We had zero active cases for a month in my city ( 250k),  and today got 30 new ones.

Actually, this all sounds realistic. The type of vaccine can be developed pretty fast and there are other developments in different countries of similar type (putting stufff in adenoviruses) that is only a month or so behind the russian vaccine. The main part is that they skip the last test-round or execute it parallel to already using the vaccine. That strategy has risks.

With a low number of cases contact tracing is a very effective tool. But you need people doing the footwork. East asian countries like Vietnam, South Korea or on the other side of the world cuba have poured a lot of people into contact tracing. This works well enough. But if the case count increases, the people doing the tracing are overwhelmed. So you need additional measures. That Canada reduced it's cases further after opening can probably be accounted to contact tracing. Also keep in mind, that found new infections were usually infected a few days before. Usually between one and two weeks before they find their way into the statistics. So even after opening up numbers may still drop from fewer infection from before the opening.

Yep that's what I like to believe. However the 2 confirmed cases from a local outbreak at the hospital were only counted as one and they said they had no clue where it came from and that the 2 were unrelated.

“Two members of the BCHS team have tested positive for COVID-19. Contact tracing shows there has been no clear link established between the two cases and no patients are affected,”

So it seems more like a failure in counting and tracing. The counter is still only up one after that was reported 3 days ago. Testing is also still mostly based on people coming in for a test after noticing symptoms. The variation between weekend numbers and week numbers also seems to keep growing, although they are 'compensating' here by letting the pending tests build up to over 25K by the end of the week, then it drops during the weekend to under 10K by Monday. Suggesting that less and less people come in for tests during the weekend. Now back up to 17K pending.

3 weeks left for schools to re-open. Hopefully my doubts are misplaced and we'll have it down to the tens of cases per day to safely re-open the schools.


The 33 cases yesterday were an outlier unfortunately, back to 95 today and another 5K pending tests added to the pile (22K pending now) It's not just us who have severe doubts about sending out kids back to school in 3 weeks

https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/it-s-a-no-win-situation-these-parents-won-t-be-sending-their-kids-back-to-school-1.5059659

"By sending our children to school with very limited precautions and next to no [physical] distancing required at any age, we are taking a risk with our children’s lives and long-term health as there is far too much unknown on the long-term effects of COVID,"

"What am I going to regret more -- if my one son has some long-term challenges health wise, or if they had a year where it was challenging socially? It's a no-win situation for parents but for us personally the bigger threat to us is health,"

And in our case, what's more damaging, mental health issues due to no interaction with other kids or potentially losing their mother to covid19... Our youngest has already been experiencing panic attacks and isolation issues, but losing their mother is potentially much worse. Unfortunately he also does pretty bad with home schooling, he needs that social interaction and his peers to keep motivated. Very much a no win situation and extremely frustrating that the government will do pretty much nothing to make schools safer and still haven't announced any concrete plans yet for home schooling. All that's been said has been pretty negative (likely to be lumped in with kids from other schools, different teachers for online, all through bright space etc)

Actually, their vaccine isn't even the most advanced since they haven't begun phase III trials and their earlier tests concerned a grand total of 38 people. I would have expected at least some actual corner cutting like successful challenge studies but no, they're basically rolling out an unfinished product. And I sincerely doubt this is even going to be tested in healthcare professionals at all (no respectable one would want to take it) unless they're under threat of being dropped off a building, like it already happened before in Russia.

The thing is, is isn't just about it being ineffective but harmless or being something like a medicine with some side effects. There's a real danger an improper vaccine might lead to the disease being worse than it actually would be otherwise, considering there's a plausible chance (looking at former SARS and RSV research) that the inflammatory response becomes more damaging to the body, even if the virus itself is cleared more quickly.

The only thing this will do in the end is serving anti-vaxxers a 10-course menu if there will be any side effects from those untested vaccines. They would be able to point at that vaccine forever to make themselves look like being in the right with not getting vaccinated.

My wife already saw a video from anti-vaxxers today that declared covid a ploy from deep government and Bill Gates to get people "vaccined", sorry, chipped to make them docile like a pet. My wife laughed it off, but I got really upset from that video, so much that I couldn't take the misinformation propaganda in it anymore after a couple minutes, understanding where this was going and what it entails.

https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/08/12/901756223/florida-sheriff-orders-deputies-and-staff-not-to-wear-face-masks

Florida has gone insane (were they ever sane?).

Yeah there are few things more dangerous to our society than the anti-vax movement to be honest, if they had their way we'd go back to the days when most children died before reaching adulthood. It's one thing for them to put their own lives in danger through paranoia and rejection of scientific evidence, but they're also putting the lives of innocent people in peril.

That's the biggest risk here, and why I've been a vocal opponent of approving any COVID vaccine before its completed the proper three stages of human trials. If the public's faith in vaccination is eroded, it will lead to the death of millions.

I have confidence that Florida will pass California as the state with the most cases because of reasons like this. 

Also Georgia will have more confirm cases than New York in the future.