I get the impression there’s some major data drops being done, ahead of the holiday weekend…
Yet another day of losing more than a thousand of our fellow Americans. https://t.co/013H6GiVcT
— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) September 3, 2020
Nearly 186,000 people in the United States have died from #Covid19.
For a little context: Canada, with roughly one-tenth of the population of the U.S., has nearly 9,200 deaths. So, one-twentieth as many deaths.https://t.co/zE1vlawcuL pic.twitter.com/wg8FrjmUQq— Helen Branswell (@HelenBranswell) September 3, 2020
Terrifying, if verifiable, thread:
.@IHME_UW now projects 410,451 #COVID19 deaths by Jan 1st, this is about 224,000 deaths from now until the end of the year. These are not numbers or statistics but family member, friends, and loved ones. 1/14https://t.co/Hm3vmqzwHI
— Ali H. Mokdad (@AliHMokdad) September 4, 2020
.@IHME_UW expects the daily death rate in the US to reach nearly 3000 a day in December due to seasonality and declining vigilance of the public. 4/14 pic.twitter.com/dT6RsIhAJF
— Ali H. Mokdad (@AliHMokdad) September 4, 2020
The White House's Dr. Deborah Birx rejected reports that a so-called 'herd immunity' strategy was being considered by the Trump administration https://t.co/B9XDkz3mCs pic.twitter.com/cmKvXkcA7T
— Reuters (@Reuters) September 3, 2020
A leading vaccine expert warns against using an emergency use authorization — which allows the FDA to greenlight medical products without going through the lengthy approval process needed — to put a vaccine on the US market as soon as possible. https://t.co/Vk5I3CrnGk
— CNN (@CNN) September 3, 2020
======
Listen, if the leader of the free world says a vaccine is safe, that’s good enough for me.
After all, she’s a scientist. https://t.co/w00Aj8sSTN pic.twitter.com/o6dF8CE1Y2
— The Hoarse Whisperer (@TheRealHoarse) September 4, 2020
Q: Why are restaurants are booming in the UK and Germany and lagging behind in the U.S.?
A: Counties that sustainably contain the virus can reclaim little pieces of pre-plague social life, as a treat. pic.twitter.com/0Gclp0eApW
— Derek Thompson (@DKThomp) September 3, 2020
Mainland China reports 25 new COVID-19 cases vs 11 a day earlier https://t.co/PgAJfEM9Fg pic.twitter.com/fkiSX1QLbw
— Reuters (@Reuters) September 4, 2020
South Korean doctors expected to end strike as COVID cases surge https://t.co/EHNYa6WWC8 pic.twitter.com/QoqaHcgaNg
— Reuters (@Reuters) September 4, 2020
ASIA TODAY: The number of people infected with the coronavirus in India rises by another 83,341 and is near Brazil's total, the second-highest in the world. https://t.co/4HAszqnzap
— The Associated Press (@AP) September 4, 2020
Nepal police fire tear gas to stop religious rally amid COVID-19 surge https://t.co/02FeyKvzLh pic.twitter.com/HgqzLNR7BE
— Reuters (@Reuters) September 4, 2020
The confirmed death toll from the coronavirus went over 50,000 in the Middle East as the pandemic continues. That's according to a count from The Associated Press, based on official numbers offered by health authorities across the region. https://t.co/2sA34tH69s
— The Associated Press (@AP) September 3, 2020
Australia's Victoria state reports 81 new coronavirus cases https://t.co/6GfNKnB8Hv pic.twitter.com/PmQVWbklCV
— Reuters (@Reuters) September 4, 2020
Coronavirus: Australia PM Scott Morrison seeks to reopen borders https://t.co/pm8HGGyU32
— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) September 3, 2020
New Zealand to retain coronavirus measures across country until mid-Sept https://t.co/uZz1umLADp pic.twitter.com/tjSVhhAKyZ
— Reuters (@Reuters) September 4, 2020
Brazil's coronavirus cases pass the four million mark: ministry https://t.co/3j9ejKmpm8 pic.twitter.com/3zJDM83QMS
— Reuters (@Reuters) September 4, 2020
Jamaicans go to polls to elect new parliament amid surge in Covid-19 cases https://t.co/aZaz7kw4Ca
— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) September 3, 2020
Mexico records 5,937 new coronavirus cases, 513 more deaths https://t.co/DbfndOBP5b pic.twitter.com/WZLeeBYrzF
— Reuters (@Reuters) September 4, 2020
Mexican officials downplays the country’s rate of coronavirus infections and deaths among medical personnel, appearing to dispute reports this week that Mexico had the highest rate in the world. https://t.co/jgqdJoKc58
— The Associated Press (@AP) September 4, 2020
======
Excellent roundup of where things stand with the development of #Covid19 vaccines from @Dereklowe. It closes with this paragraph, which I love and concur with. https://t.co/b6TkuGpGRH pic.twitter.com/a0hbnl3l0e
— Helen Branswell (@HelenBranswell) September 4, 2020
The @washingtonpost has catalogued & organized 11,831 questions about coronavirus & provided a guide to help you find the answers. This guide provides links to reporting that holds the answers to those frequently referenced topic areas. https://t.co/3GyGmS6uso pic.twitter.com/qoYhZQz9Ar
— COVID19 (@V2019N) September 3, 2020
Sickle cell disease increases the risk of severe #Covid19. Researchers are now trying to figure out if people who have sickle cell trait — they carry a single copy of the mutated gene that causes sickle cell — are also at elevated risk. By @ushamcfarling https://t.co/sDKZ1DT5a7
— Helen Branswell (@HelenBranswell) September 3, 2020
Roche receives U.S. emergency approval for coronavirus vs. flu test https://t.co/DNklIzGBiz pic.twitter.com/d2Xolq7onE
— Reuters (@Reuters) September 4, 2020
======
Fauci warns at risk for surging: North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Arkansas, Missouri, Indiana, Illinois https://t.co/aTWkqhC56d
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) September 3, 2020
Indiana University sees 'alarming' spike in COVID-19 at frat, sorority houses https://t.co/qiKW0o5Y50 pic.twitter.com/EA6r0j6HHn
— Reuters (@Reuters) September 4, 2020
U of Illinois brought back 40,000+ students to campus based on a model created by 2 very confident physicists, who said epidemiology was important but intellectually unchallenging.
Things are not going as planned, because it turns out students party and live together. pic.twitter.com/g5abUj1KsC
— Self-certified armchair epidemiologist (@yellingatwind) September 3, 2020
Links to articles in above tweet:https://t.co/7vkUSSCrJ1https://t.co/fbWOtNoOMghttps://t.co/a9Yj0Z9lLe
— Self-certified armchair epidemiologist (@yellingatwind) September 3, 2020
BREAKING ??@UofMaryland SUSPENDS all athletic training activities after 46 student-athletes test positive for COVID-19 @fox5dc pic.twitter.com/QClZLj5br5
— Ike Ejiochi (@IkeEjiochi) September 4, 2020
This included athletes who were asymptomatic: about a third had signs of myocarditis. Not published/peer-reviewed so grain of salt. Physicians, any way these scans could be misinterpreted? That seems so high… https://t.co/AMWnUKaj7h
— Dr. Tara C. Smith (@aetiology) September 3, 2020
Athens, GA is where the University of Georgia is located. 2 weeks after the university reopened with mandatory in-person classes and minimal virus mitigation measures, the town wastewater contains **10 times** the amount of #coronavirus as 1 week before.https://t.co/0eJhSsWJyi pic.twitter.com/LhJav7dvjr
— Nick Kapur (@nick_kapur) September 4, 2020
I believe the technical term to describe this situation is “shitshow.” https://t.co/GFSw2XCGcC
— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) September 3, 2020
Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds doesn't rule out raising the drinking age as COVID-19 cases surge among young people https://t.co/pGDf5rKSTF
— Catherine Rampell (@crampell) September 4, 2020
Check your alma mater here!https://t.co/weaYWaLwvA
— Lisa Deeley Smith (@LisaDeeleySmith) September 4, 2020
Amir Khalid
Malaysia;s daily numbers. 11 new cases. Four cases from local infection: three Malaysians, two from the Semenyih immigration detention depot 2 cluster, a new cluster, in Selangor and in Negeri Sembilan, one in Kedah from the Telaga cluster; one non-Malaysian, screened in custody in Selangor. Seven imported cases: two Malaysians, returning from India and Saudi Arabia; five non-Malaysians, arriving from India (four) and the UK. The cumulative reported total is 9,385 cases.
Nine more patients recovered and were discharged, for a total of 9,092 patients recovered — 96.9% of the cumulative reported total. Active and contagious cases currently isolated/treated in hospital rose to 165 patients; four are in ICU, three of them on respirators.
No new deaths today, and the total remains at 128 deaths — 1.36% of the cumulative reported total, 1.39% of resolved cases.
YY_Sima Qian
Yesterday, China reported 0 new domestic confirmed cases and 0 new domestic asymptomatic case.
At Ürumqi in Xinjiang “Autonomous” Region, there are currently 16 confirmed and 6 asymptomatic cases, with no cases in serious condition. 4 confirmed cases recovered yesterday and were discharged from hospitals, 1 asymptomatic cases were released from medical quarantine. There are 254 close contacts remaining under quarantine and medical observation.
Yesterday, China reported 25 new imported confirmed cases, 26 imported asymptomatic cases:
* Guangzhou in Guangdong Province – 8 confirmed cases, 6 Chinese nationals returning from Indonesia and 2 from the Philippines; 11 asymptomatic cases, 8 Chinese nationals returning from Indonesia, 1 each returning from the Philippines, Rwanda and Tanzania
* Shenzhen in Guangdong Province – 5 confirmed cases, all Chinese nationals returning from Mexico; 2 asymptomatic cases, both Chinese nationals returning from Russia
* Qingyuan in Guangdong Province – 1 asymptomatic case, a Chinese national returning from the Philippines
* Shanghai Municipality – 5 confirmed cases, 1 Chinese national each returning from the Philippines, Singapore, the US, Guinea and MaliNanning in Guangxi Autonomous Region – 2 confirmed and 2 asymptomatic cases, no further information released
* Xi’an in Shaanxi Province – 2 confirmed cases, both Chinese nationals returning from Saudi Arabia (via Yekaterinburg)
* Nanning in Guangxi Autonomous Region – 2 confirmed and 2 asymptomatic cases, no information released
* Chengdu in Sichuan Province – 1 confirmed case, a Chinese national returning from the US (via Frankfurt)
* Tianjin Municipality – 1 confirmed and 2 asymptomatic cases, all Chinese nationals returning from the Philippines
* Xiamen in Fujian Province – 1 confirmed and 1 asymptomatic cases, both Chinese nationals returning from the Philippines
* Fuzhou in Fujian Province – 6 asymptomatic cases, 5 Chinese nationals returning from Indonesia and 1 from Japan
* Nanjing in Jiangsu Province – 1 asymptomatic case, no information released
Today, Hong Kong reported 12 new cases, 7 from local transmission.
gkoutnik
SUNY Oneonta update: Yesterday, the SUNY Chancellor and the President of SUNY Oneonta announced that the campus will be closing, and students will be sent home, for the rest of the semester. As of yesterday, 13% positivity rate on campus. So far, after two days of community testing, little evidence of spread into town.
So a few thousand students go home… to what? Some are regional, so they may return in January. The rest (and some of the former) have choices – how many will go elsewhere? Businesses and restaurants, some owned by people we know, are going out of business. Everyone has whiplash.
All because of one (or three – it still isn’t clear) athlete parties before classes started.
Robert Sneddon
@gkoutnik:
It was going to happen, sooner rather than later. Colleges and universities are what I call plague Mixmasters, bringing together a large population of diverse people from many locales and hothousing them in a Petri dish environment where they share breathing air in confined spaces. It’s pretty much the exact opposite of quarantine and isolation which are the only real tools we have to stop or slow the spread of this disease.
YY_Sima Qian
@gkoutnik: Won’t some of the students bring COVID-19 home with them?
NotMax
India will pass Brazil as #2 worldwide in most cases reported sometime this weekend. This is not attributable to Brazil doing anything well or better.
U.S. deaths reported now over 189,000.
U.S + India + Brazil account for 53.8% of total reported cases on the planet.
The other 190 countries recognized as members by the UN (plus non-member entities), combined, comprise 46.2%
Gvg
Well that list of colleges cases is kind of useless IMO. It doesn’t give the size of the school. I know approximately the biggest in my state so I can sort of tell which ones are way out of line but most people wouldn’t know. I also know that all the numbers look a lot better than I would guess. My school employer has enrollment of 54,000 and our total since the pandemic started is 196 cases in a state with a fool for a governor seems rather goodish. That map has us marked in red. A similar sized school downstate is nearly 800…but even that is better than I expected. The low numbers are all smaller schools. Most Florida public colleges and Universities are over 20,000 and several are bigger than us.
NotMax
Repeating this here.
Maybe – maybe – this sort of revelation, among some of them, will make a dent in the illusory armor erected by the dunderheaded and the denialists.
PAM Dirac
I don’t understand the warning about FDA using emergency use authorization. Is this not an emergency? The swine flu vaccine was a disaster because the disease was much, much less of a problem than predicted. The vaccine caused about 1 major injury per 100,000 people and 0.1/100,000 deaths. That is probably about the worst case for vaccine toxicity. Swine flu caused an order of magnitude or two less deaths and injuries. Right now the US is a little over 50 deaths/100,000 population for COVID. Not only is there a minuscule chance that the vaccine toxicity will be worse than the disease, there have already been enough people that have received some of the vaccines (10s of thousands) to know for sure that the vaccine isn’t that toxic. At least some of the current trials are planned to follow people for two years. Are they really claiming that the only reasonable thing to do is wait until the end of 2022 to make a decision? It is essential to get a good estimate of how effective the vaccines are, but that won’t take two years. Of course, my experience has been that MSM reporting on medical science is incredibly poor, so it wouldn’t surprise me if CNN was being horribly misleading.
Calouste
Former Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi is now in hospital with COVID-19.
OzarkHillbilly
@PAM Dirac:
From EXCLUSIVE: Some States Won’t Distribute A Trumpian Half-Baked COVID Vaccine.
NotMax
@PAM Dirac
Jettisoning safety and efficacy protocols is quite a different thing from diligently compressing the time frame for their application. It’s like throwing overboard the parachutes from a plane facing imminent dire flight failure to lighten the load.
Also too, which vaccine? It’s ongoing testing which will cull the least efficacious or otherwise harmful.
OzarkHillbilly
@PAM Dirac: Also this:
NotMax
@NotMax
Will add, in terms of the lessons form the swine flu vaccine, adding additional known mortality risk is not, as they say in Beantown, a smaht move.
gkoutnik
@YY_Sima Qian: No doubt they will. The decision to close was, I think, delayed for just that reason, but then was reversed. A great number of our students are from the NY metro area, especially Long Island, so something to watch for.
WereBear
And this in a state which has been taking it seriously.
But some people are driven by feelings and thought has nothing to do with it. “But it’s my college experience! But I want to have fun!”
And students have an excuse to act immature…
NotMax
@NotMax
Would like to amend that for clarity, thusly:
Will add, in terms of the lessons form the swine flu vaccine, adding additional unexplored mortality risk is not, as they say in Beantown, a smaht move.
NotMax
@WereBear
One gets the distinct feeling the insurance companies covering the school have spoken, loudly.
gkoutnik
@OzarkHillbilly: I don’t think this can be emphasized enough. I (and so many older, vulnerable folks like me) am committed to doing anything possible to avoid getting the virus. If I don’t have a lot of confidence in exactly what the vaccine is protecting me from, how much, how long, etc., I can’t relax my quarantine efforts even after I take the vaccine (safety issues aside).
MomSense
Here in Maine we are dealing with an outbreak that started with a wedding and has spread to a nursing home, church and a jail. The pastor who officiated says he doesn’t have to obey the laws of man. 2 people have died. 144 have been infected. The pastor said the church still plans to open its school. It is all over the news. I’m so angry about it.
TS (the original)
@YY_Sima Qian:
One written up in the NYT well could
Barbara
@PAM Dirac: Vaccines are given to healthy people, and if the vaccine is ineffective, what is the chance we will be able to implement a more effective vaccine later? And if it has unanticipated side effects the results could be even more dire. And it isn’t just approval, it is devoting resources to the entire infrastructure of rolling out the vaccine.
Amir Khalid
@MomSense:
In Malaysia, that kind of nonsense gets you prison time.
NotMax
@MomSense
Have been reading/hearing about this. While not a jailable offense, he is a public menace.
Maybe a visit by state or municipal health inspectors would turn up a litany of violations sufficient to temporarily bar the doors?
PAM Dirac
@OzarkHillbilly:
@NotMax:
The only thing I see in these articles that I missed is the emphasis on data. I agree completely that whatever decision is made, the data underlying that decision needs to be available so that independent evaluation of the data can be made. If you look at the FDA web page with the EUAs, it seems that the data is there. If a vaccine EUA shows up without data, it would be a large red flag. I still can’t see why there would be no set of data that would justify an EUA. Note that an EUA is not approval. Unlike approval it can come with whatever conditions are deemed appropriate, almost always including continuing collection and reporting of data and could include things like limiting the number of treatments pending further review. These decisions are not at all easy, and everyone would like more and better information, but the price to get more complete information is people’s lives. I think the EUA framework is a perfectly reasonable way to balance the need for information and the need to address the problem as quickly as possible. That doesn’t mean that any EUA decision is justified or reasonable, but I do think it means that any EUA decision has to be judged on the data it is based on. To throw out what could be a useful tool before any data is available doesn’t make sense to me.
NotMax
@PAM Dirac
To whittle it down to the nub, neither a vaccine regimen nor an EUA ought to to be a political mandate, which is unquestionably what Dolt 45 is making it.
And, as it is he, always, always follow the money.
PAM Dirac
@Barbara:
Right, but that’s true whether it’s a EUA or a full approval. Just because something has a EUA or a full approval doesn’t mean it has to be used. There is always going to be the chance that something better is coming soon and it might make sense to wait, but I think a reasonable definition of emergency is when even a less than optimal choice has a large enough positive effect that it might not make sense to wait.
PAM Dirac
@NotMax: Sure the orange fart cloud is going to fart orange clouds, but if the data are there, independent evaluations can be made and if the independent evaluations are positive, then refusing to implement it is every bit political bullshit as what drumf does. If the data aren’t there or don’t support the decision, then fire away.
OzarkHillbilly
An EUA is being made without data because the data doesn’t exist yet, it’s incomplete. That is the most troubling lack of data. All these processes and procedures came about because of past failures. To throw them out is to invite more failures.
I am not an expert on vaccines. I trust those who are and I don’t trust anyone in this alternative facts administration.
mrmoshpotato
What? What does this even mean?
Robert Sneddon
@PAM Dirac: There are two core factors in a release-to-consumer authorisation of any drug or vaccine — is it safe, does it do any good?
Determining safety is the first result of any testing, pretty much — if half the test subjects get covered in blue spots then it’s not safe and the researchers will stop at that point and that treatment will never get released to consumers. From what I’ve seen on the news and a cursory reading of a few specialist blogs, the main early contenders for a COVID-19 vaccine have got over this hurdle or are close to proving safety. It’s not surprising, the science and methodology behind modern vaccine development means that nearly all noticeably harmful experimental vaccines get eliminated in in-vitro and animal testing. By the time human testing starts harm from the vaccine is a low probability event. It’s something that must be evaluated but not likely.
The next big step is efficacy — how good is the vaccine at preventing uninfected (and mildly-infected people) from catching the disease at a harmful level? Normally a vaccine that was only, say, 30% effective wouldn’t get to market because the various agencies around the world would reject it. These are not normal times though and a 30%-effective vaccine is better right now than no vaccine at all.
Any Emergency Use Authorisation for an early vaccine will be on the basis that it’s safe to administer even if it’s not perfect or even very good. Better more effective vaccines will come in time and we’ll need them as COVID-19 is going to be around for decades to come.
As an aside, the Russian “Sputnik” two-shot COVID-19 vaccine is derived from existing vaccines so it has a high probability of being safe to administer. Whether it’s effective at all against COVID-19 is another matter.
PAM Dirac
@OzarkHillbilly:
By that standard you would never get even full approvals, because you are never going to get every bit of relevant data, there is always some uncertainty. If you look 1 year out for effects, why don’t you look 2, or 3, or 10? If your trial is powered to find 1 in 1000 adverse effects, why not 1 in 10,000 or 1 in 1,000,000? It is ALWAYS going to be about balancing waiting for more data and acting. You can’t just assume that waiting for more data is always going to be better than the consequences of not acting. The EUA process is a recognition that the balance that is appropriate for a blood pressure medication might not be the best choice for something like a pandemic. Like a lot of things, the fact that bad EUA decisions can be made doesn’t mean that making no EUA decisions is always the better choice.
evodevo
@mrmoshpotato: I am a zoologist with an interest in genetics and evolution. We in biology run across this mindset all the time – physicists think that they have a monopoly on knowledge, when in fact their models are supremely simplistic as compared to the number of variables possible in biological/medical/epidemiological studies. They think they know it all, and know nothing. They are constantly inserting their little ideas into our discussions, and all they are doing is confirming my suspicions about their lack of expertise in any field outside their own lol
mrmoshpotato
@NotMax: Roll that beautiful bean footage.
PAM Dirac
@Robert Sneddon: I agree and the only thing I would add is that in order to make a sensible vaccine plan you need to have a pretty good estimate of the efficacy, however much data that takes. The best use of a 30% effective vaccine is probably different from a 70% effective vaccine.
mrmoshpotato
@NotMax: “You wanna get slapped in the bones with higher premiums? Well, do ya, punk?”
PAM Dirac
@evodevo:
LOL indeed. I had similar experience with the “Big Data” people. They think with enough computer power and data points, they don’t need to know anything about what the data is or how it was generated. I don’t think it has worked out so well.
Ramalama
Rick Perlstein wrote an OpEd in the NYT: “Even cool, calm Gerald Ford couldn’t resist the temptation to rush a vaccine for political advantage, with deadly results. With Trump? Oy.”
gkoutnik
Turns out they’re only sending students with negative test results home now from SUNY Oneonta. Organized exodus over the next few days. Over 400 cases on campus.
YY_Sima Qian
@gkoutnik: Good to hear! Will they test every student before sending them home? There will still be leakage during to false negatives, but it is the responsible thing to do.
Sloane Ranger
One of the reasons for the high number of restaurant dining in the UK is probably the Government’s Eat Out to Help Out scheme. This allowed participating restaurants to give discounts of up to 50% on food during the early part of the week with Government making up the balance. Local eateries here were heaving. The scheme ended on 31 August so we must wait and see if people will still eat out now they have to pay full price.
I thought the article on Sickle Cell Anaemia was interesting. We already know that people with preexisting conditions (and this is a really serious one) are at more risk of having major COVID-19 symptoms but, if those with only 1 sickle cell gene are also more susceptible, that could go some way to explaining why people of African descent are dying in greater numbers in both the US and UK.
Robert Sneddon
Scotland — 159 new cases reported overnight, no new deaths of confirmed sufferers. The test positivity rate is creeping up, now at 1.6%. There’s been an outbreak reported in the Highlands centred around, no surprise there, a food processing facility with currently 33 cases.
The Big Rammy in the UK right now is about the differing quarantine restrictions for travellers and returning holidaymakers — people who went off on holiday to places like Portugal and Greece after being warned they might face quarantine restrictions being suddenly imposed on them on return are complaining because, surprise surprise, they’re facing sudden quarantine restrictions.
England is lagging behind the other health areas in some cases, saying the evidence isn’t clear while the other three health areas say they based their decisions to abruptly impose new quarantine restrictions on a national data collation organisation set up by the government, the same organisation that the English COVID-19 response team is supposedly using.
Barbara
@PAM Dirac: Even without an EUA we are going to have less data and likely much less perfect data than we would normally require, and there are definitely ways that a vaccine could be rolled out so that studies of safety/efficacy could continue, but IMO you are underestimating the impact that an EUA will almost certainly have on getting better data for the vaccine approved through the EUA as well as OTHER vaccines that have studies in progress. At a minimum, I would not approve an EUA until the phase 3 trials for the other most promising vaccines have been fully enrolled.
And of course, you are underestimating the potential harm that a lightly tested vaccine might have or might SEEM to have if it is rolled out early. Every kind of FDA fast track approval process has been adopted as a result of political bullying and there have been more than a few disasters resulting from the early approval of drugs that had a fast utilization uptake. COX-2 inhibitors are exhibit A.
An EUA might be acceptable if carefully done, but I do not trust the Trump administration to be careful about how a vaccine is rolled out. I do not think cheerleading for an EUA is at all appropriate.
Uncle Cosmo
@gkoutnik: Well put! I too am in The ‘Rona’s wheelhouse (comorbidly ancient) and I’m staying outoculated until trials have certified a vaccine as reasonably safe (no severe longlasting side effects), effective (seroconversion rates well upward of 50%) and longlasting (protection upwards of 3 months). And even then I’m not venturing out until I show antibodies.
I would not put it past an ethically-challenged vaxmaker to produce a “vaccine” that’s nothing but saline solution & charge major $$$ per dose – with Orangecandyass & the gang covering for them in exchange for a cut of the profits. That’s probably his safest hail-mary come 1 Nov – it avoids most side effects**, and just might generate a placebo effect among his deluded minions that his fellowtraveling mediots can Trumpet to the heavens. And any inconvenient infections that pop up in the vaccinated could be passed off as “seasonal flu” or “pneumonia” – if necessary by threatening (untraceably) dire consequences for any whistleblower types.
**Presuming the stuff is actually sterile, not a great bet when the mfr is already cutting corners to make a few more cents per phial…
gkoutnik
@Uncle Cosmo: How paranoid. I like it!
But seriously, we both know that this is not one more Trumpy scam – our lives (yours and mine, not the imperial “our) are at stake. At that point, preparation and caution may seem like paranoia to some.
Sloane Ranger
@Robert Sneddon: It’s even more complex than that! Both England and Northern Ireland are holding back on imposing quarantine restrictions on travellers from Greece. I suspect both will do so shortly.
Plus, Scotland imposes restrictions on incoming travellers from everywhere in Greece while Wales only does so for some of the Greek islands.
Everyone is complaining that no-one knows what the restrictions are anymore, even if you want to comply with them. Some travel writer gave an example this morning on the Jeremy Vine Show. It starts like a joke, yesterday there’s an English woman, a Scottish woman and a Welsh women sitting side by side on a plane from Crete. They arrive at Heathrow and travel home. The English woman doesn’t have to self isolate, the Welsh woman has to immediately self isolate once she gets back to Cardiff while if the Scottish woman can get to Gretna Green before 4.am she doesn’t have to enter quarantine. If she misses that cut off point she does.
Actually, come to think about it, it IS a joke!
Martin
Yeahhhhhhh, that’s a pretty common problem with academic hard scientists/engineers.
How hard can epidemiology be? How hard can admissions be? How hard can economics be?
They seem to be universally unaware that free will is not an easy variable to control for.
Uncle Cosmo
Paranoids are not paranoids because they’re paranoid, but because they keep putting themselves, fucking idiots, deliberately into paranoid situations. (Thomas Pynchon, Proverbs for Paranoids #5)
Even paranoids have real enemies. (Henry Kissinger, re Tricky Dick)
Anyone living in 2020 who isn’t paranoid isn’t paying attention. (Uncle Cosmo, Paranoia Variations #1)
Only two types of people should become software developers: Those immune to paranoia, and those in love with paranoia. (Uncle Cosmo, Paranoia Variations #2)
:^D
Sloane Ranger
Last to show up as usual. The UK figures have been published. There have been 1,940 new positive tests today. The trend continues its upward slope.
1,669 of the new cases are in England; 61 in Northern Ireland and 51 in Wales plus the 159 Scottish cases Robert Sneddon reported.
10 new deaths, 9 in England and 1 in Northern Ireland.
The Sneddon has already covered the big COVID story of the day here in the UK.
lowtechcyclist
File under “not worth the Dems trying to do the one thing they could have tried to do about this.”
Yeah, I’m still mad about this. I’ll still be mad about this years from now. These people didn’t have to die, and the Dems should have at least tried to remove Trump from office in order to save them. Sure, it probably wouldn’t have succeeded. But that’s what heroes do: they try.
Aleta
https://www.sacbee.com/news/coronavirus/article245313385.html?ac_cid=DM273538&ac_bid=1990757976
Another Scott
(Emphasis added.)
Cheers,
Scott.
J R in WV
@PAM Dirac:
You appear to have strong feeling about potential vaccines.
Are you an epidemiologist, a virologist, a geneticist?
In other words, do you have education and experience in a field relevant to making decisions about the health care of 330,000,000 people?
Because if you don’t, maybe you should back off quietly?
I’m going to wait until my friend the epidemiologist professor at NC State tells me the available data tells us to get a specific set of vaccinations, and my family practice / gerontologist doctor agrees with that advice. You do you PAM Dirac.
ETA:
@Barbara:
I’m agreeing with Barbara!
J R in WV
@lowtechcyclist:
The Democratic led House DID IMPEACH Donald Trump, only to have the Republican led Senate slap them in the face.
You are ignoring the reality of the Democratic Party not having the power to remove Drumpf without at least, what, 17 Republican Senators agreeing with them.
I think that’s a shame, to attack Democratic leaders for a failure on the part of Republican Senators. This is the kind of attitude that shoots Democratic politics in our own foot. And just 2 months before the election, good job!
J R in WV
@Another Scott:
Good enough for Herr Drumpf, I’m sure. And his leader, Mister Putin, too!!
Barbara
@Martin: If you read the articles, the physicists began this project back in March and their analysis was instrumental in causing the university to move off-line, so they are serious scientists who are not being led by the result that they want to see. Their observations around some of the epidemiology forecasts ring true: that they placed to much confidence in the quality of data, hence did not account nearly enough for the uncertainty, which is what they tried to do. Moving forward, they themselves did not account for the level of non-compliant behavior post return.
PAM Dirac
@J R in WV:
I spent decades in a government agency that was involved with drug discovery and development. The program worked closely with the FDA and participated in over 100 NDA filings. I won’t call myself an expert on FDA policies and procedures, but I have a decent idea of how things things have gone. Possibly more importantly, I seem to be the only one here that has actually read the FDA documentation for the EUAs that have already been issued. I certainly don’t claim to be the only one capable of evaluating them, but I would want to hear specific arguments based on that documentation before I would change my current opinion that they are blah, nothingburger decisions and not some horrible breach of ethics.
I am not cheerleading for any specific EUA, I’m cheerleading for evaluating any specific EUA on the supporting data. Since there is currently no EUA for any vaccine, it is certainly fair to discuss exactly what kind of data should be present to justify one, but to say that there is no possible set of evidence that would justify an EUA in my opinion throws out what could be a very useful tool and quite likely will result in more deaths and suffering than need be. One other reason for using an EUA: EUAs give FDA the chance to impose conditions on the use and they are automatically are revoked when the emergency declaration is revoked. Full FDA approvals not only are very hard to revoke (example: Vioxx approval has never been revoked, the manufacturer voluntarily withdrew it) but they remove all FDA power to regulate its use. It becomes “regulating the practice of medicine”. If you start with an EUA when there are a couple of thousand deaths/day you can use a cost/benefit evaluation that is appropriate for an emergency. If you get the deaths down to a couple/day or less you can do full approvals with a much more stringent cost/benefit evaluation. I don’t see how you could change cost/benefit criteria if you start with a full approval and I don’t see why you would want to use the same criteria for both situations. Anyway, I am in full agreement that decisions, whether personal, by government agency, or corporation should be based on sound data, but all available data needs to be considered, including data on the potential cost of inaction.
I also admit to being pissed off that more than one person on this blog implied or outright accused federal workers of being unethical tools of drumf without ANY specific analysis of exactly what they did wrong. I was the target for years for all the similar bullshit (they are hiding the cure, they are tools of industry, they are suppressing the geniuses, etc) and it wears on you, especially since those type of arguments are never based on facts and usually the people making them don’t want to hear any facts. (Kind of like “Hillary is a crook”). So I will make you a deal. I will “back off” on trying to get people to see that EUAs could be an important tool if you agree to only attack the integrity of workers when you have the details to support that attack.
NotMax
@PAM Dirac
Shall step out on a limb and say I don’t think anyone here has rejected that an EUA can be an important tool nor saying there is no possible set of evidence to justify an EUA.
Today, now, this data include all the caveats based on extant evidence of how this maladministration operates coupled with the the qualifications or lack thereof of its agency appointments. Dolt 45’s desperation to make a major announcement timed for right before election day, regardless of norms of procedure or peer review, is palpable and must be taken into account as a part of evaluating the process.
PAM Dirac
@NotMax:
The article I first posted about contains the sentence
I might not have made it clear, but this is what I tried to object to and got push back, including you who said
which certainly sounds like using an EUA of necessity means ignoring safety and efficacy.
Oh well, one of my puppers had leg surgery and had just a good post-op checkup which means that I have to start doing her physical therapy. Even more fun, harvest in my vineyard starts tomorrow, so I’ll be concentrating on grapes and baby wine for a month or so. Have fun, hug your fur babies, and keep your pants on (or not as your preference goes).