Covid-19 and Politics

[The Don]

Good to see Boris Johnson blaming care home employees for the Coronavirus death toll rather than taking any responsibility on behalf of the government.

So much like his mentor

 

[Andy_Ross]

BREAKING NEWS: President Jair Bolsonaro has Covid-19 symptoms

 

[jimbob]

This is an interesting graph showing the constituent parts of the UK over the past three weeks. It's death data so less amenable to manipulation than infection rates (though of course there's a lag of about three weeks between infection and death) and it's expressed per million population so the figures are comparable.

[imgw=640]https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EcQM9HCWsAArxOz?format=png[/imgw]

The problems in Wales are likely to be related to the slaughterhouse clusters. NI is doing well but seems to have stalled a bit. Scotland continues to decline. Scotland's death rate is only 12.5% of the rate in England. It's against this background that people protesting at the border yesterday were called racists for wanting some restrictions placed on leisure travel between Scotland and England.

The way things were looking in England on Saturday, and with Scotland opening up indoor spaces next week, I think it will be a miracle if any of these downward trends continue much longer.

Agreed... I seem to be spending a significant time on Twitter arguing against dangerous idiots claiming that lockdowns don't work, and herd immunity has happened already.

 

[Rolfe]

As soon as it becomes clear they're zealots arguing from an entrenched position, I block them. Life's too short.

 

[The Atheist]

BREAKING NEWS: President Jair Bolsonaro has Covid-19 symptoms

There's some sweet karma.

You know which other president has denied all the way through and is surrounded by people with positive tests?

My karma meter will explode if he comes down with it.

 

[Puppycow]

Meanwhile in the USA, anti-vaxxers are having "COVID parties" to intentionally infect their own children. Including, in at least one case, one who was immuno-compromised.

Carsyn Leigh Davis

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement detailed the last two weeks of Carsyn’s life in a public Medical Examiner’s report.

On June 10, Carysn’s mom, Carole, took Carsyn, a 16-year-old girl who was immuno-compromised with a history of health issues (including cancer), to a “COVID party” at her church, where more than 100 children without masks were in attendance.

Her mom, who is not a doctor, then prescribed her daughter azithromycin, an anti-bacterial drug with no known benefits for fighting COVID-19, for several days. During that “treatment period,” Carsyn developed headaches, sinus pressure and a cough.

A few days later, without taking her to a doctor, her mother would later report that her daughter “looked gray” on June 19, so she put Carsyn on her grandfather’s oxygen machine.

Congratulations lady, you killed your daughter. Now she's using her daughter's death to raise money.

Carole keeps a public facebook profile that is filled with conspiracy theories about underground governmental networks and mind-control. She’s a devout follower of the alt-right terrorist and conspiracy group QAnon, and frequently reposts stories from other alt-right websites like The Federalist.

She’s an anti-vaxxer, too.

Back in April, she posted this on Facebook:
https://floridacovidvictims.files.wordpress.com/2020/07/carsyn-leigh-davis3.png

 

[jimbob]

As soon as it becomes clear they're zealots arguing from an entrenched position, I block them. Life's too short.

That's what I used to do, but now, if I come across them, I do engage, not for them, but those who might see their exchanges.

Some have graphs that superficially look convincing, but are very dodgy, and the iffiness can be explained pretty simply.

 

[The Don]

Good to see Boris Johnson blaming care home employees for the Coronavirus death toll rather than taking any responsibility on behalf of the government.

So much like his mentor

It seems that his comments were "misunderstood"

UK Business Secretary Alok Sharma has defended Boris Johnson over his comments that some care homes "didn't follow procedures" during the early days of the pandemic.

Mr Sharma told BBC Breakfast that the prime minister had meant no-one knew the correct plan of action at the start of the crisis.

He said that was because "the extent of the asymptomatic cases was not known at the time".

"No-one is suggesting that care homes haven’t done a great job in really difficult circumstances," he added.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/wor...041ee03718820671e9ac1c&pinned_post_type=share

Except that's not what Boris Johnson said at all. The next step will be to suggest that Boris Johnson was just joking.

The British Conservative Party really is indistinguishable from the Trumpist GOP.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Before the middle of April, care homes which refused to take covid-19 patients in from hospitals were sent letters from government threatening them with removing their funding.

Boris Johnson has blamed them for the number of deaths.

Boris Johnson lies.

 

[Andy_Ross]

‘Dominic Cummings did the right thing’

‘Care home workers did the wrong thing’

Blimey.

 

[The Don]

Before the middle of April, care homes which refused to take covid-19 patients in from hospitals were sent letters from government threatening them with removing their funding.

Boris Johnson has blamed them for the number of deaths.

Boris Johnson lies.

It's a shame that the UK media cannot summarise the situation as succinctly as this. Instead we either get apologist channels insisting that care homes were never threatened in this way or outlets which feel obliged to present both sides even if one side is a tissue of lies.

It certainly would make an interesting question in PMQ, except that it would be far too obvious and Boris Johnson would simply dodge it entirely by talking about the pubs being open (cheers from the Tory benches) and people being able to go on holiday (ecstasy from the Tory benches).

 

[The Don]

‘Dominic Cummings did the right thing’

‘Care home workers did the wrong thing’

Blimey.

If only the care home workers would contrive to develop a set of policies to keep him in office, then Boris Johnson wouldn't feel able to throw them under the bus.

 

[catsmate]

Meanwhile in the USA, anti-vaxxers are having "COVID parties" to intentionally infect their own children. Including, in at least one case, one who was immuno-compromised.

Carsyn Leigh Davis



Congratulations lady, you killed your daughter. Now she's using her daughter's death to raise money.


Back in April, she posted this on Facebook:
https://floridacovidvictims.files.wordpress.com/2020/07/carsyn-leigh-davis3.png

Pathogenic battery. Lock up the parents and extinguish their parental rights, have the children adopted by sane people.

 

[The Don]

More cold water being thrown on the plans of any country hoping that herd immunity will be a solution to the Coronavirus crisis:

A Spanish study has cast doubt on the feasibility of herd immunity as a way of tackling the coronavirus pandemic.

The study of more than 60,000 people estimates that around just 5% of the Spanish population has developed antibodies, the medical journal the Lancet reported.

Herd immunity is achieved when enough people become infected with a virus to stop its spread.

Around 70% to 90% of a population needs to be immune to protect the uninfected.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-53315983

If it's taken 6 months for that few people to get infected (and presumably become immune to future infection for a period of time) then it's likely that people infected early will have their immunity running out well before enough people have have been infected.

I guess the good news is that Coronavirus seems to be a lot less infectious than we had first feared (although clearly lockdown has had a dramatic effect on infection rates).

 

[Rolfe]

That's what I used to do, but now, if I come across them, I do engage, not for them, but those who might see their exchanges.

Some have graphs that superficially look convincing, but are very dodgy, and the iffiness can be explained pretty simply.

I try to get in a few tweets that will be seen by inquiring minds, but I won't engage for long.

Mind you, I actually came across one who wasn't a zealot and understood my explanations. We had quite a fruitful discussion and he thanked me for the information. Come to think of it, that was a "we'll probably never have a vaccine" one. Good news! We very probably will.

 

[Darat]

Meanwhile in the USA, anti-vaxxers are having "COVID parties" to intentionally infect their own children. Including, in at least one case, one who was immuno-compromised.

Carsyn Leigh Davis



Congratulations lady, you killed your daughter. Now she's using her daughter's death to raise money.


Back in April, she posted this on Facebook:
https://floridacovidvictims.files.wordpress.com/2020/07/carsyn-leigh-davis3.png

This is somewhere government could make a real difference.

Assuming a vaccine is developed and its safety is in line with most other vaccines we use nationally the government should be preparing and organizing right now to ensure everyone gets vaccinated as quickly as possible. Plus they should be trying to disrupt "anti-vaccine" messages and help establish a mindset that everyone will vaccinate, by the time one is ready people should just be waiting for when they will get it, not thinking if they should get it.

 

[Rolfe]

Given that this vaccine, when it comes, will have of necessity been subject to less safety testing than usual, I'm a bit uncomfortable at the idea of making it compulsory. My bias is very much towards taking it but even I want to know a fair bit about it and about the testing that has taken place before I go for it.

My goddaughter was asked to take part in the clinical trial of the Oxford vaccine, but declined. Thinking about it, subject to being given sufficient information, I'd have done it. But we should all have the choice.

 

[Rolfe]

Before I retired one of the lecture topics I introduced into the animal health course was vaccine safety and adverse reactions. We have the non-specific reactions which are either very rare (anaphylaxis) or trivial (temporary malaise, soreness at the injection site), then we have specific adverse reactions. I could come up with very little in the veterinary field.

• Reversion to virulence of the Chlamydophila abortus vaccine for sheep
• Vaccine-site fibrosarcomas in cats related to FeLV and rabies vaccine
• Bovine neonatal pancytopenia (bleeding calves) caused by the adjuvant in a BVD vaccine raising anti-bovine antibodies in cows
• Canine parvovirus probably having been spread worldwide by a contaminated canine distemper/hepatitis vaccine in 1988

None of these things seems at all likely to affect a coronavirus vaccine, although it does depend on how the vaccine is produced. It's notable that the BVD vaccine that caused the bleeding calves was fully tested and licensed long before the problem emerged. Was there a change to the adjuvant? I suspect so. That adjuvant will never be used again in any vaccine.

The Oxford vaccine is a DNA (or RNA?) vaccine. These have been used in animals but never before in man as far as I know. The concept is seriously cool. Is it safe? There's been enough work in animals that I think someone would have noticed by now, but on the other hand the poster child for these vaccines is a rabies bait vaccine given to wildlife and how closely can you monitor wild foxes? There is at least one known case of accidental innoculation of a woman by that rabies vaccine and although the vector (vaccinia virus) gave her cowpox (because she was on immunosuppressive treatment) she seroconverted to rabies and had no longstanding ill effects.

If the trial results are made public and everything looks good, I'll certainly take a coronavirus vaccine.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Gov’t today, “How were we to know about asymptomatic transmission back in March?”

Gov’t in March, “We know asymptomatic transmission occurs and that it’s a very significant challenge.”

 

[catsmate]

More cold water being thrown on the plans of any country hoping that herd immunity will be a solution to the Coronavirus crisis:



https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-53315983

If it's taken 6 months for that few people to get infected (and presumably become immune to future infection for a period of time) then it's likely that people infected early will have their immunity running out well before enough people have have been infected.

I guess the good news is that Coronavirus seems to be a lot less infectious than we had first feared (although clearly lockdown has had a dramatic effect on infection rates).

Herd immunity was an insane strategy.
Based on the New York numbers you'd be sacrificing, at best, 0.3% of the population or 150,000 people. Which requires the CMR not to increase, which is inevitable in large scale epidemics.