more sense to use existing health infrastructure to distribute doses since it can be centrally managed.

 

[Joe]

2 minutes ago, CitizenVectron said:

 

In Canada we are seeing the same thing—in provinces where the government chose to use existing (strong) public infrastructure, vaccine rollout is going very smoothly (example: Saskatchewan, with a single booking system and all sites run by Sask Health Authority). In others (like Ontario) that have chosen to largely distribute via private companies (pharmacies, grocery stores, etc) the effort is much more chaotic and difficult. 

 

Having said that, the distribution becomes less important as supply matches or exceeds demand. But as long as demand is higher than supply, it makes far more sense to use existing health infrastructure to distribute doses since it can be centrally managed.

 

 

The funny thing about NJ at least has been the distribution has been fairly chaotic and yet, we have some of the best numbers in the country vaccination wise.

[Guest]

4 minutes ago, Joe said:

 

I was asking myself seeing those numbers if it was a question of hesitancy or a question of just the way the states are run. Or a combination of both of course, but I was wondering what was the bigger factor.

I think there are certainly some states where hesitancy is killing things (think Alabama and Mississippi), but those states are also failing on account of lack of public health infrastructure. You can see this is the relatively low rates for Black residents who in those states are actually over represented in rural locales.
 

The Feds are going to have to take over distribution for those communities by getting medical buses down there and literally driving neighborhood by neighborhood to offer doses.

 

And we really need to start thinking hard about carrots and sticks for people who are just being stupid about vaccines for show.

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

1 minute ago, sblfilms said:

I think there are certainly some states where hesitancy is killing things (think Alabama and Mississippi), but those states are also failing on account of lack of public health infrastructure. You can see this is the relatively low rates for Black residents who in those states are actually over represented in rural locales.
 

The Feds are going to have to take over distribution for those communities by getting medical buses down there and literally driving neighborhood by neighborhood to offer doses.

 

And we really need to start thinking hard about carrots and sticks for people who are just being stupid about vaccines for show.

Bullshit walks, money talks. Give them money for the shot

[Guest]

I would also guess, without it being a perfect 1:1, that generally more urban states are doing better than less urban states. It helps to be able to centralize distribution in the places where lots of people live and work. Makes that story @b_m_b_m_b_mposted about some Cali distribution sites turning away pedestrians even more strange. Having decent public transport to mass vax sites is a huge deal, so utterly ridiculous to turn people away for not driving there!

[Joe]

8 minutes ago, b_m_b_m_b_m said:

Bullshit walks, money talks. Give them money for the shot

 

 

Free Nets tickets if you get a shot? Not Yankees though, amirite @ManUtdRedDevils? That's a sure fire way to increase vaccine hesitancy.

[Guest]

That’s mean @Joe

[Guest]

(But probably true right now)

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

13 minutes ago, sblfilms said:

I would also guess, without it being a perfect 1:1, that generally more urban states are doing better than less urban states. It helps to be able to centralize distribution in the places where lots of people live and work. Makes that story @b_m_b_m_b_mposted about some Cali distribution sites turning away pedestrians even more strange. Having decent public transport to mass vax sites is a huge deal, so utterly ridiculous to turn people away for not driving there!

The confounding thing is that greater urbanization is correlated with democratic party vote share which would generally in turn lead to better public health infrastructure at the stage and local level.

 

Is it urbanization? Is it partisanship? Is it education levels? The answer looks to be "yes"

[Brian]

14 minutes ago, Joe said:

 

 

Free Nets tickets if you get a shot? Not Yankees though, amirite @ManUtdRedDevils? That's a sure fire way to increase vaccine hesitancy.

[Jason]

 

[Jason]

11 minutes ago, Jason said:

 

 

 

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

45 minutes ago, sblfilms said:

I would also guess, without it being a perfect 1:1, that generally more urban states are doing better than less urban states. It helps to be able to centralize distribution in the places where lots of people live and work. Makes that story @b_m_b_m_b_mposted about some Cali distribution sites turning away pedestrians even more strange. Having decent public transport to mass vax sites is a huge deal, so utterly ridiculous to turn people away for not driving there!

One thing I just thought of too is that based on KFF data, there's not a state with a significant Black or hispanic population where the % Black or hispanic population has received a similar % of vaccines to match population. As an example, I saw a map of Chicago from today where the south and west side of the city (largely Black and Hispanic areas) largely have fewer than 36 total first shots per 100 residents in many areas where as the North side (white) is well over 60 per 100 in many zip codes. (I'd link the images from twitter but the account is private right now)

 

So there's a lot of people who are fairly willing to get shots (based on polling) who haven't had the ability or access to get them yet.