Yeah things are slowly getting better.
Germany with a 7-day incidence of sub 100 for the first time since October.

Not only Spain is rising, Portugal is also rising extremely fast. Up to 15,000 cases and ~300 deaths in one day. If Portugal had as many people as the US, it would translate to 500k cases and 10k deaths.

Portugal seems fairly comparable to the disastrous Amazonas state outbreak, which is seeing a peak of ~ 150 deaths in a 4 million-ish population.

It boggles the mind, though, to think that New York City and parts of northern Italy were even worse at one point last year, and it's not even close.

European Union approves Oxford's vaccine:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-europe-vaccine-ema-idUSKBN29Y23E

You thought the new british mutation (B.1.1.7) of their corona virus was bad?
Now they have a new one.... this one is called E484k, and apparently this one is like the one in Brazil/south africa.

It appears that old anti bodies, your immune system buildt up from haveing the org. Corona virus (covid19), dont offer much protection against it.
This means, you could potentially get sick, first with covid19 (orginal strain or B117) and then get this new one (E484k).
(it also appears that some vaccines arnt as effective at protecting against it, just like the brazil/south african versions).

I seriously hope, these new types dont make their way across europe.
I want the vaccines to work, people get a jab, and then society returns to normal.
If what happends is a new wave, of vaccine resistant covid, starts spreading across the world again.... F***.

Seriously, Brazil/south Africa/UK.... stay home please, dont travel!

Same here, they're already starting to warn about the variations potentially triggering a third wave. Atm cases are coming down with the lock downs. (Or rather closures, nothing is locked down, weird term. Curb side pickup and limited amount of people inside stores is the reality) Soon schools will re-open (10th) while the spread of the UK variant is still not widely known.

As for travel, Canadians need to cut it out as well. Over a million traveled through the 'lock downs' over the holidays. And a little update about the family that vacationed in Colombia over Christmas, the dad (50) died yesterday. They were 2 bays over from my wife when she went to the hospital for blood pressure problems. Luckily they are really really careful in the ER, constant cleaning and she could only tell the staff apart by their ear rings.

Yeah lockdown means differnt things, differnt places.

In denmark unless its a supermarket (food items only), or medicin at a apothecary..... you cant enter a store.

Some stores are still open online, where you can shop for items (and have them delivered to your home).
Some few exceptions are made, for "curb side pickup"
(but again this requires you to order online, their not allowed to have you inside to pay, at a cash register or such).

Not sure how many danes are traveling, but I would respect a total ban on vacationing.
We ve started (not sure how long ago) demanding negative tests to be allowed to fly back, and madatory quarantineing of people when they get here (x days + negative test, before being allowed to leave). (again theres exceptions to like truck drivers that bring items accross borders and such)

Its a mess....
Who woulda guessed a virus would be so hard to deal with.

 

When there's a given mutation that is better at avoiding neutralizing antibodies then obviously it's going to spread and become the dominant strain after vaccination, even if you don't import it. The ones detected in the UK mutated in situ, after all; the seeds are already there, and everywhere.

But your immune system isn't stuck with old antibodies as you put it. Antibodies undergo affinity maturation; they become more sensitive to an antigen with time when encountering it. So even if the virus gets in and wiggles around a little bit, does this count as having Covid or just a common cold? Or course, you could still pass it on to someone who never had it, or hasn't been vaccinated, or is severely immunosuppressed...

(This is why people erroneously think viruses get "weaker". They don't. Your immune system just learns how to react to it. For instance, H1N1 mutates every year to become an order of magnitude less sensitive to last season's neutralizing antibodies, and yet it isn't constantly causing 1918-style pandemics.)

I understand some people want it squashed, but it likely isn't going to magically disappear even if you inoculate everyone in the world with mRNA vaccines every trimester. It's going to linger in the background as all the other viruses that have caused pandemics in the past.

This whole thing with the vaccines make me feel uneasy. The richer get it first, the poorer get it last, all because of where we were born or where we live. We're not even sure what the hell they're getting with these Chinese vaccines with questionable data.

What a sad sad world we live in, a world that a year later, still can't muster a unified response to a pandemic that's affecting us all. No universal stimulus package, no well-planned lockdowns, no basic understanding of why the lockdowns are failing and how we can make them work, not. This is gonna go on and on and on and on and on, front-line workers re-infection rates are alarming only 6 months after the first infection, and those are the ones who were heavily exposed and generated a strong immune response to the first infection. Vaccines aren't promising you an infection free world, they're being sold on the premise of preventing the severer form of the disease. 

We're not taking this seriously enough and the price to be paid is yet to be known.

Yeah it's rather depressing. The WHO already warned that the effects will be felt for decades. Here they already said the effects on youth will last for at least a decade. And more urgently https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/doctors-fear-an-impending-wave-of-cancer-patients-after-covid-19-delays-1.5295867

All because we couldn't simply shut the border last Februari in fear of all the issues that our botched response is causing now. And it's still not taken as seriously as it should be taken. If you live in Australia or New Zealand, you have it made. Here we'll continue to dance around the issue and only make it worse trying to please everyone short term. Schools back open next week, likely too soon. Last time we had to wait until cases dropped below 1/5th of what they are currently. But ehh. It's like trying to put out a forest fire, then leave when the flames are a bit lower, to then wonder why it flared back up again. Repeat.

https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/viden/kroppen/overraskende-opdagelse-coronavirus-har-tidligere-lagt-verden-ned

Interesting article in Danish about the 1889 pandemic, which was also likely caused by a coronavirus. It lasted about two years, with outbreaks going on for five years, and much like the 1918 pandemic, it caused three waves. Rather disconcertingly, the third wave was the worst in both cases; faster and deadlier in most places. Biological, sociological, or both?

I mean, I can see societal factors being relevant in 1918 when the extremely high mortality put the fear of God in young people for a time, but 1889? It'd just be another thing alongside tuberculosis etc.