The world has never been in a better position to end the COVID-19 pandemic, the head of the World Health Organization said on Wednesday, his most optimistic outlook yet on the years-long health crisis which has killed over six million people. https://t.co/D6IMv5uh0U
— Reuters Health (@Reuters_Health) September 14, 2022
Guest Post: Zero Covid – Report From the Ground
My thanks to commentor YY_Sima Qian, who has done so much to keep us all updated on the situation in China since I first started my Covid / Coronavirus Update post:
In last Friday’s Covid post comments, there were some questions of why is China persisting w/ the “Dynamic Zero COVID” strategy, and the costs being incurred. I thought I will share my perspective here, as someone who has lived through the entire pandemic to date within China, in Wuhan, but having family, friends & colleagues throughout Mainland China, as well as Taiwan & the US.
I am also fairly confident that I have followed the course of the outbreaks & their suppression & elimination in China more closely than just about any journalist or commentators in open source anywhere.
First, let’s get the political motivations out of the way. A number have been suggested, all have at least an element of truth, most a considerable amount:
1) The CCP regime in general, & Xi Jinping specifically, need the “Dynamic COVID Zero” strategy to be seen as effective leading up to the 20th Party Congress (scheduled to start on 10/16), where Xi is expected to obtain his 3rd term; the regime has staked its legitimacy as China’s ruling government, Xi has staked his personal credibility as China’s unquestioned leader, & the regime has staked its claim to a “superior” governing model relative to the West, on containing the spread of COVID-19 w/in China’s borders.
2) The CCP regime & Xi cannot afford to have the immensely negative impact of an exit wave from ending of “Dynamic COVID Zero” – overwhelmed hospitals, large number of deaths of the vulnerable elders, massive worker absenteeism from uncontrolled spread – leading up to the 20th Party Congress.
3) To ensure 1) & 2), any dissent, or anything that could be construed as questioning the “Dynamic Zero COVID” (even if unintended) are immediately stifled; these could be (& indeed especially) public comments from high level officials, technocrats in the health care bureaucracy (such as the Chinese national CDC), & respected health experts in academia.
Where foreign (even domestic) commentators tend to go awry is when they extrapolate to conclusions that evidence do not necessarily support:
1) Comparing the CCP regime’s singled minded focus on pursuing “Dynamic Zero COVID” to Mao’s anti-scientific campaigns against sparrows/snakes/weasels, which in the end led to heightened infestations of rodents & locusts.
2) Suggesting that the CCP regime aims to gradually close off China to the world & return to the autarky of the Mao decades, using “Dynamic Zero COVID” as the excuse.
3) Suggesting that Xi & the CCP regime are blind to the economic costs of “Dynamic Zero COVID”.
Based on my close following of COVID developments in China since the beginning, my assessment is that the regime’s actions are still rational within its perceived reality, albeit having certain self-imposed limitations. Most importantly, I believe the regime’s perceived reality is still not too far off from the actual reality (unlike, say, in the case of V. Putin).
1) Even in the face of Omicron BA.5 variants, the tools employed in the execution of the “Dynamic Zero COVID” strategy are still effective in containing, suppressing & eliminating outbreaks; even as massive an outbreak as the one in Shanghai from April-May 2022 was successfully eliminated, though at enormous economic & social cost due to the terrible execution of the lock down there.
Guest Post: <em>Zero Covid – Report From the Ground</em>Post + Comments (33)
COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: Monday / Tuesday, Sept. 12-13
… The protection generated by influenza vaccines erodes pretty quickly over the course of a flu season. A vaccine dose given in early September may offer limited protection if the flu season doesn’t peak until February or even March, as it did during the unusually late 2021-2022 season.
“If you start now, I am not a big fan of it,” Florian Krammer, an influenza expert at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, told STAT. “I understand why this is promoted, but from an immunological point of view it doesn’t make much sense.”
A number of studies have shown that the benefit of a flu shot wanes substantially over the course of a flu season — exacerbating effectiveness problems that are frequently seen when some of the strains in the vaccine aren’t well matched to the strains making people sick.
Work done by researchers from the Kaiser Permanente Vaccine Study Center and the Harvard School of Public Health estimated vaccine effectiveness declined by about 18% for every 28-day period after vaccination. A study done by scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and elsewhere showed that the vaccine’s protection against flu that is severe enough to trigger hospitalization decreases by between 8% and 9% per month after vaccination. In older adults, who are more likely to get seriously ill from flu, the decline happened at a rate of about 10% to 11% per month.
“You’ve got about four months of pretty solid protection,” said Emily Martin, an associate professor of epidemiology who specializes in flu at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. Martin was an author on the latter study.
If you ask someone who researches flu and flu vaccines, they will likely quietly — or in some cases, not so quietly — advise you to wait at least until the end of October to get a flu shot, though they’ll attach the caveat that if you start to hear about flu activity picking up where you live, you should fast-forward your plans…
Noel Brewer, a professor of health behavior at the University of North Carolina, said he thinks moving to this joint-administration approach is the right idea. Covid vaccine delivery has been overly complicated, he said, requiring people to keep track of too many things. How many shots they’ve had. When they last had a shot. When they are next eligible for a shot.
People have been tuning out, he said — an assertion bolstered by the booster uptake rate. The percentage of eligible people who got a second Covid booster is lower than the percentage of people who got a first booster, which is lower than the percentage of people who got a primary series of two shots.
Making things simple and pairing Covid shots with another health intervention makes it easier for people, Brewer said — even if the combination benefits one of the interventions more than the other…
COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: Thursday / Friday, Sept. 8-9
The latest booster shots — reformulated to better protect against omicron — began rolling out in the US over the weekend.
People 12+ who haven't had a shot in 2 months are eligible. Those eligibility guidelines are here:https://t.co/wsZC5Cufn1
— Josh Wingrove (@josh_wingrove) September 6, 2022
Is this fall the first fall of the rest of your life, Covid-booster shot wise? The folks running the WH pandemic response think so. @DrewQJoseph explains. https://t.co/UCGXXFSKIu
— Helen Branswell 🇺🇦 (@HelenBranswell) September 6, 2022
COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: Monday / Tuesday, Sept. 5-6
Me looking at a dude who walked up to me out of a crowd just to tell me to take my mask off, I said thanks but I'm ugly this is going to be a better picture and he left me alone pic.twitter.com/LqVR9tdXoE
— nic (@nickelpin) September 2, 2022
Cold weather favors the coronavirus. But as summer gives way to fall, infectious-disease experts are guardedly optimistic that the spread of covid-19 this autumn and winter won’t be as brutal as in the previous two years of the pandemic.
Coronavirus scenarios from multiple research teams, shared in recent weeks with federal officials, foresee stable or declining hospitalizations in early fall. The scenarios show the possibility of a late-fall surge. A new variant remains the biggest wild card. But several factors — including the approval this week of reformulated boosters and the buildup of immunity against the latest strain of the virus — could suppress some of the cold-season spread, experts say…
The scenarios assume that reformulated vaccine boosters will be embraced by the public at a rate similar to that of the annual flu shots — possibly an optimistic assumption given that more than half of Americans eligible for boosters have yet to receive their first dose.
Peter Marks, the top vaccine official at the Food and Drug Administration, said in a briefing Wednesday that the approval of reformulated boosters comes as the agency is “looking at a possible fall wave, with a peak around December 1st.”…
The emergence of a new variant in September could result in a wave of infections and severe illness in December, according to Lauren Ancel Meyers, director of the University of Texas Covid-19 Modeling Consortium. A variant emerging in October would push the peak to January, she said.
Any new variant that could change the pandemic’s trajectory would have to be more transmissible than the omicron subvariant BA.5 currently circulating. It might emerge from an obscure branch of the virus’s family tree — which is exactly what happened last November, when omicron, with its stunning package of mutations, appeared in southern Africa and immediately overtook the reigning delta strain.
Vaccines remain highly effective at lowering the infection fatality rate and keeping people out of the hospital, and the Biden administration continues to lean heavily on vaccination and boosting as the most powerful weapon against the virus. Anthony S. Fauci, the president’s chief medical adviser for the pandemic, told The Washington Post that the fall campaign against the virus will demand widespread uptake of booster shots.
“We’re not going to eradicate it. We’re not going to eliminate it,” Fauci said. “But we do have the capability to get it to a low enough level so that it doesn’t continue to disrupt the social order.”
The federal government, meanwhile, is turning much of the fight against the virus over to the private sector. As of Friday, the government would no longer mail free coronavirus tests to the public. The plan is to transition the payment of treatments to insurers, pharmacy benefit managers, hospitals and patients themselves by the middle of next year. Updated boosters have already been purchased by the federal government and will remain free to consumers…
COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: Thursday / Friday, Sept. 1-2
Advisers to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday voted to recommend use of COVID-19 booster shots redesigned to target the BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron subvariants of the coronavirus for people aged 12 years and older. https://t.co/y0zKkJfXed
— Reuters Health (@Reuters_Health) September 2, 2022
… Where can I get one and how much will it cost?
The new boosters, which are intended as single shots, will be available at the same places where the previous boosters and vaccines have been available — at doctors offices, hospitals, pharmacies and community health clinics.Like the previous coronavirus shots, the updated boosters have been purchased by the federal government and will be free to consumers.
The booster takes two weeks to take full effect and can be administered at the same time as the annual flu shot, officials said. The CDC suggests that young men who get the monkeypox vaccine, called Jynneos, might want to wait for four weeks before getting the updated booster. That reduces the risk of inflammation of the heart muscle, a rare complication of the mRNA coronavirus shots that can affect young men…
What are the side effects of the boosters?
Side effects are not expected to differ from those associated with the current vaccine, which include redness and swelling at the vaccine site, as well as occasional fatigue, headache and muscle soreness, according to the CDC. More serious reactions are rare.
Today In Very Stupid Shit
Data has been released that to the surprise of absolutely no one, test scores dipped over the past couple of years during the pandemic. These statistics are being used, of course, in a vacuum, to bash teachers and unions with no mention of the 3 year drop in life expectancy over the past two years and the fact that OUR FUCKING ENTIRE SYSTEM OF MEDICINE WAS ON THE VERGE OF NATIONWIDE COLLAPSE AND IN SOME PLACES HAD or that none of the teachers signed up to work in a BSL-4 without PPE and that gathering in enclosed areas is the worst way to spread covid and that kids would then spread it to their parents, grandparents, and caretakers and that 50% of school districts have HVAC systems from the 60’s and 70’s and that none of the people bitching about this were willing to do the bare fucking minimum to wear masks or get a vaccine so it would be safe to reopen schools. So, yeah.