From Newsweek:

A Doomsday COVID Variant Worse Than Delta and Lambda May Be Coming, Scientists Say

All told, the chances that a virus in the population will produce a much more dangerous variant in the course of a year would normally be extremely low.
But when billions of people are infected with billions of copies of a virus, all bets are off.

Coronavirus

Scientists keep underestimating the coronavirus. In the beginning of the pandemic, they said mutated versions of the virus wouldn't be much of a problem—until the more-infectious Alpha caused a spike in cases last fall. Then Beta made young people sicker and Gamma reinfected those who'd already recovered from COVID-19. Still, by March, as the winter surge in the U.S. receded, some epidemiologists were cautiously optimistic that the rapid vaccine rollout would soon tame the variants and cause the pandemic to wind down. Delta has now shattered that optimism. This variant, first identified in India in December, spreads faster than any previous strain of SARS-CoV-2, as the COVID-19 virus is officially named. It is driving up infection rates in every state of the U.S., prompting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to once again recommend universal mask-wearing. The Delta outbreak is going to get much worse, warns Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist who leads the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. "The number of intensive-care beds needed could be higher than any time we've seen," he says. He adds that his team's analysis shows that almost every single one of the 100 million unvaccinated Americans who hasn't had COVID-19 yet will likely get it in the coming months, short of taking the sort of strong isolation and masking precautions that seem unlikely in the vaccine-hesitant population. The variant is so contagious that it's set to smash through every previous prediction of how soon the U.S. might reach herd immunity. "We've failed to shut this down as we have other pandemics," says Jonathan Eisen, a biologist at the University of California, Davis, who studies how pathogens evolve. "It may be around forevermore, leaving us continually trying to figure out what to do next."

Delta, like most of the other variants, blindsided us, worsening and extending the pandemic. When the damage from Delta starts to subside, what other variants will be lurking just behind it to pull us back down again? The World Health Organization is already keeping an eye on several: Eta, which is now in several countries; Kappa, which arose in India; Iota, which first popped up in New York City—and especially Lambda, which has torn through Peru and shows signs of having unusual success in infecting fully vaccinated people, according to one early study. It has already spread to Argentina, Chile, Ecuador as well as Texas and South Carolina. It's too soon to say whether Lambda will turn out to be the next big, bad thing that COVID-19 unleashes on us. But it's a good time to wonder: Just how destructive can these variants get? Will future variants expand their attack from the lungs to the brain, the heart and other organs? Will they take a page from HIV and trick people into thinking they've recovered, only to make them sick later? Is there a Doomsday variant out there that shrugs off vaccines, spreads like wildfire and leaves more of its victims much sicker than anything we've yet seen? The odds are not high that we will see such a triple threat, but experts can't rule it out. Delta has already shown how much worse things can get. Its extreme contagiousness, with room to run freely through the tens of millions of Americans who haven't been vaccinated and millions more who have no access to vaccines in developing countries, has good odds of turning into something even more troublesome. "The next variant," says Osterholm, "could be Delta on steroids."

Caught Off-Guard

It wasn't supposed to happen this way. Early in the pandemic, most experts closely studying COVID-19 mutations downplayed the notion that variants would cause such serious problems. "They don't seem to make much of a difference," said Richard Neher, an evolutionary biologist at Switzerland's University of Basel, in August last year. "We probably only need to worry about it on a timescale of about five years." Today he calls Delta and other COVID-19 variants "the pandemic within the pandemic." Delta, more than any other variant, has reset scientists' understanding of how quickly a virus can evolve into devastating new forms. "All coronaviruses mutate, and we knew this one was mutating, too," says Sharone Green, a physician and infectious disease researcher at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. "But we didn't think the mutations would so strikingly affect transmissibility and possible evasion of immunity." It may seem surprising that scientists were caught off-guard by the rapid emergence of a more dangerous variant. But unlike most other pathogens, Eisen notes SARS-CoV-2 was largely unknown when it emerged. In the absence of data, scientists assumed it would follow other viruses in being relatively slow to spin off much more contagious mutations. Even more important, he adds, scientists underestimated the sheer scale the pandemic would eventually achieve—a critical factor, because the more people a virus infects, the more opportunities it has to develop significant mutations. "Having billions of people infected presents a breeding ground for variants unlike anything we've ever seen with these sorts of viruses," he says.

SARS-CoV-2 doesn't mutate particularly quickly, compared to many pathogens. Just as with most human and other cells, a mutation occurs in a virus when it replicates but fails to make a perfect copy of its genetic material. That imperfect copy is a mutant. The COVID-19 virus doesn't have a lot of genetic material to scramble compared to most organisms—about 15 genes, versus about 3,000 genes in an E. coli bacterium, a run-of-the-mill stomach bug, and about 20,000 in a human cell. What's more, COVID-19 has genetic checking mechanisms that make it reasonably adept at avoiding replication mistakes compared to most viruses. But while COVID-19's mutation rate is on the low side—about one mutation for every 10 replications, or around a fifth of the flu's mutation rate and a tenth of HIV's—COVID-19 takes advantage of a grim numbers game. A single person infected with COVID-19 might carry 10 billion copies of the virus, enough to produce billions of mutated viruses every day. What happens to all those mutations? Almost always the answer is: nothing. The genetic scrambling is random, with the result that virtually all mutations either have no effect whatsoever on the virus, or else do something that makes the virus less effective or even renders it entirely non-functional. But once in a while—perhaps every million trillion times—a random mutation confers some potentially dangerous new characteristic. What's more, much of what makes the virus dangerous has to do with a relatively small portion—the so-called spike proteins that protrude from its surface and enable the virus to latch onto and penetrate human cells. Most of the mutations we've seen so far represent tweaks to these spikes, which means it only takes a minimal change within any of the few viral genes that control the spikes to create a newly threatening mutation. But even when a virus hits the jackpot with a mutation that sharpens its ability to wreak havoc, that doesn't mean a dangerous new variant has emerged. To become a significant variant, a mutated virus has to out-replicate the far more numerous copies of the virus that already predominate in the population, and to do that it needs features that give it big advantages.

What specific features will help the mutation become a better replicator and spreader in the population is determined by the environment. For example, in the case of a respiratory virus like COVID-19, the ability to travel longer distances in the air, and to latch more firmly onto cells in the nasal passage, would likely make a new strain a better contender to become a widely spreading variant. "A virus' job is just to keep propagating," says Green. "Any mutation that helps the virus survive and spread will make it more successful as a variant." All told, the chances that a virus in the population will produce a much more dangerous variant in the course of a year would normally be extremely low. But when billions of people are infected with billions of copies of a virus, all bets are off. Thanks to Delta's infectiousness, and the huge number of people whose refusal or inability to get vaccinated leaves them primed to become living COVID-19 mutation labs, the conditions are ripe to produce yet more, potentially more dangerous, variants in the coming months. "It's going to be very difficult to stop it from happening with masks and social distancing at this point," says Preeti Malani, a physician and infectious disease researcher and chief health officer at the University of Michigan. "Vaccines are the key, and vaccine hesitancy is the obstacle." The growing number of people with natural immunity, from having recovered from COVID-19, won't save the day either, says Eric Vail, director of molecular pathology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. "At best it's now a third of the U.S. population with natural immunity, and that may be an overestimation," he says. "It won't be enough to guarantee that Delta will be the last big variant."

Can It Beat the Vaccine?

The most likely way a new variant will plague us is the same way the U.K. variant did earlier this year, and Delta is now: by being more transmissible. At first glance, that seems a tall order, given that Delta is already one of the most transmissible viruses ever encountered, falling short only of the measles. Then again, notes Osterholm, scientists thought the original COVID-19 virus was a shockingly adept spreader, only to be surprised by how much more easily the U.K. variant spread, just to be caught off guard yet again with the rise of Delta, which is about five times more transmissible than the original. There's no reason to assume Delta represents any sort of ceiling in infectiousness. "I wouldn't be incredibly surprised if something else came along that's even more transmissible," says Vail. Such a super-spreading virus might burn through the unvaccinated, non-previously infected population so fast that hospitals couldn't come close to coping. Making that possibility more likely is the fact that sheer transmissibility, more than any other characteristic a virus might acquire through mutation, confers the greatest advantage on a variant when it comes to outcompeting other versions. "If a mutation comes up anywhere that's more transmissible, it will be selected out to propagate," says Green. That means a single ultra-transmissible mutation popping up anywhere in the world in a single infected person could be enough to unleash a fresh round of heightened global misery.

Might a new variant get around the vaccine? Delta appears to be able to infect the vaccinated more readily than previous variants, reducing the major vaccines' effectiveness at preventing infection from about 95 percent to around 90 percent. (A recent Israeli study claimed the Pfizer vaccine's effectiveness plunges to 39 percent, but experts caution that the finding is an outlier that may not hold up.) Most of the COVID-19 vaccines work by getting human antibodies to target the spike proteins on the virus. But because mutations can slightly change the shape of the spike protein, they can potentially disguise it from some of those antibodies, thus weakening the vaccine's effectiveness. The different variants have different combinations of mutations in the spike protein, and while so far none of those combinations seem to do a great job of disguising the spike protein enough to get around the vaccine, some seem able to chip away at its effectiveness. Delta has three mutations that together seem especially good at keeping the spikes under the antibodies' radar, leading to the breakthrough infections. Still, the vaccines remain highly effective in preventing Delta from causing severe illness leading to hospitalization or death, to judge by the fact that 99 percent of the patients struggling with COVID-19 in U.S. intensive-care units are unvaccinated.

COVID-19 may well continue to evolve into new, widely spreading variants, but there's reason to think that none of them are likely to routinely blow past the immune defenses conferred by vaccine, and even the lesser natural-immunity defenses. One reason, notes Vail, is that the vast majority of COVID-19 virus in circulation is in unvaccinated people who weren't previously infected, and mutations that can avoid immunity have no real advantage in that environment. An immune-evading variant would be more likely to thrive in a population of vaccinated or recovered people, where such a mutation would allow it to outcompete non-mutated viruses—but there just isn't enough virus circulating in that population to allow for rapid mutation. That's how Delta emerged, notes Vail. "There were four variants that arose in India, and three of them had some ability to evade immunity," he says. "The fourth one was Delta, which didn't have as strong an evading mutation, and that's the one that spread." Green points out a second reason being immune-evasive will be a huge challenge to COVID-19: The human immune system, once it's activated by vaccination or infection, is more resilient and effective than even most studies indicate. That's because studies tend to focus on how the virus fares against antibodies specifically developed by the body to fight the virus, as observed in test tubes. In real life, the body rolls out other weapons, including innate antibodies that target a broader array of pathogens, and T-cells that only kick in when an infection starts to take hold—both of which most lab studies can't easily measure. More thorough studies are underway, says Green, and the results should aid in the development of booster shots that will help block Delta and possible future variants.

The mechanics of mutation also work in our favor when it comes to dodging future variants that cause more severe illness. It's not that such mutations can't or won't spring up in the coming months. Rather, it's that causing the infected to be extremely ill takes them out of circulation, so they can't spread the more-sickening variant. That means the variant would be at a disadvantage to competing forms of the virus that leave most of the infected feeling well enough to walk around and transmit the infection. A particularly dangerous scenario would be a variant that left people feeling well for a long time, and then lowered the boom later with severe illness. But few viruses—HIV being one exception—master that trick, and so far that doesn't seem to be a threat from COVID-19, either. Eisen warns that such delayed-illness scenarios can't be ruled out, either. There are ways new variants could inflict worse damage without compromising their ability to spread. For example, a new variant might attack the brain, heart or other organs in more subtle, slower ways that leave victims walking around but that eventually take a large toll. "We've already seen that different variants have differing abilities to enter some types of cells, and that might have an effect on the nervous system or lung function," says Eisen. "It's very concerning." Malani notes that there's anecdotal evidence that more young people are getting severely ill with Delta than has been the case with previous variants. That uptick may just be due to higher numbers of young people getting infected, or it may indicate a troubling shift toward greater vulnerability among the younger. That wouldn't be a first: The 1918 flu pandemic preferentially killed younger adults.

It's not yet clear whether or not Delta is hitting the younger harder. "It's a mystery right now," Malani says. "Infected young people might walk around for days or even weeks even though they're feeling very poorly, so it's hard to judge." But even if Delta isn't targeting the younger, a spin-off variant might. While increased infectiousness is the most likely path for a fierce post-Delta variant versus getting past vaccines or causing more severe illness, there's a catch: Such traits aren't mutually exclusive. Simply as a matter of chance, a mutation that confers increased transmissibility might also cause more damage to health or give the virus a better chance at slipping past the defenses conferred by a vaccine. Although these latter traits aren't likely to be selected on their own, they could ride the coattails of a transmissibility-boosting mutation. "There's nothing to stop them from happening at the same time," says Eisen. Fortunately, there's a built-in impediment to what might otherwise be a potentially endless march toward ever-more-dangerous variants: The virus will at some point run out of ways to become nastier, thanks to the relatively simple structure of the spike protein, which can only be mutated in a few hundred different ways, most of which won't make the virus more harmful. "There are only so many changes that can be made to the spike protein without making it non-functional," says Vail. "I'd be cautious about saying that it can keep mutating indefinitely."

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Rip this joint, gonna save your soul, round and round and round we go......

Sea.Hear.Now Festival in Asbury Park NJ will now require proof of vaccination or negative test.

[twitter.com]

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skytrench

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bv
IORR is an editorial site. It is my responsibility, as an editor, to make sure that false information is removed. For most parts of the free world, the definition of facts and fiction is easy. If you do not like my editorial work then feel free to visit other places.

No complaints from me, I admire the effort you are obliged to put into it and appreciate the discussions that arise under this framework.

One of the few, pleasantly, facts based threads I can find on the subject. I will always put my trust in someone with 12-16 years of college versus a keyboard jockey who posts what he/she wants to hear.

Mike


[www.flickr.com]

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bye bye johnny
Sea.Hear.Now Festival in Asbury Park NJ will now require proof of vaccination or negative test.

[twitter.com]

" You/we are not responsible for a customer's decisions on covid."

This is directly from a top sales representative at a large secondary marketplace. So if you bought your tickets on the secondary market and show up to a venue that instituted vaccination rules without acceptable proof, you are likely not getting a refund.

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bye bye johnny
Sea.Hear.Now Festival in Asbury Park NJ will now require proof of vaccination or negative test.

[twitter.com]

It's always good to avoid New Jersey anyway.

Nearly 500 COVID-19 cases linked to Milwaukee Bucks' Deer District after NBA Finals celebration

BY ZOE CHRISTEN JONES
AUGUST 5, 2021

[www.cbsnews.com]

I got into it with an anti-vaxxer on Facebook today. After a couple back and forths I realized I was dealing with the same mentality as Trumpers. You ask them where they get their 'knowledge' and they never answer. Pointless. I sincerely asked them to get vaccinated before it's too late. It's not like they could get the first shot and be mostly immune tomorrow.

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24FPS
I got into it with an anti-vaxxer on Facebook today. After a couple back and forths I realized I was dealing with the same mentality as Trumpers. You ask them where they get their 'knowledge' and they never answer. Pointless. I sincerely asked them to get vaccinated before it's too late. It's not like they could get the first shot and be mostly immune tomorrow.

It's as though for some people, once they've decided their position, they are immovable. I'd like to think that I can change my point of view in the face of new information, but similarly when speaking to these people they don't give their sources, and when they do, they are youtube wingnuts spouting nonsense.

The part of it that I find disconcerting, is that it's so pervasive...it's not a small minority. It's a large minority.

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24FPS
I got into it with an anti-vaxxer on Facebook today. After a couple back and forths I realized I was dealing with the same mentality as Trumpers. You ask them where they get their 'knowledge' and they never answer. Pointless. I sincerely asked them to get vaccinated before it's too late. It's not like they could get the first shot and be mostly immune tomorrow.

It takes, according to info I've read ad nauseum, TWO WEEKS at a minimum for the immune system to start seeing it.

The beauty of FB, Twitter and whatever is... it reveals the idiots that bother to post their liberties being shaken etc.

Be vaxxed and don't worry about the un-vaxxed. They're on their own.

Hospitals should BAN unvaxxed COVIDiots the same as venues etc demanding vax proof to enter. Lines have been drawn. They need to be drawn severely.

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24FPS
I got into it with an anti-vaxxer on Facebook today. After a couple back and forths I realized I was dealing with the same mentality as Trumpers. You ask them where they get their 'knowledge' and they never answer. Pointless. I sincerely asked them to get vaccinated before it's too late. It's not like they could get the first shot and be mostly immune tomorrow.

I got into it with a couple antis too on another site. They just happen to be fans of he who shall not be named, too. There is no logic at work with them. I finally blocked them because reading their drivel made my blood pressure go up.

'We are backsliding': Our pandemic momentum has been squandered

Even offers of free booze and guns failed to persuade the recalcitrant.

Coronavirus

WASHINGTON — Top public health officials are warning about an alarming rise in coronavirus cases, hospitalizations and deaths, figures that represent a bitter setback in the fight to end the pandemic.
“Across the board, we are seeing increases in cases and hospitalizations in all age groups,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky said during a Thursday briefing by the White House pandemic response team. She noted that as of Monday, a full 83 percent of all counties in the U.S. were experiencing “substantial or high” transmission of the coronavirus, a trend driven almost entirely by the virus’s Delta variant.
The discouraging news is a refutation to earlier, rosier predictions. “From the beginning, we have known that this virus is unpredictable,” White House pandemic response coordinator Jeff Zients said on Thursday, though he argued that the administration’s “relentless” vaccination push was showing fresh signs of progress.

The coronavirus has shown a frustrating resilience. New variants of the pathogen could extend the pandemic into 2022. It was supposed to be over by now. “We’ll Have Herd Immunity by April,” went the headline of a Wall Street Journal op-ed published on Feb. 18, 2021. Vaccines were just becoming widely available, and the winter surge appeared to be subsiding. “There is reason to think the country is racing toward an extremely low level of infection,” predicted the article’s author, Dr. Marty Makary, a cancer surgeon at Johns Hopkins. Like most other predictions about the pandemic, this one turned out to be incorrect. It is now August, and while things are not nearly as bleak as they were throughout most of 2020, the more transmissible Delta variant has prolonged the pandemic, scuttling visions of a nationwide summer reopening. “We are backsliding,” says Dr. Leana Wen, the former health commissioner of Baltimore, “when we could be putting the pandemic behind us through vaccination.” There are, to be sure, reasons for optimism, including when it comes to inoculation rates that had been stagnant for weeks. On Thursday, Zients revealed that 864,000 people had been vaccinated on Wednesday, the highest number since July 3. Notably, he said that vaccinations had increased in Georgia, Oklahoma and Tennessee, where infections have recently soared. “Clearly, Americans are seeing the impact of being unvaccinated and unprotected,” Zients said at the press briefing. The vaccines continue to be exceptionally effective in protecting against severe disease and death. On the rare occasions when the coronavirus does break through the protections the vaccines offer, the resulting bout of COVID-19 tends to be mild.

Overall, only 49.9 percent of all Americans are fully vaccinated, according to the CDC. That figure doesn’t account for those who have natural immunity from having fought off COVID-19, developing antibodies in the process. Nor is the vaccine approved yet for children under 12, though they tend to become ill much more rarely than do adults. That means the reprieve that began in spring is just about over. During the Thursday briefing, Walensky said that the seven-day average of cases had risen sharply to 89,463 new cases per day, an increase of 43.3 percent over the previous reporting period. Only two months ago, the nation finally saw a day with fewer than 10,000 new cases — and a weekly average of fewer than 15,000 new cases. There couldn’t be a clearer sign that things were improving. But what should have been a turning point turned out to be a brief spell of calm. Soon after that dip, cases started rising again, just as some epidemiologists predicted they would if more people did not become vaccinated and communities cast off all restrictions. Even more worrying than rising case rates are a 41.1 percent increase in the seven-day average of new hospitalizations last week, as compared to the week ending on June 26, and a 39.3 percent rise in deaths during roughly the same period. There is now an average of 381 coronavirus deaths per day. Deaths fell below 300 per day in June, but, like infection rates, have risen since then.

For much of the summer, the nation appeared to be in a post-pandemic mindset, even as Delta was already spreading. “President Biden absolutely declared a victory too soon,” Wen recently told Yahoo News, referring to his July 4 address on “our independence from a deadly virus.” Those remarks came after a spring that saw more than 100 million Americans vaccinated. As vaccination rates continued to climb, the public and many elected leaders appeared to exhale and relax. That looks to have been a mistake. In mid-May, the CDC announced that vaccinated people no longer needed to wear masks. Right around that time, the most cautious regions of the United States announced that they would be lifting the last restrictions on activities like indoor dining and concerts. The pandemic appeared to be over. “It is time to resume normal life,” wrote social critic Yascha Mounk. Already, though, a new variant of the coronavirus was on its way. Delta had first been identified in India and had spent much of the spring proliferating through the United Kingdom, where it delayed reopening plans. “We cannot let that happen in the United States,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the president’s top science adviser, said on June 8, referring to the rapid spread of Delta in the U.K. Early studies indicated that the Delta variant had features that made it more transmissible than other variants of the coronavirus. Still, vaccines were highly effective — and continue to be. Public health officials have said over and over that vaccinations are the only effective endgame against the virus. Of course, for vaccines to be effective, they have to be injected into arms. Despite a bevy of incentives from federal, state and local officials, Americans lost interest in the vaccination drive with the arrival of warmer weather. A flood of misinformation about the vaccines also appears to have hurt the effort. Even offers of free booze and guns failed to persuade the recalcitrant. The last time more than a million people were vaccinated on a single day was June 11, according to the CDC. By then, vaccination rates had been in a steady decline since early April, when more than 3 million people were being vaccinated daily. Doses were coveted, sending some people hunting for shots.

Now that the Delta variant has made landfall, people are eager to get vaccinated again. But it takes as long as two weeks for a fully immunized person to develop antibodies against the coronavirus, and people now receiving their first shot of the mRNA vaccines from Pfizer or Moderna will need to wait several weeks before receiving a second shot, without which there is little protection against Delta. Nothing can be done about these waiting periods, meaning that the coronavirus will continue to spread for much of August, even as governors like Ron DeSantis of Florida and Greg Abbott of Texas have resisted mask mandates that would offer an added layer of protection. Earlier this week — about a month later than hoped — the nation reached President Biden’s goal of immunizing 70 percent of American adults. Yet experts now believe that about 80 percent of the population has to be vaccinated (or retain natural immunity from a previous COVID-19 illness) to achieve herd immunity. The picture today is notably more bleak than it was a month ago, when the end of the pandemic seemed to be near. “We’re closer than ever to declaring our independence from a deadly virus,” Biden said during a White House event on July 4. Now, suddenly, independence feels more distant. There are fears of new lockdowns, of schools reverting to Zoom, of weddings and vacations canceled. There are debates over eviction moratoriums and travel restrictions. Masks are back. So are worries about just how long this pandemic will last. For at least a little while longer, it seems.

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Rip this joint, gonna save your soul, round and round and round we go......

It’s interesting to read that many European countries now have higher vaccine rates than the United States. The US had a head start on all of these countries. I read Belgium is 62 percent fully vaccinated. Germany is 54 percent fully vaccinated. Will Europe return to normal life before the US?

This link is still available on the first post of this thread:

Tracking Coronavirus Vaccinations Around the World (New York Times)

Bjornulf

The first vaccine dose is giving a good protection against getting seriously ill from covid-19.
The second dose will give an even better protection, but most of all, prevent spreading the virus to others, especially with the delta variant.

Bjornulf

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GasLightStreet

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24FPS
I got into it with an anti-vaxxer on Facebook today. After a couple back and forths I realized I was dealing with the same mentality as Trumpers. You ask them where they get their 'knowledge' and they never answer. Pointless. I sincerely asked them to get vaccinated before it's too late. It's not like they could get the first shot and be mostly immune tomorrow.

It takes, according to info I've read ad nauseum, TWO WEEKS at a minimum for the immune system to start seeing it.

The beauty of FB, Twitter and whatever is... it reveals the idiots that bother to post their liberties being shaken etc.

Be vaxxed and don't worry about the un-vaxxed. They're on their own.

Hospitals should BAN unvaxxed COVIDiots the same as venues etc demanding vax proof to enter. Lines have been drawn. They need to be drawn severely.

I don't think hospitals can ban or otherwise turn away patients but Insurance companies, different story. I keep wondering how ling it will be before they cease coverage of covid related treatments for the unvaccinated. Let them exercise their freedoms to pay for their care themselves too.

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MKjan

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bye bye johnny
Sea.Hear.Now Festival in Asbury Park NJ will now require proof of vaccination or negative test.

[twitter.com]

It's always good to avoid New Jersey anyway.

><

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bye bye johnny
Nearly 500 COVID-19 cases linked to Milwaukee Bucks' Deer District after NBA Finals celebration

BY ZOE CHRISTEN JONES
AUGUST 5, 2021

[www.cbsnews.com]

That's actually not too bad, considering there was rumored to be like 65K fans packed into that area on some nights.

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JN99

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GasLightStreet

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24FPS
I got into it with an anti-vaxxer on Facebook today. After a couple back and forths I realized I was dealing with the same mentality as Trumpers. You ask them where they get their 'knowledge' and they never answer. Pointless. I sincerely asked them to get vaccinated before it's too late. It's not like they could get the first shot and be mostly immune tomorrow.

It takes, according to info I've read ad nauseum, TWO WEEKS at a minimum for the immune system to start seeing it.

The beauty of FB, Twitter and whatever is... it reveals the idiots that bother to post their liberties being shaken etc.

Be vaxxed and don't worry about the un-vaxxed. They're on their own.

Hospitals should BAN unvaxxed COVIDiots the same as venues etc demanding vax proof to enter. Lines have been drawn. They need to be drawn severely.

I don't think hospitals can ban or otherwise turn away patients but Insurance companies, different story. I keep wondering how ling it will be before they cease coverage of covid related treatments for the unvaccinated. Let them exercise their freedoms to pay for their care themselves too.

They won't do that anymore than they have for the 1000's who continue to smoke even though the scientific evidence against doing so is far more formidable than the proof for getting vaxed.

I've talked to some folks in NYC this week and they are peeved by the return to masks mandate. They all agreed that they wouldn't have taken the vax in the first place if they'd had known that they would be looking at square one again, because they don't believe it's been tested enough. They only got vax'd so as to no longer have to wear a mask, and they refuse to be told to have to put it back on. They're p'd at the flip-flop mentality coming out now.

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VoodooLounge13

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JN99

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GasLightStreet

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24FPS
I got into it with an anti-vaxxer on Facebook today. After a couple back and forths I realized I was dealing with the same mentality as Trumpers. You ask them where they get their 'knowledge' and they never answer. Pointless. I sincerely asked them to get vaccinated before it's too late. It's not like they could get the first shot and be mostly immune tomorrow.

It takes, according to info I've read ad nauseum, TWO WEEKS at a minimum for the immune system to start seeing it.

The beauty of FB, Twitter and whatever is... it reveals the idiots that bother to post their liberties being shaken etc.

Be vaxxed and don't worry about the un-vaxxed. They're on their own.

Hospitals should BAN unvaxxed COVIDiots the same as venues etc demanding vax proof to enter. Lines have been drawn. They need to be drawn severely.

I don't think hospitals can ban or otherwise turn away patients but Insurance companies, different story. I keep wondering how ling it will be before they cease coverage of covid related treatments for the unvaccinated. Let them exercise their freedoms to pay for their care themselves too.

They won't do that anymore than they have for the 1000's who continue to smoke even though the scientific evidence against doing so is far more formidable than the proof for getting vaxed.

When you get insurance, the first question is, DO YOU SMOKE? So while you may get insurance, you'll pay extra for it.

I could totally see that happening...OR, creating an exception for it. ie We'll cover you, EXCEPT for COVID-19 or a disease directly or indirectly related to it.

Unless you have Universal Health Care, a private insurer can do what they want.

COVID survivors with 1 dose have 2x the antibodies as others with 2

COVID-19 survivors may be more protected with only one vaccine dose than those who never contracted the virus are with two doses, a new study finds.

Researchers from Rush University in Chicago, Illinois, compared vaccine antibody levels among people with and without natural COVID immunity.

They found that people previously infected with the virus had antibody levels twice as high after one dose compared to those not previously infected with two doses.

What's more, antibody levels did not increase much between dose one and dose two for COVID-19 survivors.

This means the world may be able to save doses, at least in the short term, by giving former Covid patients only one dose.

Daily Mail

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treaclefingers

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VoodooLounge13

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JN99

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GasLightStreet

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24FPS
I got into it with an anti-vaxxer on Facebook today. After a couple back and forths I realized I was dealing with the same mentality as Trumpers. You ask them where they get their 'knowledge' and they never answer. Pointless. I sincerely asked them to get vaccinated before it's too late. It's not like they could get the first shot and be mostly immune tomorrow.

It takes, according to info I've read ad nauseum, TWO WEEKS at a minimum for the immune system to start seeing it.

The beauty of FB, Twitter and whatever is... it reveals the idiots that bother to post their liberties being shaken etc.

Be vaxxed and don't worry about the un-vaxxed. They're on their own.

Hospitals should BAN unvaxxed COVIDiots the same as venues etc demanding vax proof to enter. Lines have been drawn. They need to be drawn severely.

I don't think hospitals can ban or otherwise turn away patients but Insurance companies, different story. I keep wondering how ling it will be before they cease coverage of covid related treatments for the unvaccinated. Let them exercise their freedoms to pay for their care themselves too.

They won't do that anymore than they have for the 1000's who continue to smoke even though the scientific evidence against doing so is far more formidable than the proof for getting vaxed.

When you get insurance, the first question is, DO YOU SMOKE? So while you may get insurance, you'll pay extra for it.

I could totally see that happening...OR, creating an exception for it. ie We'll cover you, EXCEPT for COVID-19 or a disease directly or indirectly related to it.

Unless you have Universal Health Care, a private insurer can do what they want.

Won't happen. Insurance always covers stupidity.

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VoodooLounge13

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treaclefingers

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VoodooLounge13

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JN99

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GasLightStreet

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24FPS
I got into it with an anti-vaxxer on Facebook today. After a couple back and forths I realized I was dealing with the same mentality as Trumpers. You ask them where they get their 'knowledge' and they never answer. Pointless. I sincerely asked them to get vaccinated before it's too late. It's not like they could get the first shot and be mostly immune tomorrow.

It takes, according to info I've read ad nauseum, TWO WEEKS at a minimum for the immune system to start seeing it.

The beauty of FB, Twitter and whatever is... it reveals the idiots that bother to post their liberties being shaken etc.

Be vaxxed and don't worry about the un-vaxxed. They're on their own.

Hospitals should BAN unvaxxed COVIDiots the same as venues etc demanding vax proof to enter. Lines have been drawn. They need to be drawn severely.

I don't think hospitals can ban or otherwise turn away patients but Insurance companies, different story. I keep wondering how ling it will be before they cease coverage of covid related treatments for the unvaccinated. Let them exercise their freedoms to pay for their care themselves too.

They won't do that anymore than they have for the 1000's who continue to smoke even though the scientific evidence against doing so is far more formidable than the proof for getting vaxed.

When you get insurance, the first question is, DO YOU SMOKE? So while you may get insurance, you'll pay extra for it.

I could totally see that happening...OR, creating an exception for it. ie We'll cover you, EXCEPT for COVID-19 or a disease directly or indirectly related to it.

Unless you have Universal Health Care, a private insurer can do what they want.

Won't happen. Insurance always covers stupidity.

What won't happen, they won't have to pay extra for it or no riders or exemptions? Both?

Have you even bought any insurance before?

Florida COVID update: 22,783 new cases added, breaking record for daily pandemic count

By Howard Cohen and Michelle Marchante
August 06, 2021

[www.miamiherald.com]

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treaclefingers

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VoodooLounge13

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treaclefingers

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VoodooLounge13

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JN99

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GasLightStreet

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24FPS
I got into it with an anti-vaxxer on Facebook today. After a couple back and forths I realized I was dealing with the same mentality as Trumpers. You ask them where they get their 'knowledge' and they never answer. Pointless. I sincerely asked them to get vaccinated before it's too late. It's not like they could get the first shot and be mostly immune tomorrow.

It takes, according to info I've read ad nauseum, TWO WEEKS at a minimum for the immune system to start seeing it.

The beauty of FB, Twitter and whatever is... it reveals the idiots that bother to post their liberties being shaken etc.

Be vaxxed and don't worry about the un-vaxxed. They're on their own.

Hospitals should BAN unvaxxed COVIDiots the same as venues etc demanding vax proof to enter. Lines have been drawn. They need to be drawn severely.

I don't think hospitals can ban or otherwise turn away patients but Insurance companies, different story. I keep wondering how ling it will be before they cease coverage of covid related treatments for the unvaccinated. Let them exercise their freedoms to pay for their care themselves too.

They won't do that anymore than they have for the 1000's who continue to smoke even though the scientific evidence against doing so is far more formidable than the proof for getting vaxed.

When you get insurance, the first question is, DO YOU SMOKE? So while you may get insurance, you'll pay extra for it.

I could totally see that happening...OR, creating an exception for it. ie We'll cover you, EXCEPT for COVID-19 or a disease directly or indirectly related to it.

Unless you have Universal Health Care, a private insurer can do what they want.

Won't happen. Insurance always covers stupidity.

What won't happen, they won't have to pay extra for it or no riders or exemptions? Both?

Have you even bought any insurance before?

Won't happen that they won't cover it. I work in Insurance. I've spent my entire career being an underwriter. It could be a rider, but it will be covered, just like every other disease out there, and perhaps one may have to pay more for coverage, but it will be covered.

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VoodooLounge13

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treaclefingers

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VoodooLounge13

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treaclefingers

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VoodooLounge13

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JN99

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GasLightStreet

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24FPS
I got into it with an anti-vaxxer on Facebook today. After a couple back and forths I realized I was dealing with the same mentality as Trumpers. You ask them where they get their 'knowledge' and they never answer. Pointless. I sincerely asked them to get vaccinated before it's too late. It's not like they could get the first shot and be mostly immune tomorrow.

It takes, according to info I've read ad nauseum, TWO WEEKS at a minimum for the immune system to start seeing it.

The beauty of FB, Twitter and whatever is... it reveals the idiots that bother to post their liberties being shaken etc.

Be vaxxed and don't worry about the un-vaxxed. They're on their own.

Hospitals should BAN unvaxxed COVIDiots the same as venues etc demanding vax proof to enter. Lines have been drawn. They need to be drawn severely.

I don't think hospitals can ban or otherwise turn away patients but Insurance companies, different story. I keep wondering how ling it will be before they cease coverage of covid related treatments for the unvaccinated. Let them exercise their freedoms to pay for their care themselves too.

They won't do that anymore than they have for the 1000's who continue to smoke even though the scientific evidence against doing so is far more formidable than the proof for getting vaxed.

When you get insurance, the first question is, DO YOU SMOKE? So while you may get insurance, you'll pay extra for it.

I could totally see that happening...OR, creating an exception for it. ie We'll cover you, EXCEPT for COVID-19 or a disease directly or indirectly related to it.

Unless you have Universal Health Care, a private insurer can do what they want.

Won't happen. Insurance always covers stupidity.

What won't happen, they won't have to pay extra for it or no riders or exemptions? Both?

Have you even bought any insurance before?

Won't happen that they won't cover it. I work in Insurance. I've spent my entire career being an underwriter. It could be a rider, but it will be covered, just like every other disease out there, and perhaps one may have to pay more for coverage, but it will be covered.

OK, we agree! That is what I said.

Reba McEntire reveals she and boyfriend caught COVID-19 despite being vaccinated
The 66-year-old country singer shared the news on a recent TikTok live.

Coronavirus

Country star Reba McEntire is pleading with her fans to get the COVID-19 shot after she caught the coronavirus, despite being vaccinated. In a recent TikTok live, the singer revealed that she and boyfriend Rex Linn both tested positive for COVID-19. "It's not fun to get this. I did get it," the 66-year-old country star said of the coronavirus. "Rex and I got it and it's not fun. You don't feel good," McEntire continued. "We were both vaccinated and we still got it, so stay safe, stay home, and be protected the best you can." "I just want to say one thing: this has been a hard year and it's getting rougher again," she added. "You guys, please stay safe. Wear your mask. Do what you have to do. Stay home."

Experts say that contracting COVID-19 after being vaccinated is not a sign that vaccines do not work, rather an expected outcome based on both efficacy and rate of vaccinations. "Ninety-five percent efficacy is not 100% efficacy," Andrew Heinrich, a lecturer at the Yale School Of Public Health in New Haven, Connecticut, told TODAY Health. "Vaccines matter most when a significant portion of the population gets them. It's a bit of a logarithmic scale and (as more people get vaccinated), the benefits start to mount immensely." In short, "breakthrough cases" are expected, but an NBC News survey of health officials nationwide found that those who experience more serious disease despite being fully vaccinated tend to be older than 65, have a compromised immune system or other health conditions.

McEntire also addressed how the ongoing pandemic will impact her upcoming live shows. "I have no idea what plans for next year are. You know, the COVID thing has really hit hard and spikes are going everywhere right now ... and it's all over the country — this new variant," she said. "We have plans right now to go back on tour in January, February and March. We have plans with being with Brooks & Dunn at Caesars in December — the first two weeks, almost three weeks of December — but we don't know if that's going to go."

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Rip this joint, gonna save your soul, round and round and round we go......

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VoodooLounge13
I've talked to some folks in NYC this week and they are peeved by the return to masks mandate. They all agreed that they wouldn't have taken the vax in the first place if they'd had known that they would be looking at square one again, because they don't believe it's been tested enough. They only got vax'd so as to no longer have to wear a mask, and they refuse to be told to have to put it back on. They're p'd at the flip-flop mentality coming out now.

World's smallest violin in front of their favorite Italian restaurant.


jb

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jbwelda

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VoodooLounge13
I've talked to some folks in NYC this week and they are peeved by the return to masks mandate. They all agreed that they wouldn't have taken the vax in the first place if they'd had known that they would be looking at square one again, because they don't believe it's been tested enough. They only got vax'd so as to no longer have to wear a mask, and they refuse to be told to have to put it back on. They're p'd at the flip-flop mentality coming out now.

World's smallest violin in front of their favorite Italian restaurant.


jb

I would have told them to grow a pair, but I like the subtly of your delivery Welda.

Licensed drug could reduce SARS-CoV-2 infection by up to 70 per cent, reveals study

A licensed drug normally used to treat abnormal levels of fatty substances in the blood could reduce infection caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus by up to 70 per cent, reveals a study in the laboratory by an international collaboration of researchers.

The research team, led by the University of Birmingham and Keele University in the UK and the San Raffaele Scientific Institute in Italy, has demonstrated that fenofibrate and its active form (fenofibric acid) can significantly reduce SARS-COV-2 infection in human cells in the laboratory.

Importantly, reduction of infection was obtained using concentrations of the drug which are safe and achievable using the standard clinical dose of fenofibrate. Fenofibrate, which is approved for use by most countries in the world including the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the UK's National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), is an oral drug currently used to treat conditions such as high levels of cholesterol and lipids (fatty substances) in the blood.

Eureka alert