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Forums - General Discussion - Coronavirus (COVID-19) Discussion Thread

EricHiggin on 14 July 2021
LurkerJ said:
SvennoJ said:

This does raise a moral/ethical question.

Do you let the virus do 'its thing', no more restrictions, since the option is there to get vaccinated if you want / try hard enough. Basically let the anti-vaxers and other hesitant people fend for themselves. (with the risk of creating new strains in the process) And go for herd immunity the hard way.

What about the children though, below 12 aren't getting vaccinated yet and while low occurrence, there are problems with covid in children as well. Plus hospitals will stay busy with covid, pushing other things further and further back.

It seems the USA is done with restrictions, UK as well, the rest can fend for themselves. Canada might be next.

Anyway, instead of getting rid of it / numbers so low it won't flare up again with vaccinations, now it's a wait and see game again whether it's safe to send my youngest back to school. He has to go back regardless, not doing well socially. But how safe it will be, I don't know. There definitely no longer is any push to suppress the pandemic entirely, it's a collective fail in that regards.

I'm getting my second dose tomorrow, and my wife should have reached close to full immunity by now. Next, the kids, our oldest just turned 12, so he is eligible. It still feels like a gamble. Too many unknowns still and too much conflicting information. Anyway it's his decision to make and there is zero info made available for kids. Pretty poor going imo.

I think smokers, boozers, addicts, and those who are obese and don't exercise should pay more taxes. If those who don't wish to take the vaccine end up in the hospital, they should be taxed more. Obviously the issue here is that the majority of unvaccinated people won't need public services to support them unless they get severe or long COVID19, so only start taxing them if they fall ill? I truly believe there should be harsher consequences for anyone who thinks my taxes are there to fund their smoking-induced COPD/diabetes treatments, nothing more off putting than seeing a grown ass adult with a cigarette. 

The problem with this, is you'd end up with some rarer situations where people who'd rather not get vaxed, due avoiding extra taxation, out of necessity or not, are going to take the vax. For those few who get severely negatively impacted, or killed because of it, how does the system respond? Do you just turn a blind eye or pay their family reparations? How much if so? Would reparations be enough?

The problem is, who to sacrifice in what situations, and nobody wants the answer to be themselves or their loved ones, and it's understandable why. What's hard to understand is how exactly to deal with those problems, and the answer is always somewhat flawed.



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JRPGfan on 15 July 2021

Daily cases of new infected keeps riseing (in dk).
We re now upto 1200 today....

The good news, is it seems vaccinations are accelerateing.
We're now at 65% (with 1 jab) and 42% (with both).

This cant go fast enough.



SvennoJ on 15 July 2021

It's a race against a 4th wave, which has already been lost, can't outpace exponential growth plus after 50% vaccine uptake slows down.

The current state of the world, over 3.5 billion doses administered so far

The percentages are based on total population (instead of eligible what most countries report)

Canada is now at 69.25%/46.38% (first/second doses) or 78.8%/52.8% of 12+

So far very few signs we're getting another wave as well, but we probably will still get a bump.

And as usual, Africa is left behind.



Barozi on 15 July 2021
SvennoJ said:

It's a race against a 4th wave, which has already been lost, can't outpace exponential growth plus after 50% vaccine uptake slows down.

The current state of the world, over 3.5 billion doses administered so far

The percentages are based on total population (instead of eligible what most countries report)

Canada is now at 69.25%/46.38% (first/second doses) or 78.8%/52.8% of 12+

So far very few signs we're getting another wave as well, but we probably will still get a bump.

And as usual, Africa is left behind.

Honestly, based on my recent research, Canada was the only country I encountered that did that.

Reporting them like that is pretty much pointless anyway as they can't be compared to other countries. In Germany for example, the eligible age is 18+. Therefore not comparable. Even less comparable for countries that have a different distribution of age groups (especially more young people).

Furthermore the eligible age could change at any time which will cause the percentages to suddenly drop even though you keep vaccinating more people. Just report it based on total population and accept that you can never reach 100% (which isn't the target anyway).



SvennoJ on 15 July 2021
Barozi said:

Honestly, based on my recent research, Canada was the only country I encountered that did that.

Reporting them like that is pretty much pointless anyway as they can't be compared to other countries. In Germany for example, the eligible age is 18+. Therefore not comparable. Even less comparable for countries that have a different distribution of age groups (especially more young people).

Furthermore the eligible age could change at any time which will cause the percentages to suddenly drop even though you keep vaccinating more people. Just report it based on total population and accept that you can never reach 100% (which isn't the target anyway).

Ah, my incorrect assumption from the disclaimer below the graph.

They also put a table up
https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/coronavirus-vaccination-tracker-how-many-people-in-canada-have-received-shots-1.5247509

Gibraltar is at the top with 116% of the population having received a first dose, I guess people go over the border to get a shot? And the worst, lots of countries in Africa still only around 1%.

Gibraltar, Malta and Iceland are the top 3 for fully vaccinated (115%, 80% and 72%)



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haxxiy on 15 July 2021

Chile has some interesting real-world data on the effectiveness of vaccines against a mostly Gamma/Lambda outbreak.

CoronaVac had 87% VE vs. hospitalizations, 90% ICU admission, 86% deaths. Meanwhile, Pfizer had 97% VE vs. hospitalizations, 98% ICU admission, 92% deaths. Limitation of the study: the Chilean healthcare system was rather strained during this period, so efficacy against hospitalization might have been overstated, and against deaths, understated.

It might seem not like a huge difference but it means 4 - 5 times more people end up needing a hospital/ICU bed after being double vaccinated with CoronaVac than Pfizer. This is the sort of discrepancy that might end up having a significant effect with a Delta variant wave (see Seychelles and Mongolia, where most adults were vaccinated with the similar Sinopharm vaccine).



 

 

 

 

 

JRPGfan on 16 July 2021
haxxiy said:

Chile has some interesting real-world data on the effectiveness of vaccines against a mostly Gamma/Lambda outbreak.

CoronaVac had 87% VE vs. hospitalizations, 90% ICU admission, 86% deaths. Meanwhile, Pfizer had 97% VE vs. hospitalizations, 98% ICU admission, 92% deaths. Limitation of the study: the Chilean healthcare system was rather strained during this period, so efficacy against hospitalization might have been overstated, and against deaths, understated.

It might seem not like a huge difference but it means 4 - 5 times more people end up needing a hospital/ICU bed after being double vaccinated with CoronaVac than Pfizer. This is the sort of discrepancy that might end up having a significant effect with a Delta variant wave (see Seychelles and Mongolia, where most adults were vaccinated with the similar Sinopharm vaccine).

Im happy denmark was like... nope, we're not doing the astrazeneca vaccine, anyone wanna trade us, for some Pfizer?
After looking at the data, for how effective it was, and how many people were getting blood clots ect.

Almost everyone here, is vaccinated with pfizer.



JRPGfan on 16 July 2021

UK had 52,000 new cases today..... wow.

Hospitalisation, and ICU beds for covid patients are riseing slowly too now.
Give it a month, and you'll again see the deaths claim.

Its a race against the clock, get people vaccinated, before delta varient wrecks havoc with the systems needed to handle it.



haxxiy on 16 July 2021
JRPGfan said:
haxxiy said:

Im happy denmark was like... nope, we're not doing the astrazeneca vaccine, anyone wanna trade us, for some Pfizer?
After looking at the data, for how effective it was, and how many people were getting blood clots ect.

Almost everyone here, is vaccinated with pfizer.

I'd be fine with AstraZeneca. Strong cellular response and antibody titers don't tip among the 80+ like with the mRNA vaccines. It just got unlucky the whole blood cot issue was found out before the myocarditis one.

As for CoronaVac, it actually matches Pfizer in cellular response. The problem is that it is outright not immunogenic in a minority of people, which likely explains  that extra 5 - 10% protection that is missing against severe disease. Sinopharm's vaccine, which is also made from the innactivated virus, has the same issue, which is why the UAE, Hungary, are giving third doses to those who are lab testing negative after the two-dose regimen.



 

 

 

 

 

SvennoJ on 17 July 2021

Weekly update.

South Africa is rebounding from their 3rd wave, South America is trending down as well. The rest of the world is heading back up. Especially Europe which seems to be dead set on testing the vaccines to the max, giving the virus every opportunity to mutate into a more successful strain...


In total 3.45 million new cases were reported last week (up from 2.98 million) to a total of 190,269,458
Also another 56,652 more deaths were reported (slightly up from 55,172) to a total of 4,091,477

Europe and USA are both rising pretty fast, deaths are also slowly starting to rise again

The continents

Asia reported 1.35 million new cases (up from 1.14 million) and 21,552 more deaths (up from 18,674)

Europe reported 834K new cases (up from 603K) and 6,685 more deaths (6,618 last week)
South America reported 592K new cases (down from 697K) and 17,981 more deaths (down from 19,992)
North America reported 379K new cases (up from 256K) and 4,413 more deaths (up from 3,795)
Africa reported 289K new cases (slightly up from 280K) and 5,988 more deaths (6,061 last week)
Oceania reported 6,590 new cases (up from 4,766) and 33 deaths (32 last week)

Cases are growing exponentially in Fiji (Oceania), 39% with first dose is not doing much (only 7% fully vaccinated)


Corners of the world

Brazil reported 288K new cases (down from 333K) and 8,723 more deaths (down from 9,709)
India reported 269K new cases (down from 294K) and 5,950 more deaths (down from 6,105)
USA reported 218K new cases (up from 131K) and 1,898 more deaths (up from 1,547)
Iran reported 142K new cases (up from 111K) and 1,248 more deaths (up from 1,027)
South Africa reported 111K new cases (down from 138K) and 2,512 more deaths (2,541 last week)
Japan reported 17.2K new cases (up from 12.3K) and 97 deaths (115 last week)
South Korea reported 9,702 new cases (up from 6,795) and 15 deaths (12 last week)
Canada reported 2,677 new cases (down from 3,647) and 70 deaths (81 last week)
Australia reported 675 new cases (up from 266) and 2 deaths

Europe in detail

Play a game of chicken with the virus and vaccines, who will give up first...