OT Coronavirus: America in chaos, News and Updates. One million Americans dead and counting

Nope. Not til February 8th.

 

No, under the Governor’s announced plan, teachers get to jump the line. They start getting vaccinated January 23rd. Seniors 80 and over have to wait two more weeks until February 8th. At current death rates, the decision to wait on vaccinating the most vulnerable elderly will kill 200-300 of them and will cause many more to be hospitalized with severe illness.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.or...niors-65-to-wait-to-feb-8.html?outputType=amp

 

Yep, I heard him say it yesterday evening. Oh wait, you probably mean your mother. Oh well, Feb. 8 is near the end of January.

 

1. Dr. Fauci doesn’t live in Oregon. The rules in each state are different and are set by the Governors.

2. It was my 92 year-old mother-in-law we were discussing, not tlongII’s mom.

3. Feb. 8th amounts to a two- week delay in opening vaccinations up for the 80+ age group. Around 100-150 people in that age group are dying each week in Oregon from Covid-19. Many more are hospitalized in terrifying situations where they can’t even see their loved ones as they fight for their lives. All of this in the name of Governor Brown’s quixotic mission to try to open schools in February. Oh well.

 

If science should be the road map them why not vaccinate teachers over say 55 with underlying conditions along seniors over 70?
Putting all younger teachers and district employees first is wrong when the death rate under 50 is super low as compared to 70 plus. Science?

 

1. The rules in each state are heavily influenced by the CDC guidelines;
2. I'm presuming that Brown is bending to political pressure which I don't believe in especially when you are a lame duck political servant. There are other pressures that she may be bending to but I think you have to weigh the pros and the cons. I also agree that the elderly ought to be near the top if not at the top. I've got three elderly aunts in their late 80s so I do think about this. One aunt lives in a nursing home and has not been allowed any visitors for a long time now. It's difficult for all my family.

 

The decision to put teachers ahead of the elderly is not in the CDC guidelines; it’s Governor Brown’s own policy decision. Of course she’s under pressure to get schools opened. A lot of our most economically disadvantaged parents rely on schools for childcare while they work. There are no easy decisions here and I get that. That said, this is a deadly game she’s playing and it’s unlikely to be successful for a whole lot of reasons:

1. Teachers don’t want to go into the classrooms until they’re vaccinated, but even if we manage to get their first shots by the end of the month, they have to wait 3-4 weeks for the second one and won’t have immunity until a couple weeks later. That timeframe doesn’t fit with the Governor’s schedule.

2. Schools are going to spread the virus. While kids don’t get too sick from Covid usually, a recent study showed that they still spread the virus at least 50% as well as adults. No amount of mask-wearing and social distance policies are likely to be ver effective with young kids. In Europe, where they thought they could do school safely, they’re finding with the new more transmissible variant that they are having to close them again. Teachers may be vaccinated, but family members at home won’t be.

 

death rate in the U.S, under 44 is .o7%

 

Sucks man, my friend that passed Friday was 41.....

 

Union's unfortunately own Brown.

 

So sorry man! My son had it but didn't get that sick but has some lingering cough.
Seems like there is certain strains that effect people differently.
I'll keep you and you're fam in my thoughts!

 

There's some really good information in the NYT's free "The Morning" newsletter:

‘We’re underselling the vaccine’
Early in the pandemic, many health experts — in the U.S. and around the world — decided that the public could not be trusted to hear the truth about masks. Instead, the experts spread a misleading message, discouraging the use of masks.

Their motivation was mostly good. It sprung from a concern that people would rush to buy high-grade medical masks, leaving too few for doctors and nurses. The experts were also unsure how much ordinary masks would help.

But the message was still a mistake.

It confused people. (If masks weren’t effective, why did doctors and nurses need them?) It delayed the widespread use of masks (even though there was good reason to believe they could help). And it damaged the credibility of public health experts.

“When people feel as though they may not be getting the full truth from the authorities, snake-oil sellers and price gougers have an easier time,” the sociologist Zeynep Tufekci wrote early last year.

Now a version of the mask story is repeating itself — this time involving the vaccines. Once again, the experts don’t seem to trust the public to hear the full truth.

This issue is important and complex enough that I’m going to make today’s newsletter a bit longer than usual. If you still have questions, don’t hesitate to email me at themorning@nytimes.com.

‘Ridiculously encouraging’
Right now, public discussion of the vaccines is full of warnings about their limitations: They’re not 100 percent effective. Even vaccinated people may be able to spread the virus. And people shouldn’t change their behavior once they get their shots.

These warnings have a basis in truth, just as it’s true that masks are imperfect. But the sum total of the warnings is misleading, as I heard from multiple doctors and epidemiologists last week.

“It’s driving me a little bit crazy,” Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown School of Public Health, told me.

“We’re underselling the vaccine,” Dr. Aaron Richterman, an infectious-disease specialist at the University of Pennsylvania, said.

“It’s going to save your life — that’s where the emphasis has to be right now,” Dr. Peter Hotez of the Baylor College of Medicine said.

The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are “essentially 100 percent effective against serious disease,” Dr. Paul Offit, the director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said. “It’s ridiculously encouraging.”

The details
Here’s my best attempt at summarizing what we know:

• The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines — the only two approved in the U.S. — are among the best vaccines ever created, with effectiveness rates of about 95 percent after two doses. That’s on par with the vaccines for chickenpox and measles. And a vaccine doesn’t even need to be so effective to reduce cases sharply and crush a pandemic.
• If anything, the 95 percent number understates the effectiveness, because it counts anyone who came down with a mild case of Covid-19 as a failure. But turning Covid into a typical flu — as the vaccines evidently did for most of the remaining 5 percent — is actually a success. Of the 32,000 people who received the Moderna or Pfizer vaccine in a research trial, do you want to guess how many contracted a severe Covid case? One.
• Although no rigorous study has yet analyzed whether vaccinated people can spread the virus, it would be surprising if they did. “If there is an example of a vaccine in widespread clinical use that has this selective effect — prevents disease but not infection — I can’t think of one!” Dr. Paul Sax of Harvard has written in The New England Journal of Medicine. (And, no, exclamation points are not common in medical journals.) On Twitter, Dr. Monica Gandhi of the University of California, San Francisco, argued: “Please be assured that YOU ARE SAFE after vaccine from what matters — disease and spreading.”
• The risks for vaccinated people are still not zero, because almost nothing in the real world is zero risk. A tiny percentage of people may have allergic reactions. And I’ll be eager to see what the studies on post-vaccination spread eventually show. But the evidence so far suggests that the vaccines are akin to a cure.

Offit told me we should be greeting them with the same enthusiasm that greeted the polio vaccine: “It should be this rallying cry.”

Why are many experts conveying a more negative message?

Again, their motivations are mostly good. As academic researchers, they are instinctively cautious, prone to emphasizing any uncertainty. Many may also be nervous that vaccinated people will stop wearing masks and social distancing, which in turn could cause unvaccinated people to stop as well. If that happens, deaths would soar even higher.

But the best way to persuade people to behave safely usually involves telling them the truth. “Not being completely open because you want to achieve some sort of behavioral public health goal — people will see through that eventually,” Richterman said. The current approach also feeds anti-vaccine skepticism and conspiracy theories.

After asking Richterman and others what a better public message might sound like, I was left thinking about something like this:

We should immediately be more aggressive about mask-wearing and social distancing because of the new virus variants. We should vaccinate people as rapidly as possible — which will require approving other Covid vaccines when the data justifies it.

People who have received both of their vaccine shots, and have waited until they take effect, will be able to do things that unvaccinated people cannot — like having meals together and hugging their grandchildren. But until the pandemic is defeated, all Americans should wear masks in public, help unvaccinated people stay safe and contribute to a shared national project of saving every possible life.

 

3rd loved one of mine to pass in 48 hours..... my cousin Rudy Sanchez in Riverside, CA. died this morning.....man this has to end soon. #RIP

 

So sorry to hear this, HCP. The Latino community is really taking a hit with this virus.

https://salud-america.org/coronavirus-case-rates-and-death-rates-for-latinos-in-the-united-states/

 

Sorry to hear it @THE HCP - hope this all gets better soon for you, your family and everyone.

 

Thanks for the kind words guys...... been a rough stretch.....just unreal.

 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/617721/

A Troubling New Pattern Among the Coronavirus Variants

The most concerning versions of the virus are not simply mutating—they’re mutating in similar ways.

 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/thehil...lift-travel-restrictions-on-europe-brazil?amp

Trump moves to lift coronavirus travel restrictions on Europe, Brazil

 

President-elect Joe Biden is set to take over the presidency on Wednesday and his incoming press secretary, Jen Psaki, said that his administration would not lift the restrictions.

"With the pandemic worsening, and more contagious variants emerging around the world, this is not the time to be lifting restrictions on international travel," Psaki said on Twitter. "On the advice of our medical team, the Administration does not intend to lift these restrictions on 1/26. In fact, we plan to strengthen public health measures around international travel in order to further mitigate the spread of COVID-19."

https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/18/politics/trump-covid-travel-restrictions/index.html

Let's call it what it is, Trump is now playing stupid games to annoy the incoming administration.

I wonder what kind of stupid prizes he will win...

 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/deadli...l-a-vaccine-resistant-denmark-1234675834/amp/

Another New Covid-19 Variant Discovered In L.A. Might Be Vaccine Resistant, Researcher Says; Strain First Identified In Denmark