I've always been pissed at people refusing to wear masks or wearing them under their chin or nose. There's no excuse. I had a family member have to spend time in the hospital recently. I stayed with them everyday for weeks. I wore a mask the whole time I was there hours. Yes, it was slightly inconvenient but in the end, no big deal. People are just selfish.
With that being said, on the other hand, we get no support from the federal government so many are not able to afford to stay home.
Members of President Trump's administration — who seriously mismanaged the coronavirus pandemic leading to nearly 300,000 American deaths and who have constantly downplayed the seriousness of the virus by refusing to wear masks and defying public health experts — will be among the first to receive the COVID-19 vaccine in the United States.
The UK has recently had significantly tighter restrictions imposed. Those are being blamed on the emergence of a new mutation that may be more transmissable. Other countries clearly fear this is the case as a number of countries have stopped flights from the UK and France have closed their border entirely to UK arrivals.
It's too early to be certain of the impact. However, this graph, showing the increasing predominance of the new strain in positive results from one laboratory in the UK, is at least suggestive that the mutations are producing a real world impact.
At present scientists are confident the mutation will not affect the protection offered by existing vaccines. However, the extent of mutations seen to date also highlights the strong possibility that, over time, it will find a way around vaccines. As with flu, that could lead to a situation where vaccines are targeted against particular strains of the virus at a particular point in time - and have to be renewed periodically.
The UK has recently had significantly tighter restrictions imposed. Those are being blamed on the emergence of a new mutation that may be more transmissable. Other countries clearly fear this is the case as a number of countries have stopped flights from the UK and France have closed their border entirely to UK arrivals.
It's too early to be certain of the impact. However, this graph, showing the increasing predominance of the new strain in positive results from one laboratory in the UK, is at least suggestive that the mutations are producing a real world impact.
At present scientists are confident the mutation will not affect the protection offered by existing vaccines. However, the extent of mutations seen to date also highlights the strong possibility that, over time, it will find a way around vaccines. As with flu, that could lead to a situation where vaccines are targeted against particular strains of the virus at a particular point in time - and have to be renewed periodically.
Maybe a double-shot of flu/corona every year? I kinda thought this would be the likely outcome. I also wonder if the Covid vaccine might help somewhat against the common cold. I read somewhere that about 20% of the viruses that cause a cold are coronaviruses...
The UK has recently had significantly tighter restrictions imposed. Those are being blamed on the emergence of a new mutation that may be more transmissable. Other countries clearly fear this is the case as a number of countries have stopped flights from the UK and France have closed their border entirely to UK arrivals.
It's too early to be certain of the impact. However, this graph, showing the increasing predominance of the new strain in positive results from one laboratory in the UK, is at least suggestive that the mutations are producing a real world impact.
At present scientists are confident the mutation will not affect the protection offered by existing vaccines. However, the extent of mutations seen to date also highlights the strong possibility that, over time, it will find a way around vaccines. As with flu, that could lead to a situation where vaccines are targeted against particular strains of the virus at a particular point in time - and have to be renewed periodically.
Maybe a double-shot of flu/corona every year? I kinda thought this would be the likely outcome. I also wonder if the Covid vaccine might help somewhat against the common cold. I read somewhere that about 20% of the viruses that cause a cold are coronaviruses...
I thought the Covid vaccine was completely different than the flu vaccine as the Covid one just tells cells to create the protein that the outer shell of the virus is made of and your immune system reacts to that instead of the actual dead strains that are found in flu shots.
I don’t know if the virus can actually mutate out a protein it is made out of.
All of Canada should be vaccinated by September 2021 with the government purchasing 418 million vaccines. With a population of 38 million, the extra was to cover if any of 7 different pharma companies don’t make it out of clinical trials. Any extra will be donated to developing countries once Canada gets immunized.
The September dates reeks of ‘your kid can’t go to school if they haven’t been immunized’ but that’s actually expected.
And Ontario might be gong back into lockdown come the 24th, which is once again expected. Waiting till after the Xmas rush was over to lock down was the wisest choice IMO. We’ll know for sure at 1:30
The vaccination method is the same as for the common flu. You let the immune system recognise any kind of virus specific protein: surface or internal does not matter much.
Viruses mutate best in people who are either immune compromised or unvaccinated but they can also mutate in vaccinated people, just the vaccinated people suffer less symptoms if any. Some viruses mutate faster than others, noroviruses, influenza and corona viruses are such examples. So yes, yearly cocktail is the most likely fix.
While I get your point, that would be counterproductive to the roll out of vaccines. You increase bureaucracy slowing roll out to a crawl and you decrease coverage for population immunity.
Viruses don't care about human opinions, so it is in our best interest to ignore all that has been said by the various participants and just be as efficient as possible in the disease prevention.
Breaking News - the Oxford/AstraZeneca/NHS vaccine has just (in the last hour) been approved for use in the UK. This (according to the news outlets) is a game changer for the following reasons -
It doesn't need to be stored at very low temperatures. Can be stored in normal domestic fridges.
Due to it being created not for profit it is by far the cheapest.
While being designed to be administered in 2 doses, in the trials around the world it was found that even a single dose apparently prevented the disease from being severe enough for hospitalisation of those who had been given the inoculation. This is why in the UK, while it is approved for a 2 dose regime, the second dose can be given anywhere between 4 and 12 weeks.
Given the spread of the new variant here in the UK, this latter could be very important in alleviating the pressure on our hospitals.
[*] While being designed to be administered in 2 doses, in the trials around the world it was found that even a single dose apparently prevented the disease from being severe enough for hospitalisation of those who had been given the inoculation. This is why in the UK, while it is approved for a 2 dose regime, the second dose can be given anywhere between 4 and 12 weeks.
And it has been decided to leave a 12 week gap between doses in order to maximize the numbers getting a single dose as soon as possible, rather than aim for full protection for a smaller number in the same period.
Here in the uk there are 4 levels of restriction in place. These are known tiers. From today lots more people have woken up under tighter restrictions as their local area has moved into a higher tier (here is the official list). So I have just one thing to say -
[*] While being designed to be administered in 2 doses, in the trials around the world it was found that even a single dose apparently prevented the disease from being severe enough for hospitalisation of those who had been given the inoculation. This is why in the UK, while it is approved for a 2 dose regime, the second dose can be given anywhere between 4 and 12 weeks.
And it has been decided to leave a 12 week gap between doses in order to maximize the numbers getting a single dose as soon as possible, rather than aim for full protection for a smaller number in the same period.
I thought it might be of interest to some to give a more detailed explanation about the decision to leave a long gap between doses. In addition to getting protection to more people in the same time, it also reflects that scientists now believe the long term results will be better by leaving such a gap. As has often been the case historically with medical advances, the evidence for this comes largely from an accident.
The development of the Oxford University vaccine started as a result of the early information coming out of China of a new disease. In January China published the genome of the new virus and the Oxford team, who had previously discussed how they would respond when the next threatening virus emerged, used that to design a vaccine using their existing template (which had previously been used to develop a vaccine for MERS among other viruses).
That meant that the early development and animal trials of the vaccine had already been completed by the time the UK went into lockdown in March. That greatly complicated the logistics of undertaking human trials and one consequence of that was that the University (which had limited manufacturing ability of their own) sourced part of their new vaccine stock for large-scale trials from a new supplier in Italy.
There were some concerns over the concentration of the resultant vaccine, which contributed to an error in setting up the test. While the main group of participants in the trial received two full doses of vaccine, a smaller group received only a half dose initially. That error was quickly discovered and the situation discussed with regulators - who decided the trial should proceed for the sub-group as well as the main group (both groups getting a full second dose).
The initial results of the trials were surprising, with the effectiveness of the vaccine for those in the main group rated at 62%, while those in the sub-group had a much higher effectiveness of 90%. There was no immediate explanation of why this should be. However, a more detailed review disclosed a significant difference between the groups beyond the strength of the dosage. Partly as a result of the regulatory discussions, the gap between doses was much longer on average for the sub-group than the main group. Scientists now believe this was the principal reason for the greater effectiveness - that's supported by the fact that the detailed results of the main group also show greater effectiveness where there happened to be a longer gap between doses.
The increased transmissability of the new virus variant in the UK has resulted in major increases in cases in recent weeks. Numbers in hospital are now as high or higher as in the first peak at the end of last March and the UK has just raised the Covid-19 threat level to 5 (the highest level), indicating a real threat to the ability of the NHS to cope.
Boris Johnson has just made a televised statement saying that England will be going immediately once more into a national lockdown. This will be very close in nature to the first one, so schools and colleges will again be shut for most pupils and shielding arrangements will be put in place for the clinically vulnerable.
This time though, there is a bit of light at the end of the tunnel - the roll-out of vaccines (planned at 2m per week) gives reason to believe that the lockdown will not be needed indefinitely ...
Meanwhile in France we have vaccinated only 400 people in 9 days...
A complete failure of epic proportions
So the vaccines come in doses that need to be separated. There are 5 doses per vial. With the short shelf life per dose, these need to be done on the day of the shots. 6 hours here in Canada.
If France is anything like Canada, I doubt they had time to hire the additional staff to draw up the vaccines on top of all the other medication that the hospitals need.
Keep in mind, this is also happening during 2 (3) Stat holidays that most people take off. The quick roll out of these vaccines took hospitals by surprise. Give them a week to actually get the logistics of it down before complaining about it.
Yeah I agree about holidays and logistics but you can compare with our european neighbours... Germany has already vaccinated a hundred thousand people.
400 against 100 000 ? The government is having a hard time in the media...
While not disputing anything that @Grond0 has said there are other factors than just the new UK variant to take into account when discussing numbers of patients in our UK hospitals. The fact is that because there are now treatments available that weren't in the first wave, more people are surviving who wouldn't have done before. These people still need to remain in hospital in order to recover. Add to this that due to the need to socially distance patients from one another there are fewer beds available in covid wards than there would have been for in-patients in normal times. Add in the factors already mentioned by @Grond0 and you have the makings of a perfect storm.
I agree that improved treatments will have increased the total numbers in hospitals somewhat as:
- essentially new treatments have only been offered to hospital patients and not to community cases (and have thus not significantly affected the numbers of admissions);
- the length of stay in hospital is greater for those who survive; and
- the impact of treatments on survival has been greater than the impact on length of stay for those who survive.
The constraint on capacity is not really physical beds or space - hospitals are capable of reconfiguring to release quite a lot of additional physical capacity when necessary. Instead it's the availability of staff to provide care. The lack of staff is the reason almost none of the additional capacity provided through the Nightingale hospitals in the first wave was ever used. The loss of staff to direct illness, added to the need to self-isolate and care for relatives, means that the back-up systems for providing additional staff have been under far greater pressure this year than normal.
I thought it might be helpful to give some numbers to put the pressure on hospitals into context. The NHS has been publishing daily information on hospital admissions for Covid-19 patients since August - those can be found here.
- the first lockdown (23 March to 12 May - with some continuing restrictions thereafter) was successful in reducing the virus to low levels and that remained the case during the summer. Daily hospital admissions for the whole of England in August (when this particular dataset was first produced) were pretty stable at around 50.
- there was a clear upward trend during September, with daily numbers climbing to around 300.
- that continued in October with numbers going past 1,300. That prompted the second lockdown (5 November - 2 December), which stabilized the numbers.
- during December, numbers have once more been rapidly increasing with the most recent daily admissions going above 3,000.
- the total numbers in hospital (as opposed to daily admissions) were around 500 in August and grew to 2,000 at the end of September, 10,000 at the end of October, 14,000 at the end of November and are currently around 27,000.
- the total number of non-Covid-19 patients in hospital is around 60,000 and there are around 9,000 unoccupied beds at the moment. Given that total numbers of Covid-19 patients have been increasing by about 1,000 a day recently, it's entirely understandable why health leaders are concerned about the possibility of the NHS being overwhelmed in the relatively near future (and as the pattern is uneven across the country, some areas are already very close to breaking point). As noted above that's not generally due to a lack of physical capacity that could be made available, but a lack of staff to make use of that.
Update: I'm level 4 priority (out of 10) and have just got an appointment for vaccination this Saturday evening.
It was just announced that Canada’s General Public has to wait till August for their vaccine which blew my prediction of everyone being forced vaccinated by the start of the next school year out of the water.
I like these more scholarly articles on Covid-19. I think we'll be seeing more and more of these now that science is accumulating data on this virus and how our immune system reacts to it.
Thanks @Isewein. I'm just one of the many interested observers rather than having any health service connections. I assume you're referring to the post I did a month ago, just after the UK went into our third lockdown period. That has been working pretty well, though it does of course take time to have an impact:
- case numbers at about 18k are now less than a third of the peak of 60k.
- hospital numbers lag cases significantly and are only roughly back to where they were a month ago at 30k, having hit a peak of 40k.
- deaths have even more of a lag and it's only in the last 10 days or so that rate has been falling. It's going down fast, but the current 7 day average is still 900 or so.
This is the latest summary of figures produced by the BBC, which provides information in a pretty accessible format.
With over 12m people having had their first dose of vaccine and the government being on course to complete initial rollout to the highest priority groups next week, future deaths should be very considerably lower once the current cases have worked through the system.
Current studies are confirming that mutations are undermining the efficacy of vaccines, but that has always seemed likely when dealing with a coronavirus. However, even with reduced impact, vaccines are likely to still provide significant protection. When added to the natural immunity gained from infections, I suspect that things will settle down over the next 3 years or so into a situation somewhat akin to that with flu, i.e. annual booster vaccines will be produced to deal with the latest strains and more vulnerable groups will be encouraged to take these. Fatality rates will probably remain a bit higher than flu and, with memories of the impact still fresh, I suspect that there will probably be rather higher take-up for coronavirus. I would certainly be of that mind - I've not taken up the offer of a flu vaccine this winter, but am looking forward to getting my Covid-19 vaccine in the not too distant future .
I was referring to the Oxford vaccine development anecdote, I can't recall having read that before. But good on you for keeping yourself this informed. I've found trying to keep up with the new rather tiring recently.
Comments
With that being said, on the other hand, we get no support from the federal government so many are not able to afford to stay home.
to whit:
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/tasneemnashrulla/white-house-staffers-first-coronavirus-vaccine?bftwnews&utm_term=4ldqpgc#4ldqpgc
TR
It's too early to be certain of the impact. However, this graph, showing the increasing predominance of the new strain in positive results from one laboratory in the UK, is at least suggestive that the mutations are producing a real world impact.
At present scientists are confident the mutation will not affect the protection offered by existing vaccines. However, the extent of mutations seen to date also highlights the strong possibility that, over time, it will find a way around vaccines. As with flu, that could lead to a situation where vaccines are targeted against particular strains of the virus at a particular point in time - and have to be renewed periodically.
Maybe a double-shot of flu/corona every year? I kinda thought this would be the likely outcome. I also wonder if the Covid vaccine might help somewhat against the common cold. I read somewhere that about 20% of the viruses that cause a cold are coronaviruses...
I thought the Covid vaccine was completely different than the flu vaccine as the Covid one just tells cells to create the protein that the outer shell of the virus is made of and your immune system reacts to that instead of the actual dead strains that are found in flu shots.
I don’t know if the virus can actually mutate out a protein it is made out of.
All of Canada should be vaccinated by September 2021 with the government purchasing 418 million vaccines. With a population of 38 million, the extra was to cover if any of 7 different pharma companies don’t make it out of clinical trials. Any extra will be donated to developing countries once Canada gets immunized.
The September dates reeks of ‘your kid can’t go to school if they haven’t been immunized’ but that’s actually expected.
And Ontario might be gong back into lockdown come the 24th, which is once again expected. Waiting till after the Xmas rush was over to lock down was the wisest choice IMO. We’ll know for sure at 1:30
Viruses mutate best in people who are either immune compromised or unvaccinated but they can also mutate in vaccinated people, just the vaccinated people suffer less symptoms if any. Some viruses mutate faster than others, noroviruses, influenza and corona viruses are such examples. So yes, yearly cocktail is the most likely fix.
People like her and all the other Republican covid deniers should NOT be at the front of the line getting vaccinated.
After they are vaccinated their messaging will continue to be irresponsible. Probably worse than before.
Viruses don't care about human opinions, so it is in our best interest to ignore all that has been said by the various participants and just be as efficient as possible in the disease prevention.
Given the spread of the new variant here in the UK, this latter could be very important in alleviating the pressure on our hospitals.
TR
TR
And it has been decided to leave a 12 week gap between doses in order to maximize the numbers getting a single dose as soon as possible, rather than aim for full protection for a smaller number in the same period.
TR
I thought it might be of interest to some to give a more detailed explanation about the decision to leave a long gap between doses. In addition to getting protection to more people in the same time, it also reflects that scientists now believe the long term results will be better by leaving such a gap. As has often been the case historically with medical advances, the evidence for this comes largely from an accident.
The development of the Oxford University vaccine started as a result of the early information coming out of China of a new disease. In January China published the genome of the new virus and the Oxford team, who had previously discussed how they would respond when the next threatening virus emerged, used that to design a vaccine using their existing template (which had previously been used to develop a vaccine for MERS among other viruses).
That meant that the early development and animal trials of the vaccine had already been completed by the time the UK went into lockdown in March. That greatly complicated the logistics of undertaking human trials and one consequence of that was that the University (which had limited manufacturing ability of their own) sourced part of their new vaccine stock for large-scale trials from a new supplier in Italy.
There were some concerns over the concentration of the resultant vaccine, which contributed to an error in setting up the test. While the main group of participants in the trial received two full doses of vaccine, a smaller group received only a half dose initially. That error was quickly discovered and the situation discussed with regulators - who decided the trial should proceed for the sub-group as well as the main group (both groups getting a full second dose).
The initial results of the trials were surprising, with the effectiveness of the vaccine for those in the main group rated at 62%, while those in the sub-group had a much higher effectiveness of 90%. There was no immediate explanation of why this should be. However, a more detailed review disclosed a significant difference between the groups beyond the strength of the dosage. Partly as a result of the regulatory discussions, the gap between doses was much longer on average for the sub-group than the main group. Scientists now believe this was the principal reason for the greater effectiveness - that's supported by the fact that the detailed results of the main group also show greater effectiveness where there happened to be a longer gap between doses.
Boris Johnson has just made a televised statement saying that England will be going immediately once more into a national lockdown. This will be very close in nature to the first one, so schools and colleges will again be shut for most pupils and shielding arrangements will be put in place for the clinically vulnerable.
This time though, there is a bit of light at the end of the tunnel - the roll-out of vaccines (planned at 2m per week) gives reason to believe that the lockdown will not be needed indefinitely ...
A complete failure of epic proportions
So the vaccines come in doses that need to be separated. There are 5 doses per vial. With the short shelf life per dose, these need to be done on the day of the shots. 6 hours here in Canada.
If France is anything like Canada, I doubt they had time to hire the additional staff to draw up the vaccines on top of all the other medication that the hospitals need.
Keep in mind, this is also happening during 2 (3) Stat holidays that most people take off. The quick roll out of these vaccines took hospitals by surprise. Give them a week to actually get the logistics of it down before complaining about it.
400 against 100 000 ? The government is having a hard time in the media...
https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-uk-vaccination-tracker-find-out-how-many-have-had-the-jab-12179220
TR
- essentially new treatments have only been offered to hospital patients and not to community cases (and have thus not significantly affected the numbers of admissions);
- the length of stay in hospital is greater for those who survive; and
- the impact of treatments on survival has been greater than the impact on length of stay for those who survive.
The constraint on capacity is not really physical beds or space - hospitals are capable of reconfiguring to release quite a lot of additional physical capacity when necessary. Instead it's the availability of staff to provide care. The lack of staff is the reason almost none of the additional capacity provided through the Nightingale hospitals in the first wave was ever used. The loss of staff to direct illness, added to the need to self-isolate and care for relatives, means that the back-up systems for providing additional staff have been under far greater pressure this year than normal.
I thought it might be helpful to give some numbers to put the pressure on hospitals into context. The NHS has been publishing daily information on hospital admissions for Covid-19 patients since August - those can be found here.
- the first lockdown (23 March to 12 May - with some continuing restrictions thereafter) was successful in reducing the virus to low levels and that remained the case during the summer. Daily hospital admissions for the whole of England in August (when this particular dataset was first produced) were pretty stable at around 50.
- there was a clear upward trend during September, with daily numbers climbing to around 300.
- that continued in October with numbers going past 1,300. That prompted the second lockdown (5 November - 2 December), which stabilized the numbers.
- during December, numbers have once more been rapidly increasing with the most recent daily admissions going above 3,000.
- the total numbers in hospital (as opposed to daily admissions) were around 500 in August and grew to 2,000 at the end of September, 10,000 at the end of October, 14,000 at the end of November and are currently around 27,000.
- the total number of non-Covid-19 patients in hospital is around 60,000 and there are around 9,000 unoccupied beds at the moment. Given that total numbers of Covid-19 patients have been increasing by about 1,000 a day recently, it's entirely understandable why health leaders are concerned about the possibility of the NHS being overwhelmed in the relatively near future (and as the pattern is uneven across the country, some areas are already very close to breaking point). As noted above that's not generally due to a lack of physical capacity that could be made available, but a lack of staff to make use of that.
Update: I'm level 4 priority (out of 10) and have just got an appointment for vaccination this Saturday evening.
It was just announced that Canada’s General Public has to wait till August for their vaccine which blew my prediction of everyone being forced vaccinated by the start of the next school year out of the water.
TR
https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/07/opinions/covid-flu-twindemic-mystery-sepkowitz/index.html
- case numbers at about 18k are now less than a third of the peak of 60k.
- hospital numbers lag cases significantly and are only roughly back to where they were a month ago at 30k, having hit a peak of 40k.
- deaths have even more of a lag and it's only in the last 10 days or so that rate has been falling. It's going down fast, but the current 7 day average is still 900 or so.
This is the latest summary of figures produced by the BBC, which provides information in a pretty accessible format.
With over 12m people having had their first dose of vaccine and the government being on course to complete initial rollout to the highest priority groups next week, future deaths should be very considerably lower once the current cases have worked through the system.
Current studies are confirming that mutations are undermining the efficacy of vaccines, but that has always seemed likely when dealing with a coronavirus. However, even with reduced impact, vaccines are likely to still provide significant protection. When added to the natural immunity gained from infections, I suspect that things will settle down over the next 3 years or so into a situation somewhat akin to that with flu, i.e. annual booster vaccines will be produced to deal with the latest strains and more vulnerable groups will be encouraged to take these. Fatality rates will probably remain a bit higher than flu and, with memories of the impact still fresh, I suspect that there will probably be rather higher take-up for coronavirus. I would certainly be of that mind - I've not taken up the offer of a flu vaccine this winter, but am looking forward to getting my Covid-19 vaccine in the not too distant future