COVID-19 - READ THE RULES BEFORE REPLYING

[Age of 9394]

20 minutes ago, tikker said:

It has to do with laws and regulations. Pfizer's Comirnaty vaccine, for example, was (maybe still is, haven't checked) only granted Emergency Use Authorisation and not fully FDA-approved vaccines aren't allowed to be marketed like that. Also here in the Netherlands there are strict laws concerning drug marketing.

 They can make video about google map, but the true information is about health and how to find vaccine location. 

[Donut417]

45 minutes ago, tikker said:

hey look at this awesome drug that is the best".

No drug is the best. Not all drugs work on all people. I had to try 3 different blood pressure medicines before I got one that worked well for me. Same thing applies to the vaccines. They all have positives and negatives. In some cases I have heard doctors tell people to get a different vaccine for the booster, as there was a possibility of it proving better protection. I got all the same, but that was under the recommendation of my doctor. 

 

Most drug commercials are like "Hey, this drug manages this condition" "Here is the list of the side effects that are worse than the condition". "Ask you doctor about such and such drug today". None of the claim to be "The best". 

[EphraimK]

As the 3 year of COVID comes near, I wanted to talk about January 2020.

 

COVID tests should not work have worked logically from the start, because the virus had not been isolated yet.

 

Think logically, the first test cam out literally weeks after the virus was even discovered!

 

How in the world would they have a test that fast?

 

The Influenza shot was tested years before release, why aren't they doing that with the COVID jab?

[Donut417]

37 minutes ago, EDKTech said:

How in the world would they have a test that fast?

Because Covid is a corona virus which is a well known type of Virus. It just like Lysol states on its can it kills Corona virus even before covid was a thing. Covid is just a new type of Corona virus. 

[EphraimK]

5 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

Because Covid is a corona virus which is a well known type of Virus. It just like Lysol states on its can it kills Corona virus even before covid was a thing. Covid is just a new type of Corona virus. 

But it is still different, for example, you couldn't treat FluA with a FluB shot.

 

Thats why they want you to take the Flu jab every year.

[Donut417]

4 minutes ago, EDKTech said:

But it is still different, for example, you couldn't treat FluA with a FluB shot.

 

Thats why they want you to take the Flu jab every year.

But the fact is Covid is a corona virus and probably attacks the body the same way corona virus's do. Meaning health officials know what the look for. On top of it Im going to guess that they identified some specific characteristic about Covid that they look for with the test, like some signature. 

 

The reason you have to get a flu shot yearly is due to the type of virus. Also there are eleventy billon strains about the flu. Every year health officials try to predict which strains are going to be an issue. Then they tell the drug companies to develop vaccines for those strains. Honestly Covid is likely going to be like the flu from now on. Meaning you will need a vaccine each year. 

[adarw]

4 minutes ago, EDKTech said:

But it is still different, for example, you couldn't treat FluA with a FluB shot.

 

Thats why they want you to take the Flu jab every year.

thats such a counterintuitive statement. Different types of coronavirus had infected humans multiple times, for example sars in 2002-2004. now COVID-19 is just a strain of coronavirus, but the thing is its faster to infect you and makes you more sick than most coronavirus branches. while coronavirus research was underfunded before Covid-19 (even though many people knew another coronavirus outbreak will happen) there was already a base understanding and how they could do a vaccine for it. so all they needed was to change the some stuff from something that already existed.

 

btw vairents such as delta and omicron are variants of coivd-19 and not coronavirus, think of it as a tree with branches.

 

[WkdPaul]

1 hour ago, EDKTech said:

But it is still different, for example, you couldn't treat FluA with a FluB shot.

 

Thats why they want you to take the Flu jab every year.

I'm going to be brutally blunt here, so no offense but ;

 

Coronaviruses are well known, and the SARS epidemic made scientist afraid that something similar could happen again (and it obviously did!), as such, they started researching vaccines.

 

They didn't just came up with a coronavirus vaccine in a few weeks, this was years in the making.

 

You SERIOUSLY need to start listening to the scientific community and drop FB and other conspiracy breading grounds.

 

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22536382/

 

Quote

Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) emerged in China in 2002 and spread to other countries before brought under control. Because of a concern for reemergence or a deliberate release of the SARS coronavirus, vaccine development was initiated.

They've been working on this for almost 2 decades now, is that not enough ???????????

[tikker]

10 hours ago, Donut417 said:

No drug is the best. Not all drugs work on all people. I had to try 3 different blood pressure medicines before I got one that worked well for me. Same thing applies to the vaccines. They all have positives and negatives. In some cases I have heard doctors tell people to get a different vaccine for the booster, as there was a possibility of it proving better protection. I got all the same, but that was under the recommendation of my doctor. 

 

Most drug commercials are like "Hey, this drug manages this condition" "Here is the list of the side effects that are worse than the condition". "Ask you doctor about such and such drug today". None of the claim to be "The best". 

Same here. Commercials also aren't allowed for stuff you can't get over the counter here.

 

10 hours ago, EDKTech said:

COVID tests should not work have worked logically from the start, because the virus had not been isolated yet.

 

Think logically, the first test cam out literally weeks after the virus was even discovered!

 

How in the world would they have a test that fast?

Multiple factors. For starters it wasn't a completely strange virus, it was a species of the known SARS-CoV virus. The second point is that if you have discovered the virus then you have it isolated/know what it is. Otherwise it isn't discovered. Once they have a clue what to  look for, that is immediately shared across the world through the appropriate channels. This ties into the next point.

10 hours ago, EDKTech said:

The Influenza shot was tested years before release, why aren't they doing that with the COVID jab?

What you are seeing is what happens when you let scientists do what scientists do best. Instead of applying for funding and other bureaucratic tasks, you let them do science. The scientific community of then entire world was focussed on a single problem: find the vaccine. Secondly, the vaccine technology isn't new. Viral vector vaccines are similar to the flu shot and mRNA vaccines have been researched for decades. The latter just hadn't been used on such a large scale yet, but is by no means experimental. This, combined with the previous knowledge of SARS, allowed COVID vaccines to be fast-tracked, which was necessary due to the severity of the sitation.  Firstly you can't test years before release, because COVID didn't exist years before. That does not mean the vaccine is unsafe, untested or experimental. That simply means we tried to make every segment as short as they could safely be without the usual bureaucratic hassles surrounding them. This is also why the vaccines currently have Emergency Use Authorisation from e.g. the FDA instead of full authorisation.

 

With all the variants we are in a simlar situation as the flu vaccine wise. The flu is assessed each year and a vaccine prepared for variants they think are going to spread next flu season. With SARS-CoV-2 we are keeping an eye on variants of concern, and will start developing vaccines for those (or hopefully all in general) when they become prevalent.

8 hours ago, WkdPaul said:

I'm going to be brutally blunt here, so no offense but ;

 

Coronaviruses are well known, and the SARS epidemic made scientist afraid that something similar could happen again (and it obviously did!), as such, they started researching vaccines.

 

They didn't just came up with a coronavirus vaccine in a few weeks, this was years in the making.

 

You SERIOUSLY need to start listening to the scientific community and drop FB and other conspiracy breading grounds.

 

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22536382/

 

They've been working on this for almost 2 decades now, is that not enough ???????????

Even the bat part and likely geographical location had been all but predicted in 2007: Cheng et al. 2007

Quote

SHOULD WE BE READY FOR THE REEMERGENCE OF SARS?

<snip>
Coronaviruses are well known to undergo genetic recombination (375), which may lead to new genotypes and outbreaks. The presence of a large reservoir of SARS-CoV-like viruses in horseshoe bats, together with the culture of eating exotic mammals in southern China, is a time bomb. The possibility of the reemergence of SARS and other novel viruses from animals or laboratories and therefore the need for preparedness should not be ignored.

Nice demonstration of how slow science can go on the back-burner vs being the priority (of course I understand we can't constantly tackle every disease with this kind of unlimited budged and around-the-clock work).

[EphraimK]

This is ALL based on "probably". Things like this that the entire world depend on can't be decided on probably.

[tikker]

1 minute ago, EDKTech said:

This is ALL based on "probably". Things like this that the entire world depend on can't be decided on probably.

Could you elaborate a bit more what you think is based on probably? A lot in the world is based on probably. Hell the entirety of science is based on probably. We say that we are X% sure about something and give our margin of error. Furthermore, you can literally see in the numbers that the vaccines are working great. What is currently being worked on is trying to increase the duration of immunity and protection against infection.

12 hours ago, EDKTech said:

But it is still different, for example, you couldn't treat FluA with a FluB shot.

 

Thats why they want you to take the Flu jab every year.

This is the same situation. Shot B won't help you against flu A, but the knowledge of flu A will help us develop the shot against flu B, because it isn't a completely new virus. Similarly, our knowledge of SARS-CoV helped us greatly in developing a vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 quickly.

[tkitch]

Holy shitballs:

1/3/2021 - the US Tested over 1 million positive new COVID Cases, with a 480k/day 7 day average (And still rising)

 

So, for those of you playing along at home:

 

480k/day & 7 = 3.36 Million positive tests in 7 days

 

330 Million population = 3.3 Mill / 1% of the ENTIRE population tested positive in a single fucking week.

 

(Not counting At Home tests, People who couldn't get tested, or those who are asymptomatic and don't realize they're sick.)

 

So...  Fuck.  

 

Fuck.  Fuck.  Fuck.  Fuck.

[WkdPaul]

24 minutes ago, tkitch said:

*snip*

Pretty similar here in Canada, though it's still under 1% (260k out of 38 millions)

[Spotty]

Crazy how fast the Omicron variant spreads. In Australia there were 47,800 new cases for 4th January 2021. To put that in perspective; In 2020 we had a total of 28,000 cases for the entire year.

 

[Commodus]

44 minutes ago, tkitch said:

Holy shitballs:

1/3/2021 - the US Tested over 1 million positive new COVID Cases, with a 480k/day 7 day average (And still rising)

 

So, for those of you playing along at home:

 

480k/day & 7 = 3.36 Million positive tests in 7 days

 

330 Million population = 3.3 Mill / 1% of the ENTIRE population tested positive in a single fucking week.

 

(Not counting At Home tests, People who couldn't get tested, or those who are asymptomatic and don't realize they're sick.)

 

So...  Fuck.  

 

Fuck.  Fuck.  Fuck.  Fuck.

Keep in mind it's not going to keep surging forever. Even in South Africa, where vaccination rates are low, the case rates are starting to drop precipitously after several weeks. Just be careful until it's clear the wave is over.

[Quackers101]

10 minutes ago, Commodus said:

Keep in mind it's not going to keep surging forever. Even in South Africa, where vaccination rates are low, the case rates are starting to drop precipitously after several weeks. Just be careful until it's clear the wave is over.

hope it doesn't mutate and destroys this pandemic. Not sure what impact the virus had when going to animals, hopefully with the spread we don't see anything new as well.

[tkitch]

17 minutes ago, Commodus said:

Keep in mind it's not going to keep surging forever. Even in South Africa, where vaccination rates are low, the case rates are starting to drop precipitously after several weeks. Just be careful until it's clear the wave is over.

no, it absolutely won't, but on the current curve, in only a couple weeks, we'll be seeing 3-5% a week infection rates.  

WHICH IS INSANE

[Mister Woof]

Everyone I know is vaxxed and boosted, kids have their 2 shots that they can get, and they went back to school.

 

I'm still masking up when going out and not going to high-risk events, but I have no illusions that we are going to not get sick. With the kids in school, even with masks (most of the other kids wear poopy cloth masks, and even if mine wear KN95 types, children's behaviors are not reliable), it's gonna burn through the student population and go home with them.

 

Seems hospitalizations are less severe than previous waves, and deaths aren't really going up. So, guess I've no choice but to just get sick and hope it confers even more immunity for future variants.

1 hour ago, tkitch said:

Holy shitballs:

1/3/2021 - the US Tested over 1 million positive new COVID Cases, with a 480k/day 7 day average (And still rising)

 

So, for those of you playing along at home:

 

480k/day & 7 = 3.36 Million positive tests in 7 days

 

330 Million population = 3.3 Mill / 1% of the ENTIRE population tested positive in a single fucking week.

 

(Not counting At Home tests, People who couldn't get tested, or those who are asymptomatic and don't realize they're sick.)

 

So...  Fuck.  

 

Fuck.  Fuck.  Fuck.  Fuck.

 

[tkitch]

31 minutes ago, Mister Woof said:

Everyone I know is vaxxed and boosted, kids have their 2 shots that they can get, and they went back to school.

 

I'm still masking up when going out and not going to high-risk events, but I have no illusions that we are going to not get sick. With the kids in school, even with masks (most of the other kids wear poopy cloth masks, and even if mine wear KN95 types, children's behaviors are not reliable), it's gonna burn through the student population and go home with them.

 

Seems hospitalizations are less severe than previous waves, and deaths aren't really going up. So, guess I've no choice but to just get sick and hope it confers even more immunity for future variants.

 

Yes and no:

2 shots doesn't do a lot to prevent infection.  It does, however, still dramatically reduce risk of hosiptalization, and again deaths.

Boosters significantly boost infection resistance, but still far from 100%.

 

Also, we're not at the point where we can say much about fatalities, there's usually a ~2 week delay from infections to deaths.  

[Mister Woof]

9 minutes ago, tkitch said:

Yes and no:

2 shots doesn't do a lot to prevent infection.  It does, however, still dramatically reduce risk of hosiptalization, and again deaths.

Boosters significantly boost infection resistance, but still far from 100%.

 

Also, we're not at the point where we can say much about fatalities, there's usually a ~2 week delay from infections to deaths.  

Not much I can do about that - we can't get them boosters yet (age requirement) and I'm not seeing how they're going to escape infection. Same for us, even with boosters.

 

So...I don't really have many options. Omicron doesn't seem like something you can really avoid.

[Commodus]

47 minutes ago, Quackers101 said:

hope it doesn't mutate and destroys this pandemic. Not sure what impact the virus had when going to animals, hopefully with the spread we don't see anything new as well.

Actually, we want it to mutate — just in a way that reduces the effects (and ideally infectiousness, but that's less likely). Historically, viruses like this mutate to become more docile. That's how the Spanish Flu pandemic ended — the virus didn't go away, it just became much less dangerous.

 

Omicron is a large step in that direction. The problem, of course, is that it's still more dangerous than the flu. We may need another several months or more for COVID-19 to just be an inconvenience rather than a hospital-slamming threat.

[tikker]

2 hours ago, Spotty said:

Crazy how fast the Omicron variant spreads. In Australia there were 47,800 new cases for 4th January 2021. To put that in perspective; In 2020 we had a total of 28,000 cases for the entire year.

 

The morbid beauty of exponential growth in action.

 

It's insane how in just 2-3 years it's now the second most or the most infectious disease on the planet, competing with measles. In a slightly cruel way this will probably benefits us though. The more people get infected, the more will have immunity. Some further light at the end of the tunnel is that antibodies that target parts of the virus that remain unchanged have been identified [Nature]. That may allow us to develop a more general vaccine for a bunch of variants of coronaviruses in general.

[tkitch]

6 hours ago, tikker said:

The morbid beauty of exponential growth in action.

Oh we're working on that part:

https://www.mwra.com/biobot/biobotdata.htm

 

tldr:  MA Wastewater COVID Data.  Last winter's worst covid wastewater spikes were around 4,000 p/mL.  Summer was lower.  Now we're past 16,000 p/mL.
This is really bad.  I hope Omicron is less bad than they think it is already.
 

If we're still 2 weeks away from peak?  This is gonna be a raging fucking shitshow.

[Donut417]

1 minute ago, tkitch said:

This is gonna be a raging fucking shitshow.

The last 2 years have been a shit show. What makes this year different? 

 

1 minute ago, tkitch said:

I hope Omicron is less bad than they think it is already.

Everything I heard about it suggested its maybe more infectious but you have less chance of ending up in the ER with it. To me if we can reduce hospitalizations then something is going right, even if more people are getting infected. 

[tkitch]

13 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

Everything I heard about it suggested its maybe more infectious but you have less chance of ending up in the ER with it. To me if we can reduce hospitalizations then something is going right, even if more people are getting infected. 

Right

But if 8 times as many peoople are infected and only 1/4 as many are in the hospital....

 

That's still twice as many ending up in the hospital.