COVID-19 ongoing thread part 2

[Ralin]

Lord Vladimort is claiming he has a Covid vaccine: https://bbc.com/news/world-europe-53735718

Given his propensity for self-aggrandizement and propaganda, I am... skeptical. Its about as credible as if Trump claimed to have a vaccine, really. Which is to say, not at all (I'm about 90% sure Trump will tell the CDC to approve a vaccine ready for use in October regardless of the data, so he can declare victory over covid before the election).

Except that Putin is an intelligent and competent man who wouldn't risk looking like a fool for declaring something like this and having it fall flat. Not without a specific reason, which I'm not seeing one.

Which isn't to say I trust his word on this, but I expect any deception to be along the lines of it not working as well as advertised or having a higher than normally acceptable number of side-effects and complications due to lack of adequate testing. Not because he straight up made it all up.

[Civil War Man]

Except that Putin is an intelligent and competent man who wouldn't risk looking like a fool for declaring something like this and having it fall flat. Not without a specific reason, which I'm not seeing one.

Which isn't to say I trust his word on this, but I expect any deception to be along the lines of it not working as well as advertised or having a higher than normally acceptable number of side-effects and complications due to lack of adequate testing. Not because he straight up made it all up.

He's also an authoritarian strongman, though, with all the baggage that comes with that. Quite a few of them around the world have responded to this pandemic by declaring that their great leadership was keeping their people safe from this disease while hoping that nobody notices the massive spike in deaths from "pneumonia" over previous years.

If he's just blowing smoke, he may be counting on either a) being able to control information enough that Russian citizens don't realize he's lying, b) being able to control the narrative enough that nobody remembers this claim however many days/weeks/months down the road, or c) having a subordinate to throw under the bus if it all backfires.

This type of claim, if unfounded, has the risk of making him look like a fool, though there are ways to mitigate that (see the part about throwing subordinates under the bus). Admitting that there is no vaccine and he has no control over the disease, though, carries a risk far greater to a strongman, and one that cannot be mitigated: making him look weak.

[madd0ct0r]

Meanwhile the Moscow-based Association of Clinical Trials Organizations (Acto), which represents the world's top drug companies in Russia, urged the health ministry to postpone approval until after phase-three trials.

Acto executive director Svetlana Zavidova told the Russian MedPortal site that a decision on mass vaccination had been carried out after a combined first- and second-phase tests on 76 people, and that it was impossible to confirm the efficacy of a drug on this basis

I imagine the moral calculus skews when you are faced with unknown but likely small risks from vaccine Vs known risks from a future, currently unknown vaccine + ongoing death toll in a heavily hit country staring down barrell of autumn and winter

[bilateralrope]

Community transmission has happened in New Zealand.

After 101 days without any reported community transmission in New Zealand, cases without any link to overseas travel have been reported.

Auckland will go into alert level three as of noon tomorrow, for a period of three days, until midnight on Friday. The rest of the country goes into alert level two. It follows four cases of community transmission of the coronavirus in one family.

The news was announced by the prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, and the director general of health, Ashley Bloomfield, at an emergency Beehive press conference this evening.

“We have not yet been able to determine the source of these cases,” said Ardern. There was no apparent link to any isolation facility or person travelling from overseas.

What does “Auckland” mean? It covers the Super City region, Ardern explained, covering Wellsford to Pukekohe. Travel to and from the Auckland region will also be prohibited, apart from those returning home. Details on police checkpoints will be released in the morning.

“Act as if you have covid and the people around you have covid,” the prime minister added.

For Aucklanders it means most workplaces, schools, restaurants and public places will be closed as of noon tomorrow. Pharmacies and supermarkets will remain open.

The cases emerged after a man in his 50s tested positive for Covid-19 in Auckland. More than one workplace is involved, said Ardern, spanning more than one suburb in south Auckland.

“While we have worked incredibly hard to avoid this … we have also planned for it,” said Ardern.

Ardern said she would change her plans and remain in Wellington for the next three days. Beyond that, “I’m not going to speculate at this time. We’ve set out a plan that should give us more information on which to base future decisions.”

The news reached Ardern at 4pm today, she said. The decision to take the lockdown action followed the failure to identify any links to the family that might permit an isolation and quarantine solution.

Bloomfield was informed via text at 3pm.

He said it was “a wake up call against any complacency that may have set in”. Authorities had been preparing for some time for a community case. He urged people to follow guidelines including hand-washing, physical distancing and mask wearing. Testing would be scaled up and people encouraged to err on the side of caution as far as testing is concerned.

People in Auckland will be asked to wear masks when they access essential services. In the rest of New Zealand, masks should be used where physical distancing is difficult, like public transit.

“We’re expecting to see other cases, and as was the situation earlier in the year we want to find other cases and identify and isolate any contacts,” said Bloomfield.

He said he was confident that Covid-19 had not remained undetected since before the last lockdown.

The man twice tested positive in the Auckland region after being swabbed yesterday. Three members of his family tested positive, while three others tested negative.

The man is understood to have had symptoms for five days. He is currently being interviewed by Auckland Regional Public Health.

All close contacts will be tested and will remain in self-isolation for 14 days.

“Please stay at home and be vigilant, we will get through this,” said Ardern.

Ardern said she spoke to the leader of the opposition, Judith Collins, as well as the mayor of Auckland earlier this evening to advise of the planned course of action. She said she had given no consideration at this point to any postponement of the election.

The prime minister convened an emergency ministerial meeting tonight with deputy prime minister Winston Peters, finance minister Grant Robertson, health minister Chris Hipkins, justice minister Andrew Little and attorney general David Parker. The assembled ministers have the power to reimpose lockdown conditions.

National leader Judith Collins said the opposition will focus on getting answers out of the government. “New Zealanders can be assured that National will be seeking an explanation and clear answers about the situation we now find ourselves in,” she said in a statement.

The Labour Party and New Zealand First have announced the immediate suspension of their campaigns. National said it has only cancelled tomorrow’s events.

Now we see how well the governments plans work. The obvious change from last time is that we are now advised to wear masks.

[Jub]

BC was considering opening schools as scheduled but has now indefinitely postponed any return to in class learning.

[PainRack]

Lord Vladimort is claiming he has a Covid vaccine: https://bbc.com/news/world-europe-53735718

Given his propensity for self-aggrandizement and propaganda, I am... skeptical. Its about as credible as if Trump claimed to have a vaccine, really. Which is to say, not at all (I'm about 90% sure Trump will tell the CDC to approve a vaccine ready for use in October regardless of the data, so he can declare victory over covid before the election).

Except that Putin is an intelligent and competent man who wouldn't risk looking like a fool for declaring something like this and having it fall flat. Not without a specific reason, which I'm not seeing one.

Which isn't to say I trust his word on this, but I expect any deception to be along the lines of it not working as well as advertised or having a higher than normally acceptable number of side-effects and complications due to lack of adequate testing. Not because he straight up made it all up.

.... Essentially, Putin skipped the phase 3 trials which was what Trump advocated doing before giving regulatory approval

What happens is that Phase 1 establishes safety and tolerable doses while phase 2 establishes effectiveness, phase 3 combines both while having a larger population so you get better statistical results (if well designed. )

It's a bet essentially and it is unsafe to do so. So far, everyone else is going to do phase 3 because there are drugs which fail phase 3 trials due to adverse reaction and etc.

[mr friendly guy]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-08-12/ ... d/12549068

Russian coronavirus vaccine to be named Sputnik V, President Vladimir Putin announces

Russia's newly approved coronavirus vaccine will be called Sputnik V, in homage to the Soviet Union's Cold War-era satellite program.

Key points:
Russian says the vaccine is safe and there has been demand from foreign countries
But experts say approving the vaccine so early is dangerous
The vaccine still needs to go to a larger trial, involving thousands of participants
President Vladimir Putin announced Russia had become the first country to grant regulatory approval to a COVID-19 vaccine after less than two months of human testing, a move Moscow likened to its success in the space race.

The vaccine has, however, not yet completed its final trials and Russia's announcement to grant approval before then has raised concerns among some experts.

Only about 10 per cent of clinical trials are successful, and some scientists fear Moscow may be putting national prestige before safety.

Mr Putin and other officials have insisted the vaccine is safe.

The President said one of his daughters had taken it as a volunteer, and felt good afterwards.

For the latest news on the COVID-19 pandemic read our coronavirus live blog.
"I know that it works quite effectively, forms strong immunity, and I repeat, it has passed all the necessary checks," Mr Putin told a government meeting.

Russian business conglomerate Sistema expects to put the vaccine, developed by Moscow's Gamaleya Institute, into mass production by the end of the year.

An elderly man with a slight smile sits at a desk in a dark suit with a colourful flag behind him.
Russian President Vladimir Putin says his daughter has taken the vaccine.(AP: Alexei Nikolsky)
Government officials have said it will be administered to medical personnel, and then to teachers, on a voluntary basis at the end of this month or in early September. Mass roll-out in Russia is expected to start in October.

The vaccine is administered in two doses and consists of two serotypes of a human adenovirus, each carrying an S-antigen of the new coronavirus, which enter human cells and produce an immune response.

The platform used for the vaccine was developed by Russian scientists over two decades and formed the basis for several vaccines in the past, including those against Ebola, Russian officials said.

Lessons from the last big vaccine race
The flags of the Us, China, the EU and Australia tiled behind a hand holding a syringe.
Billions are being poured into the race to find a coronavirus vaccine, with the winner owning a powerful political tool. During the last pandemic an Australian company got there first.

Read more
Authorities hope it will allow the Russian economy, which has been battered by fallout from the virus, to return to full capacity.

Kirill Dmitriev, head of Russia's sovereign wealth fund, said Russia had already received foreign requests for 1 billion doses. He said the vaccine was also expected to be produced in Brazil.

Mr Dmitriev said clinical trials were expected to start soon in the United Arab Emirates and the Philippines. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said he was willing to participate personally.

Brazil's Parana state announced it was in talks with Russia to produce the vaccine, but it was unclear if the state's research institute would get regulatory approval in Brazil.

Any production arrangement in Brazil would require approval by health regulator Anvisa. The agency said it had not yet received a request to authorise the Russian vaccine, and that it could not comment on its safety or effectiveness before receiving data from the laboratory responsible for development.

Read more about coronavirus:
Charting the pandemic: These numbers show how dire it has become in Victoria
How Melbourne's stage 4 restrictions compare to the world's toughest lockdowns
Ivo Bucaresky, a former Anvisa director, urged caution, given the speed of the Russian vaccine's development and incomplete testing.

"I would be afraid of Russia's vaccine," Dr Bucaresky said in a telephone interview.

"The Russian Government was very bold, if not to say irresponsible, to put out a vaccine that had hardly been tested to vaccinate its population."


There are more than 200 coronavirus vaccine candidates worldwide.(AAP)

Top US infectious disease official Anthony Fauci said he had not heard any evidence that the vaccine was ready for widespread use.

"I hope that the Russians have actually definitively proven that the vaccine is safe and effective. I seriously doubt that they've done that," Dr Fauci, who is a member of the White House coronavirus task force, said.

Who are the frontrunners in the coronavirus vaccine race?

There are more than 100 coronavirus vaccines in the pipeline and almost a dozen that have made it to humans trials. ABC Health takes a look.


US Health Secretary Alex Azar, asked about Russia's announcement, said safety was paramount and late-stage trials were key.

He said the United States was on track for an effective vaccine by the end of the year, with six candidates under development.

"The point is not to be first with a vaccine. The point is to have a vaccine that is safe and effective," Mr Azar said.

More than 100 possible COVID-19 vaccines are being developed around the world.

At least four are in final Phase III human trials, according to WHO data.

[madd0ct0r]

The Vietnamese outbreak continues to unfold.
Both Vietnam and new Zealand had 100 days between last case and sudden emergence of community transmission.

The da Nang city test results (aggressive contact tracing and ring testing areas around cases) have found 300 odd cases *41% asymptomatic*.

I'm toying with the math for how probable an infection chain can go on 100days before triggering a symptomatic case (or better, the 20% ish chance of a case resulting in medical contact / hospital admission).

I think it's possible that, for the same behaviour, asymptomatic people are much less infectious then someone sneezing. Why would someone symptomatic not change behaviour? Maybe passing to carers/family or stuff as simple as I've been hot and sneezing all week, but it's a heatwave and high pollen count...

If the asymptomatic people have an R barely above 1, I think an outbreak could easily smoulder for months.

[bilateralrope]

For New Zealand, I doubt it was undetected transmission for that long. I think the most likely scenario is that it slipped through our isolation hotels due to false negatives or and/someone getting sloppy at them. Then it only needs an asymptomatic carrier or two to complicate the tracing efforts. Though that's not the only possibility:

Covid 19 coronavirus: Freight investigated as possible source of community transmission

Surfaces in a coolstore workplace are being tested to see whether international freight may have been the origin of the new cases.

One of the people who has tested positive for Covid-19 is an employee at an Americold coolstore in Mt Wellington, one of four people who tested positive on Tuesday.

The man had been off work on sick leave for nine days.

Americold NZ Managing Director Richard Winnall told the Herald the company was notified an employee was suspected of having Covid-19 late yesterday and that the Mt Wellington branch needed to close for 48 hours.

"We have made contact with him. He is doing okay. He has been on sick leave for the last nine days."

So far the source of New Zealand's first community transmission is unknown, with Director General of Health Ashley Bloomfield saying that authorities are "working hard to put together pieces of the puzzle on how this family got infected".

"We are very confident we didn't have any community transmission for a very long period," Bloomfield said this morning, adding: "We know the virus can survive within refrigerated environments for quite some time."

Four members of one family have so far tested positive for Covid-19.

Close contacts of the family are required to stay in isolation for 14 days regardless of a negative test.

Recently, there have been cases reported overseas of traces of the virus being found on frozen imports.

Reuters have reported that the city government of Yantai, a port city in China's eastern Shandong province, said it had found the virus on the packaging of frozen seafood that had arrived from the port city of Dalian, which recently battled a surge of cases.

Two of the new Covid cases travelled to Rotorua while showing virus symptoms and visited tourism spots.

The Ministry of Health is working to establish where they visited in Rotorua.

People in Rotorua would need to be vigilant, director general of health Ashley Bloomfield said.

If there is another case in Rotorua, a nationwide response will be necessary.

The woman, in her 20s, travelled out of Auckland last weekend. The woman and two young children visited tourist attractions, Bloomfield said.

None of the people who tested positive in the community needed hospital-level care, Bloomfield said.

"I know that the virus re-emerging in our community has caused alarm and the unknown is scary. That causes anxiety for many of us," Bloomfield said.

The family who had tested positive was in isolation at home in south Auckland and a decision hadn't been made about whether they would be moved to a quarantine facility, he said.

Meanwhile, a west Auckland medical centre has closed for 48 hours after one of the country's four new Covid-cases visited the clinic.

An email from Glen Eden's Westview Medical Centre to a patient, see by the Herald, says the patient was seen in the Infection Control area at the medical clinic and was wearing a mask.

One of the four new Covid cases with no links to overseas travel had a test at a West Auckland clinic.

"The patient was assessed and swabbed by one of our doctors wearing full protective equipment," the email said.

"All surfaces were subsequently cleaned as per guidelines. On the advice of the Ministry of Health, Westview will close down for 48hrs from 11am today 12/08/2020.

"Our doctors and nurses will contact all booked patients to offer phone consultations over the next 48hrs."

In the letter it said they apologised for the inconvenience but it was necessary to avoid New Zealand having to go back to level 4, "something none of us want to happen".

The Herald has contacted Westview Medical Centre and the Ministry of Health for comment and is awaiting a response.

[mr friendly guy]

https://soperth.com.au/clive-palmer-30b ... t-wa-42357

More update on WA border wars. For those who just joined us, WA has been able to control covid 19 for now, with one of the measures shutting down our borders. Pretty every state agrees with WA keeping them close if they desire. Even the Commonwealth has finally given in.

Enter fat fuck billionaire Clive Palmer. He wanted to challenge in court and force WA to open its borders to the rest of Australia, so Palmer who is based in Queensland can return for meetings. It now turns out he wrote a letter to the WA government, trying to use this border brinkmanship to settle another dispute with the WA government about his Balmoral mining site.

Basically he is in arbitration with the WA government over said disagreement at Balmoral to the tune of 27.7 billion dollars. Which is almost WA's entire budget ($30 billion). WTF. Ok, step back. From what I understand, Palmer either wants to enter WA or wants further sessions in regards to the dispute to be held outside of WA. He is willing to force open the borders during a pandemic so he can sort out this dispute.

The dispute relates to a deal he signed with the state government in 2002 (under a Labor premier, the current premier Mark McGowan is also a Labor man), but the government under a Liberal premier in 2012 had a different interpretation of what was allowed (Palmer has won that arbitration). At that time in 2012 Palmer wanted to develop the site and the government put restrictions on him. Its alleged he had a Chinese buyer at the time who were willing to pay big bucks for the Balmoral mining site, and now he has lost out because the site was never developed the way he wanted it.

In response the WA government rammed in emergency legislation to stop any liability relating to the Balmoral dispute, which I am sure will be considered authoritarian or at least anti capitalistic. But fuck Palmer man. Opening the borders during a pandemic is bad enough. If the cost is anywhere near the $27.7 billion it will severely limit the State's ability to run hospitals, which is bad during a pandemic.

His "right" to almost $30 billion dollars even if it was deserve doesn't negate the right of 2.5 million people in WA to have services like you know, health care.

------------------------------
Notes
* The final value of 27.7 billion is quoted from the state government. Palmer's lawyers deny the high cost but hasn't put forward their own figure as far as I know.

** Palmer apparently has letters showing a Chinese bank was willing to finance things, but so far I haven't seen evidence that any Chinese mining companies were willing to purchase the Balmoral site. So its not iron clad that he would have sold it even if he was allowed to make the proposed developments to Balmoral.

[bilateralrope]

Update from New Zealand:
- Genomic testing has ruled out these cases being linked to our first wave.
- It has also ruled out a leak in our isolation hotels.
- Americold's Melborne facility has had staff test positive recently. Since the first NZ case was in their Auckland facility, genomic testing is underway to check if those are linked.

'We’re leaving no stone unturned': Did New Zealand's outbreak come from a Melbourne coolstore?

There is no evidence to suggest Covid-19 can spread via food packaging, health experts say.

However, New Zealand authorities are investigating whether a recent outbreak of Covid-19 in the community came from chilled products shipped from overseas, with a particular focus on a Melbourne coolstore where two workers recently tested positive for the disease.

An Americold coolstore facility in Mt Wellington, Auckland was forced to close this week after a worker and three of his family members tested positive for Covid-19.

It marked the first case of community transmission in New Zealand in more than 100 days and triggered an alert level 3 lockdown in Auckland, with the rest of New Zealand moving to alert level 2.

The resurgence has so far resulted in 37 positive Covid-19 cases.

The Ministry of Health said the Ministry for Primary Industries tested the Mt Wellington facility on Friday.

Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said testing from the site was being processed on Saturday.

As of Friday five Americold staff at the Mt Wellington, and one contractor who visited the site, had tested positive for Covid-19.

There have also been two confirmed Covid-19 cases at Americold's Melbourne facility in the past two weeks.

Bloomfield said genomic testing was being done in Australia to see whether there was any link between the Melbourne Americold facility and the New Zealand outbreak.

“It’s part of the overall puzzle, and we’re leaving no stone unturned,” Bloomfield said.

On Friday Bloomfield said with help from police, the Mt Wellington Americold “setting” was being “thoroughly” investigated from the border through to the coolstore.

However, earlier in the week he said chilled products being the source of the outbreak was an “unlikely” scenario.

On Friday Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said it was not clear where the virus originated from and contact tracing and genomic testing had ruled out a link to quarantine and isolation facilities.

Sequencing of the virus also showed that it was not a “burning ember” from New Zealand’s first wave of Covid-19, she said.

“It appears to be new to New Zealand,” Ardern said.

Extensive testing and contact tracing determined the earliest case found to date was an Americold coolstore worker who became sick on July 31, she said.

She said we may never know how the virus entered the country.

“There’s a number of theories that exist but not a lot of research that tells us at this point whether or not surfaces are in play or whether or not there was a connection through that supply chain,” Ardern said.

New York Stock Exchange-listed Americold is New Zealand’s largest coolstore provider and supplies frozen goods to supermarkets and fast food outlets.

All products at the Mt Wellington facility were frozen goods manufactured both locally and overseas.

Overseas products were imported by sea from about 15 different countries.

On Thursday Americold managing director Richard Winnall said there was no product going between the Melbourne and Auckland facilities.

Otago University professor and epidemiologist Michael Baker said there was currently no evidence that refrigerated freight had a role in transmitting Covid-19 between people.

“This is a respiratory pathogen, and the predominant mode of transmission is through respiratory droplets and aerosols produced by infected people,” Baker said.

“Surfaces that have recently been contaminated with respiratory droplets can also infect people, but this mode of transmission is considered much less important than direct respiratory spread.”

The disease was not considered to be water or food borne, he said.

Stuff asked the Ministry of Health whether there was a risk frozen products contaminated with Covid-19 either locally or overseas could have ended up on store shelves and what advice it had for the public.

“Unfortunately this is still under investigation. MPI is testing today. This is all the information we have at this stage,” a spokeswoman said on Friday.

A spokesman for the New Zealand Food & Grocery Council said it was keeping “a watching brief” on the Americold developments.

“We have been advised New Zealand Food Safety has reviewed the most recent science from around the world about the risk of being infected with Covid-19 through contact with food or food packaging, and to date it has seen no evidence of transmission via food or food packaging.”

This week two cities in China found traces of Covid-19 on imported frozen food, according to Chinese media.

A sample taken from the surface of frozen chicken wings imported into the southern city of Shenzhen from Brazil, as well as samples of outer packaging of frozen Ecuadorian shrimp sold in the northwestern city of Xian, tested positive for the virus, local Chinese authorities said.

Viruses can survive up to two years at temperatures of minus 20 degrees Celsius, but scientists and officials say there is no strong evidence so far the coronavirus can spread via frozen food."

The World Health Organisation on Friday said it had no evidence of coronavirus being spread by food or packaging and urged people not to be afraid of the virus entering the food chain.

“People should not fear food, food packaging or delivery of food," the World Health Organisation's head of emergencies programme Mike Ryan told a briefing.

The US Food and Drug Administration and Agriculture Department said in a joint statement "there is no evidence that people can contract Covid-19 from food or from food packaging."

Shenzhen's health authorities traced and tested everyone who might have come into contact with potentially contaminated food products, and all results were negative.

The Shenzhen Epidemic Prevention and Control Headquarters said the public needed to take precautions to reduce infection risks from imported meat and seafood.

[ray245]

This virus do seem to keep popping up and spreading very easily in enclosed cold spaces. This might be why the virus mass outbreak happened in the Wuhan market, with the condition helping to it spread very rapidly.

[aerius]

What is Singapore doing that the rest of us aren't?
They've had almost 56,000 cases and only 27 deaths.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavir ... singapore/

That's a death rate of 0.05% while almost everyone else is over 1%. Whatever they're doing is working.

[ray245]

What is Singapore doing that the rest of us aren't?
They've had almost 56,000 cases and only 27 deaths.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavir ... singapore/

That's a death rate of 0.05% while almost everyone else is over 1%. Whatever they're doing is working.

Most of the cases are from worker dormitories, consisting of foreign labours sharing a small room with 10 people. And Singapore locked down the dorms and prevent them from even leaving their floor until the entire dorm is cleared of the virus.

The only lucky thing is those workers in dorms are mostly healthy young men because they are working in construction and other kinds of heavy labour work.

Do you think it's "working"? Or are you so desperate of wanting to return to normal that you're not even bothering to look into reasons that might challenge your hopes?

[ray245]

Basically Singapore ended up with a form of herd immunity. It's just that Singapore managed to separate nearly a quarter of its population, mostly young and fit adults from the rest of the population.

So based on the data in Singapore, we have a decent idea of the mortality rate in young and healthy adults. The problem is this approach is only replicable in other countries that house mass number of foreign workers in dorms, aka Dubai or Qatar. In most other countries, this is impossible because there is no way you can isolate the young and healthy people from interacting with those with more vulnerable health conditions.

So in order to actually sort out the mortality rate in Singapore, you need to remove the dorm residents from the community cases.

https://www.moh.gov.sg/docs/librariespr ... abinet.pdf

2206 Community cases. A number of people who have died are dorm residents, but we don't have the numbers that separate death cases of community from that of dorm workers. But from what I can remember, it should be 2-3 of them. So we can take 25 deaths for now.

25/2206= 1.13% mortality rate.

So pretty much the same as everywhere else in the world where large community outbreak has occurred.

[aerius]

Interesting. So they somehow had a death rate of about 1 in 25,000 among the dorm residents, which is about 4-5 times better than on the US Navy's ships which were also filled with young healthy adults. Looking at the stats for where I live and only counting people under 40, our death rates are still 15-20 times higher than what Singapore has in its dorm residents. Unfortunately the data set for co-morbidities isn't something I can get my hands on at the moment, but if it's similar to what I've seen from NYC then things might get fun.

[mr friendly guy]

Hey Shep, you might find this interesting.

https://www.euronews.com/2020/08/17/cor ... -marseille

Coronavirus: France sends in riot police to enforce face mask rules in Marseille
COMMENTS
By Euronews with Associated Press • last updated: 17/08/2020 - 15:0

French riot police are being deployed near Marseille to help enforce mask requirements as the country registers a spike in COVID-19 cases.

Government spokesperson Gabriel Attal announced on Monday that 130 police officers are being sent to Marseille, a coastal city in south-eastern France. It comes after local authorities made face masks mandatory in all farmers' markets and in several neighbourhoods.

Face masks are mandatory in all public indoor places across France as well as on public transport but town halls can expand the requirement to outdoor areas if they feel it's necessary.

Several major cities including Paris, Toulouse, and Lille have introduced such measures in crowded places to stem the spread of the virus as the rising temperatures have been accompanied by an increasing number of cases.

Coronavirus: France expected to impose quarantine for UK travellers in reciprocal move
Several violent incidents have been reported over people's refusal to wear masks.

A bus driver died last month in Bayonne, south-west France, after two men attacked him when he reminded them they ought to wear masks.

A female nurse was also beaten last week in Seine-Saint-Denis, just north of Paris, after she asked two teenagers climbing aboard a bus to wear face coverings.

France recorded more than 3,300 new COVID-19 cases on Saturday — the highest tally since the country started easing lockdown restrictions in mid-May — followed by just over 3,000 new infections on Sunday, according to data from the Health Ministry.

More than 30,400 people are known to have lost their lives to COVID-19 in France since the beginning of the outbreak — the seventh-highest tally in the world.

An uptick in cases in Italy — the EU's most heavily impacted country — prompted the authorities to shut down all dance venues and to make masks mandatory everywhere from 18:00 to 06:00.

Similar measures were also introduced in Spain, where COVID-19 hospitalizations have quintupled since early July.

Coronavirus lockdowns and mental health: 'We're missing an ingredient that makes us human'
But anti-mask sentiment is spreading. Several hundred people demonstrated in Brussels and Madrid over the weekend against masks, arguing that being forced to wear one goes against their civil rights.

According to a study commissioned by the World Health Organisation and released in June in The Lancet, wearing a face mask decreases the risk of infection to the wearer by 65 per cent.

What authoritarianism by the French. Why can't they be like freedom loving American Karens?

[ray245]

Interesting. So they somehow had a death rate of about 1 in 25,000 among the dorm residents, which is about 4-5 times better than on the US Navy's ships which were also filled with young healthy adults. Looking at the stats for where I live and only counting people under 40, our death rates are still 15-20 times higher than what Singapore has in its dorm residents. Unfortunately the data set for co-morbidities isn't something I can get my hands on at the moment, but if it's similar to what I've seen from NYC then things might get fun.

Singapore is testing every single dorm resident, and thus we are able to detect a lot of asymptomatic cases. And you can move those infected with the virus away to be isolated much quicker than you can isolate sailors who were infected with the virus, because you are on land. Then there is also the ability to give the workers who are infected the care and treatment much quicker than you would be able to for a sailor stuck onboard. We know that having adequate care for patients can improve their survival odds by a fair bit.

Even if you count the people under 40 in the US, you cannot forget the fact that people in the general population do suffer from more health complications than the dorm workers. We know that obesity has a massive impact on the mortality rate, and dorm workers are highly unlikely to be overweight due to the nature of their work.

Also, US Navy ships do have a fair number of older sailors who have various health conditions of their own. Not USN sailor is young and healthy, because you do need your petty officers and etc to provide the experience to operate a ship. And if they get infected while being stuck on a ship and it is going to take a few days to get to the nearest port and hospital, it will not help their chances of survival.

[bilateralrope]

Coronavirus: Donald Trump refers to 'big surge' of Covid-19 in New Zealand

RNZ
16:57, Aug 18 2020
US president Donald Trump has cited New Zealand as having a big surge in coronavirus cases, but New Zealand politicians say there is no comparison with the cases in the States.

"All of a sudden a lot of the places they were using to hold up, they are having a big surge - and I don't want that, I don't want that, - and they're saying 'whoops'," Trump said at a conference.

"Even New Zealand, you see what's going on in New Zealand," he said.

"They beat it they beat, it was like front page [news] they beat it because they wanted to show me something.

"The problem is [there is a] big surge in New Zealand, you know it's terrible - we don't want that.

"But this is an invisible enemy, that should have never been let to come to this country, to Europe to the rest of the world by China, just remember it."

New Zealand reported nine new cases yesterday and 13 new cases today, all linked or believed to be linked to the Auckland cluster. A case that was under investigation has been found to not be linked to the cluster.

Meanwhile, the US reported more than 42,000 new cases yesterday.

Labour leader Jacinda Ardern said there was no comparison between the thousands of cases daily in the United States and New Zealand's current cluster.

"Obviously, every country is experiencing its own fight with Covid-19, it is a tricky virus but not one where I would compare New Zealand's current status to the United States.

"New Zealand's nine cases in a day doesn't compare to the United States' ten of thousands [of cases], and in fact doesn't compare to most countries in the world.

"I'm not concerned about people misinterpreting our status."

Greens Party co-leader James Shaw said Trump's comments were an "absurd comparison".

"We know by now to take everything that Donald Trump says with an enormous grain of salt."

New Zealand First leader Winston Peters was also on par with those reactions.

"The American people can work out that what we have for a whole day, they have every 22 seconds of the day, that speaks for itself."

National Party's leader Judith Collins told reporters she hadn't seen Trump's comments and wasn't there "to talk about Donald Trump".

Her deputy Gerry Brownlee said Trump's remarks would "not be particularly damaging" to New Zealand.

"I don't think too many of our trading partners would be moved by anything he might say ... [Trump's comments] are what they are."

Washington correspondent Simon Marks said Trump almost appeared to be implying that New Zealand had deliberately tried to control the virus in a bid to show him up.

In similar remarks Trump has previously referred to an increase in cases in Germany, Marks said (listen below).

Sadly, some people are probably going to remain fooled even after we squash this outbreak.

[PainRack]

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/si ... n-13026932[/URL]

The couple is contesting their charges and sought an appeal.


I can't share everything because some stuff is internal and the story is supposedly even more damming than what has been shared with me but the trial will be interesting in terms of what the couple and their relative wealth is trying to achieve by pretending ignorance of the law.

Singapore Infectious Disease Act is one of the most draconian in the world and arguing that Covid was not a scheduled infectious diseases pointless. While any questioning prior to it's scheduling might not be criminal, as the prosecutor point out, any evasion after Jan 30 was criminal.

There is a potential case of ignorance but draconian law's here. Ignorance is not innocence and at best a mitigation of punishment. Which was lenient in terms of penalty when compared to Clark Quay and other legal wrangles due to Covid.


Personally, I throw the book at them because they and the Sengkang case violated every scientific norm that was being blared out then and it battle Covid compliance fatigue now.

[mr friendly guy]

One thing I didn't predict from COVID is that California is now desperately short on firefighters. Not because COVID has stricken down paid firefighters, but because it struck down their prison population.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/08/19/ ... -for-help/

Short hundreds of firefighters, California calls on other states for help
Arizona, Nevada and Texas to provide 375 engines to the Golden State
By FIONA KELLIHER | fkelliher@bayareanewsgroup.com | Bay Area News Group
PUBLISHED: August 19, 2020 at 1:44 p.m. | UPDATED: August 19, 2020 at 9:23 p.m.

California officials have requested help from Arizona, Nevada and Texas as its own firefighting resources stretch thin in tackling the hundreds of wildfires that have ignited across the state.

Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a press briefing Wednesday that he had called on the three Western states to provide 375 engines to the state as it races to contain nearly as many fires from Southern to Northern California — three of which have burned through more than 140,000 acres in the Bay Area region.

“We are experiencing fires the likes of which we haven’t seen in many, many years,” Newsom said. “The totality when you consider three hundred sixty-seven active fires we’re aware of all across California … that is a resource challenge where they are stretched in ways we haven’t seen in the last few years.”

Over the past month, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection or Cal Fire rushed to hire and onboard 830 firefighters, out of an 858-person seasonal force the state approved through its recent budget negotiations, Newsom said. Historically, the state has relied on people who are incarcerated to fight wildfires — a pool of workers that has significantly shrunk due to COVID-19.

But the past 72 hours showed that batch of firefighters wasn’t enough. After a request from California officials, Nevada and Arizona have sent crews and support, Newsom said, and the governor of Texas just approved a similar request.

Even so, Newsom balked at the suggestion that the state could have been more prepared for the hard-to-beat blazes, which erupted this week as a massive heat wave engulfed the West Coast and caused thousands of lightning strikes.

Newsom instead pointed out that the state pumped an additional $85 million into Cal Fire for permanent hires and has worked to procure more equipment in recent years — but that the extent of this year’s fires, which number more than 6,700 — compared to just over 4,000 in 2019 — is an unprecedented challenge, further compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic and rolling power blackouts.

“Many of these conditions — while they may be stacked up on each other — are familiar, and there are protocols, processes, procedures in place, and there is long-term thinking,” Newsom said.

This older article from July gives a better idea of the numbers.

This week, state prison officials announced they had placed 12 of the state’s 43 inmate fire camps on lockdown due to a massive outbreak at a Northern California prison in Lassen County that serves as the training center for fire crews.

Until the lockdown lifts, only 30 of the state’s 77 inmate crews are available to fight a wildfire in the north state, prison officials said.

California’s incarcerated firefighters have for decades been the state’s primary firefighting “hand crews,” and the shortage has officials scrambling to come up with replacement firefighters in a dry season that is shaping up to be among the most extreme in years. The state is hunting for bulldozer crews and enlisting teams that normally clear brush as replacements.

I truly had no idea California was that reliant on its prison population to fight fires.

[mr friendly guy]

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald ... g-n1237795

Trump announces emergency authorization for COVID-19 treatment after accusing FDA of delays
One day prior to the start of the Republican National Convention, Trump made the announcement in an evening news conference.

Aug. 24, 2020, 5:41 AM AWST
By Allan Smith
President Donald Trump announced Sunday his administration was providing an emergency authorization for the use of convalescent plasma to treat COVID-19, a treatment that more than 70,000 patients have already received.

One day prior to the start of the Republican National Convention, Trump made the announcement in an evening news conference. He said the authorization "will dramatically expand access to this treatment."

"We're years ahead of approvals if we went by the speed of past administrations," Trump said, adding, "And that includes vaccines."

The treatment, which involves taking antibody-rich blood product from recovered coronavirus patients and providing it to those afflicted with the virus, has shown some benefit to patients but evidence remains inconclusive about its effectiveness and appropriate dosage. The trials have been riddled with delays and issues with finding volunteers.

Hahn made clear the emergency use authorization was not the same as the treatment being approved by the FDA and that the treatment still needs to undergo randomized clinical trials to determine its safety and effectiveness.

Speaking with CBS's "Face the Nation" on Sunday, Trump's former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said the treatment is "probably beneficial" though the emergency authorization amounts to an "incremental" change.

"The emerging data does not suggest convalescent plasma is that great," Dr. Carlos Del Rio, an infectious disease physician at Emory University, told NBC News. "It is at best an incremental improvement but not a game changer."

Nearly 180,000 Americans have already died of the virus, according to an NBC News tracker. With a vaccine not expected to be widely available until 2021, the push for effective treatments has intensified.

The authorization comes as Trump has ramped up criticism of his own administration, alleging they are slow-walking approvals for vaccines and therapeutics. On Saturday, Trump claimed with no evidence, "The deep state, or whoever, over at the FDA is making it very difficult for drug companies to get people in order to test the vaccines and therapeutics."

Trump has repeatedly promoted the conspiratorial idea that a "deep state" of officials throughout the administration is working against him and openly criticized top health officials who challenge his unproven claims. On Saturday, he accused the FDA of delaying approval of a vaccine until after the November election, which is far sooner than most experts have predicted a vaccine could be available.

"Obviously, they are hoping to delay the answer until after November 3rd," Trump tweeted. "Must focus on speed, and saving lives!"

Earlier this month, Hahn said the agency would not "cut corners" to approve a vaccine, which Trump has promised before the end of the year. Top biotechnology executives responded to Trump's tweet saying politics can play no role in vaccine and therapeutic development and said the FDA is moving at record speed to get drugs approved.

The president also expressed disdain over the FDA months ago rescinding its emergency use authorization for hydroxychloroquine to treat hospitalized COVID-19 patients, which the agency said carries too many risks without any apparent benefit.

White House chief of staff Mark Meadows on Sunday downplayed the tweets in an interview with ABC's "This Week," saying Trump is simply trying to make sure officials want to move as quickly as he does.

"They want to do things the way they’ve always done it," Meadows said of career staffers at the FDA. "This president is about cutting red tape. That’s what the tweet was all about."

Meadows added he believes "there are a number of people that do not see the same sense of urgency as [Trump] sees" in approving drugs to combat the coronavirus.

In July, former Vice President Joe Biden, the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee, called on Trump to "assure us all that the White House will respect the independent authority of the FDA to decide, free from political pressure, if the vaccine is safe and effective."

Speaking with "This Week," Biden's deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield said "the American people need to be confident that the process of getting to a vaccine is not being politically manipulated."

"And, right now, we’re not getting a whole lot of reason to believe that," she said, adding, "And so, I think Americans are obviously eagerly awaiting a vaccine, they need to feel confident that the process is not being politically manipulated and they also need to feel confident that the president is going to be able to ... get a vaccine equitably and quickly to people all across the country

Ok, so an election stunt but...

Americans aren't already using convalescent plasma. China did this quite early on, and months ago I saw posts on Facebook from my friends in the medical profession talking about it, one of them a doctor in NYC, IIRC looking for volunteers.

Edit - not to say every country is going to use convalescent plasma, but given the Facebook posts from months ago I guess I just assumed they would have done something along these lines even if its just a trial basis, rather than having trials delayed as per the article.

[Mr Bean]

Ok, so an election stunt but...

Americans aren't already using convalescent plasma. China did this quite early on, and months ago I saw posts on Facebook from my friends in the medical profession talking about it, one of them a doctor in NYC, IIRC looking for volunteers.

Edit - not to say every country is going to use convalescent plasma, but given the Facebook posts from months ago I guess I just assumed they would have done something along these lines even if its just a trial basis, rather than having trials delayed as per the article.

See here's the funny thing
America has been using convalescent plasma before this, the red cross has been asking for donations as old as May and they put together an official drive in June. It's been a case by case basis however not approved process since the FDA is the FDA and they won't give blanket approval until every I is dotted and every T is crossed unless you hire their old employees, have a lot of money or have official pressure from above.

But even if they won't grant blanket approval convalescent plasma has been approved on a per patient basis for a good while now.

[mr friendly guy]

Ok, so an election stunt but...

Americans aren't already using convalescent plasma. China did this quite early on, and months ago I saw posts on Facebook from my friends in the medical profession talking about it, one of them a doctor in NYC, IIRC looking for volunteers.

Edit - not to say every country is going to use convalescent plasma, but given the Facebook posts from months ago I guess I just assumed they would have done something along these lines even if its just a trial basis, rather than having trials delayed as per the article.

See here's the funny thing
America has been using convalescent plasma before this, the red cross has been asking for donations as old as May and they put together an official drive in June. It's been a case by case basis however not approved process since the FDA is the FDA and they won't give blanket approval until every I is dotted and every T is crossed unless you hire their old employees, have a lot of money or have official pressure from above.

But even if they won't grant blanket approval convalescent plasma has been approved on a per patient basis for a good while now.

My friend posted about this in March. I notice the article mentioned 70 K had received this treatment, although its not clear to me if this was in the US or worldwide.

Given that one a case by case basis its already being used, this might just be a pure election stunt, something Trump can claim credit for especially when he states his actions "will dramatically expand access to this treatment." Well if more Americans have COVID, then obviously more Americans will get this treatment and more Americans can donate their plasma for this treatment as there will be more recovered Americans. This will occur anyway, so its an easy thing Trump can claim. Sadly, people might very well believe it.

[mr friendly guy]

If Australia gets the Oxford vaccine (assuming it works), there is one group that might boycott it. Catholics.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-08-24/ ... e/12588578

Oxford University coronavirus vaccine has 'ethical concerns', Sydney Catholic Archbishop warns followers
By Alison Xiao
Posted 1hhour ago, updated 8mminutes ago

Australia's most powerful Archbishop has told Catholics to boycott the coronavirus vaccine that the Federal Government struck a deal to purchase 25 million doses of last week over "ethical concerns".

Anthony Fisher, the Archbishop of Sydney, used social media to criticise the vaccine being developed at Oxford University, saying it "makes use of a cell line cultured from an electively aborted human foetus".

The vaccine, which is considered among the frontrunners in the global race to combat COVID-19, has been developed from a kidney cell line (HEK-293) taken from an aborted foetus, a common practice in medical research.

The Australian Government last week signed an agreement with UK-based drug company AstraZeneca to secure 25 million doses of the potential COVID-19 vaccine if it clears trials.

"Whether this vaccine is successful or not, it is important that the Government does not create an ethical dilemma for people," Archbishop Fisher wrote on Facebook.

Archbishop Fisher said he had written to the Prime Minister and urged him to pursue alternate vaccines which "do not use foetal cells in their development".

Scott Morrison has previously said the Government was not confining its search for a vaccine to just the Oxford University candidate.

Professor Colin Pouton, from the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, said the HEK-293 cell was regularly used in medical research "to make viral vector products" because there are advantages to using mammalian cells.

"They're using the cell line as a packaging system to make the virus," he said.

"It's a cell line you can use to produce proteins or produce viral products."

Professor Pouton said the cell-line was developed decades ago and had been widely used around the world.

"It's not like people are using a new cell line," he said.

"It's already there, so in many respects the ethical issue is in history."

Other vaccines in Australia use the "human diploid cell lines" of WI-38 and MRC-5, which are originally derived from human foetal tissue.

These include the rubella, hepatitis A and rabies vaccines among others.

AstraZeneca was approached for comment.

Not sure how many Catholics will ignore the "ethical concerns" from archbishop, but in the US aren't there lots of protestants who oppose stem cell research? Wouldn't be surprised if some other religious figure elsewhere also has the same idea.