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Re: "Coronavirus" is the category, dangit. (COVID-19 thread)

Posted: Sun Nov 07, 2021 3:48 pm
by nosimpleway
Big Bird: bad
racist caricatures by Dr. Seuss: good

Re: "Coronavirus" is the category, dangit. (COVID-19 thread)

Posted: Mon Nov 08, 2021 2:12 pm
by Thad
I can't find the tweet, but I saw one to the effect of "Hm, whose side am I on, Big Bird or Ted Cruz? That's a real toughie."

Re: "Coronavirus" is the category, dangit. (COVID-19 thread)

Posted: Mon Nov 08, 2021 9:14 pm
by nosimpleway
One is kind of whiny and sniveling and flies south when it gets cold, and the other one is a six-year-old bird-child.

Re: "Coronavirus" is the category, dangit. (COVID-19 thread)

Posted: Tue Nov 09, 2021 3:03 pm
by Mongrel
This is nuts. I think a lot of former Iron Curtain countries are in a similar position.


Re: "Coronavirus" is the category, dangit. (COVID-19 thread)

Posted: Tue Nov 09, 2021 8:07 pm
by IGNORE ME
Thanks to Twitter blocking it now looks like you're reacting to Ted Cruz.

Re: "Coronavirus" is the category, dangit. (COVID-19 thread)

Posted: Tue Nov 09, 2021 8:21 pm
by Mongrel
Brentai wrote:Thanks to Twitter blocking it now looks like you're reacting to Ted Cruz.

I was very confused until i realized that you're replying to the earlier Big Bird stuff and not the Bulgaria Covid situation.

(I think...)

Re: "Coronavirus" is the category, dangit. (COVID-19 thread)

Posted: Tue Nov 09, 2021 9:00 pm
by mharr
Wait, twitter blocked Big Bird? Cancel culture is truly out of control.

Re: "Coronavirus" is the category, dangit. (COVID-19 thread)

Posted: Tue Nov 09, 2021 10:05 pm
by Mongrel

Re: "Coronavirus" is the category, dangit. (COVID-19 thread)

Posted: Wed Nov 10, 2021 2:53 pm
by Friday
God damn I miss Alan Rickman. I think he might be my favorite actor. It's really close between him and Judi Dench.

Re: "Coronavirus" is the category, dangit. (COVID-19 thread)

Posted: Tue Nov 23, 2021 4:54 pm
by Yoji
Well, that's weird. Or maybe I'm just missing something?

How many people have died worldwide of this thing? 258 million?

Yup, there's the US at the top.

Pfff, India is only ranked third, even though they have literally a billion people.

...wait, why can't I find the other population of one billion? I can't find China's numbers anywhere... Are they fudging the numbers so badly that Google took it down?

Re: "Coronavirus" is the category, dangit. (COVID-19 thread)

Posted: Thu Nov 25, 2021 1:27 am
by Upthorn
The numbers for China show up in https://ncov2019.live/data/asia

I actually find them believable, well, I saw videos of people from Wuhan begging for help because they were being locked and welded into their homes with no allowance made to get supplies. If the Chinese authorities were covering up the scale of the pandemic, there's no way we wouldn't be getting videos of people begging for help because their relatives disappeared with no acknowledgement of what happened.

Re: "Coronavirus" is the category, dangit. (COVID-19 thread)

Posted: Thu Nov 25, 2021 6:40 pm
by Mongrel


New South African variant identified as having mutated during a long stay in an AIDS patient who naturally had a weakened immune system. Note that whoever this wasn't some dickhead wandering around heedlessly - they were being treated. This was just a consequence of someone having a really long chronic case of Covid so their body basically became a production lab.

tl;dr

- New variant 'B.1.1.529' with potentially significantly higher transmission rates than almost any previous variant
- Preliminary results show B.1.1 has a much stronger ability to evade existing immunities, both antibodies from vaccination and exposure
- May even evade monoclonal antibody treatments.
- Higher evasion does not mean vaccines are useless. As before, they continue to help with the all-important "not dying" bit.
- Similarly, the overall severity of infection is unknown. Possibly lighter! But not much information yet.
- Repeats a specific genetic variation from the original alpha variant, so it can already be specifically tested for using existing tests!
- South Africa trying to stay as on top of it as possible and is trying to share every scrap of information as soon as they get it, good on them, they are doing a global service

Re: "Coronavirus" is the category, dangit. (COVID-19 thread)

Posted: Wed Dec 01, 2021 3:02 am
by Mongrel
Small Omicron update, and it's not bad!

- Moderna less effective, but not dramatically so (they still took a stock hit).
- Pfizer nearly as effective in prevention (95% to 93%) and NO reduction in effectiveness in preventing serious illness or hospitalization.

Haven't seen any press releases yet for AZ, etc.

Incidentally, previous infection is very weak protection against Omicron, so after totally unvaccinated people, the highest risk group BY FAR for Omicron are people who are unvaccinated and who have been previously infected. Which may be good news depending on how brutally callous you want to be about it.

Re: "Coronavirus" is the category, dangit. (COVID-19 thread)

Posted: Wed Dec 01, 2021 2:28 pm
by Friday
Thu May 28, 2020


Friday wrote:Given the expected vaccine is still a year away (summer 2021) and how second and third wave dynamics work, yeah, I'd say 1 million dead americans is a safe bet in the year(s) to come. x20 or so worldwide.

I sincerely hope I am wrong. I'd love nothing more for me to quote this post in a year, with only, say, 250000 dead, and say, "Thank God I was wrong."



I think you're wrong Friday. Not about American numbers, about the worldwide numbers. I think other countries have mostly learned.



Yeah, could be. I mean, I'm one-billion percent in the "please let be wrong" place. But I don't make deals with my emotions when I deal with numbers.

China and their lack of reporting aside, India and Russia worry me. Perhaps 20x was overly cynical, 5-10x (so 5 to 10 million dead worldwide instead of 20) might be more accurate.

Again, I'm speaking of numbers that are a year to two years away.


Current US Covid Deaths: 777,000
Current World Covid Deaths: 5,220,000

So, a little less than 7x.

Re: "Coronavirus" is the category, dangit. (COVID-19 thread)

Posted: Wed Dec 01, 2021 2:45 pm
by IGNORE ME
2 million unreported is pretty damned believable.

Re: "Coronavirus" is the category, dangit. (COVID-19 thread)

Posted: Wed Dec 01, 2021 3:57 pm
by Mongrel
Yeah, I think it'll be years before we get the full picture.

Re: "Coronavirus" is the category, dangit. (COVID-19 thread)

Posted: Wed Dec 01, 2021 7:30 pm
by mharr
On the plus side I now have a much clearer idea of what's going on with people who don't use turn signals.

Hey who else innocently thought themselves a cynic back in 2015?

Re: "Coronavirus" is the category, dangit. (COVID-19 thread)

Posted: Mon Dec 20, 2021 1:53 am
by Mongrel
Meanwhile in weirder/funnier Covid news:


Re: "Coronavirus" is the category, dangit. (COVID-19 thread)

Posted: Wed Dec 22, 2021 12:30 am
by Mongrel

Re: "Coronavirus" is the category, dangit. (COVID-19 thread)

Posted: Wed Dec 22, 2021 1:28 am
by Mongrel
In potentially very good news, the US Army (who have already been noted for their impressive and verified 99+% vaccination rate... credit where it's due), announced the results of the pre-clinical trials of their catch-all mRNA spike protein vaccine developed at Walter Reed, which is designed to combat a broad number of covid variants, as well as potentially any and all coronavirus variations, including SARS, etc.

The results are very positive

Human trials started in April and results of those are set to be published in another month or so and not unreasonable to hope that the high success rate from the pre-clinical trials will be replicated in humans.

This of course doesn't solve the problem of anti-vaxxers, but it would certainly help against dire repeating situations like the one Omicron is presenting and greatly reduce the potential future damage of "Fuckin' Rubes" as Sharkey recently called 'em.