Quote
Hairball
Vaccinated back in May, comedian Chris Rock now has Covid.....

'Trust me you don't want this,' comedian tweets

Breakthrough

Comedian and actor Chris Rock revealed Sunday that he has tested positive for Covid-19, and he is using the opportunity to urge others to get vaccinated against the virus.
On his verified Twitter account, Rock posted, "Hey guys I just found out I have COVID, trust me you don't want this. Get vaccinated."
The former "Saturday Night Live" cast member didn't comment on his condition, and his representatives did not immediately return a request from CNN for further comment.
Rock told Jimmy Fallon on an episode of "The Tonight Show" in May that he received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, and joked that he used his star status and "skipped the line" in getting it.

The 'one shot' virus I don't think is supposed to be as effective against Delta.

I feel badly for the people did as they were told, and ran out and got the first vaccine that was offered. In this country it was the Astra Zeneca. It seems clear that the RNa's are providing better overall protection.

Hopefully people are still only getting a mild reaction to the virus.

Of all the breakthrough cases of vaccinated people that have been in the news lately , quite a few have sounded quite drastic.
From "It kicked my ass" to "Trust me you don't want this"..don't think I've heard anyone say "Hey it was a mild nuisance, no biggie", or "piece of cake - a walk in the park"...
It's better than being hospitalized with the risk of dying (which can still happen), but even if not that severe, wouldn't want to experience what many vaccinated people are having to deal with...

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

Covid drug given to Donald Trump to be rolled out to NHS hospital patients

Health Secretary Sajid Javid heralded Ronapreve as the first treatment designed specifically for Covid-19 to receive regulatory approval in the UK.

A drug given to former US president Donald Trump when he had coronavirus last year is to be rolled out to vulnerable NHS hospital patients.

Last month, Health Secretary Sajid Javid heralded Ronapreve as the first treatment designed specifically for Covid-19 to receive regulatory approval in the UK.

GB News UK

Quote
Hairball
Of all the breakthrough cases of vaccinated people that have been in the news lately , quite a few have sounded quite drastic.
From "It kicked my ass" to "Trust me you don't want this"..don't think I've heard anyone say "Hey it was a mild nuisance, no biggie", or "piece of cake - a walk in the park"...
It's better than being hospitalized with the risk of dying (which can still happen), but even if not that severe, wouldn't want to experience what many vaccinated people are having to deal with...

Even though it can hit you quite bad, they are still classified as mild cases.

I think the trip to the hospital changes that metric.

As covid-19 patients fill hospitals, health-care workers fight fear and exhaustion: ‘Here we go again’

Pandemic

The man in his 60s could no longer breathe on his own, so the doctor, respiratory therapist and nurses worked together, snaking an oxygen tube into his windpipe. That day in late July marked the first time they had intubated a covid-19 patient in weeks. As they did so, the medical professionals exchanged silent looks: They knew what they were seeing was the beginning of a third surge of coronavirus patients in the Washington region. “It was surreal,” said Kanak Patel, the director of critical care medicine at Luminis Health Doctors Community Medical Center. “We all knew: Here we go again.” Nearly two months later, the surge continues, driven by the highly transmissible delta variant and affecting mostly unvaccinated people, including the man that staff at Doctors intubated that day. Health-care workers say in some ways, this phase has been the hardest yet. Earlier this summer, it looked like the widespread availability of vaccines might mean the coronavirus pandemic was behind them. Now, those on health-care’s front lines share a hardening view toward the delta variant’s biggest target: the willingly unprotected. The workers are baffled over how, after so much pain and death, there is still even a debate over whether to get vaccinated or wear a mask in public. Their patience is wearing thin, they say. And as they toil in stifling plastic protective gear, or glance down the growing lists of new patients to contact, exhaustion has settled in. Many have quit, Patel said, or are thinking about it. “Empathy fatigue,” he said, “is a real thing.” There have been more than 23,000 deaths in D.C., Maryland and Virginia since the first was reported on March 14, 2020. Health-care workers are now in their 19th month on the front lines. Here are some of their stories.

The vaccinator

After months of putting coronavirus vaccine shots in arms, Tiana Satchell thought she had done her part to help end the pandemic. Her time working at Six Flags, Maryland’s largest vaccination site, had been the proudest of her nursing career. “People wonder their whole lives whether they make a difference … now I feel like I have," Satchell told The Washington Post on July 10, the final day of operation at Six Flags. Officials closed most of the state’s mass vaccination sites during the summer after realizing that waning demand meant they were no longer needed. But Satchell and the other Six Flags staff had focused on the positive during the closing days: More than 342,000 people vaccinated. It was the most of any site in Maryland. When the final shot was administered, Satchell and the other nurses danced, cheered and snapped pictures. “I thought we were good,” she said. “I was on cloud nine.” A few weeks later, she was spending time with her daughter and infant granddaughter when she started seeing more news about the delta variant in the D.C. region. She felt a sense of dread — and doubt. Satchell, a contract nurse, had seen the pandemic from a few angles, including working in nursing homes filled with covid-19 patients during the first and second waves. When she started working at Six Flags in April, she said she felt filled with purpose, especially when she was administering shots for children. “I hope I can see my friends now,” she remembers them telling her. “I hope I can have a normal school year." Satchell has been praying for those children recently, fearful their plans will be thwarted by the rising case numbers. The group chats she has with fellow nurses, she said, have been blowing up lately with people frustrated by the rising case numbers asking the same question: “What is going on?”

The paramedic

It’s always the stifling plastic protective gear that Pete Gonzalez dreads when his Virginia Beach paramedic unit goes out on a call. Twice now, he has been convinced that he was going into cardiac arrest under all that equipment, his body suffocating in the summer heat beneath a respirator, plastic cap, plastic gown and gloves, while helping to treat a patient they believed had covid-19. Gonzalez, 53, has lost nearly 60 pounds since the pandemic started, most of it water weight from sweating beneath the plastic. Like his colleagues, Gonzalez can feel his patience wearing thin as hospital transports related to the disease skyrocket, while the number of people getting vaccinated in the city feels stagnant. Nearly 40 percent of the city’s 450,000 residents have yet to receive even one vaccine dose. In late July, an average of one patient per day was being hospitalized in Virginia Beach, according to the state health department. Now, that figure is up to almost 14 per day. Meanwhile, 911 calls from houses with covid-19 patients tripled between June and July, then went up another nearly 400 percent in August to 204. Meanwhile, 17 rescue workers at Virginia Beach’s Department of Emergency Medical Services have been infected, presumably while working, the department said. “It can drive you crazy,” Gonzalez said. He has been a paramedic since 2001. The years of experience have taught him to keep those feelings to himself while out on a call. Gonzalez reminds his younger colleagues — and himself — that it’s their duty to treat whoever they encounter without judgment, be it heroin addicts, drunk drivers or the unvaccinated. “Everyone is making their choice to do something that’s not wise,” Gonzalez said he tells his colleagues. “We’ve done this, so don’t let it take the wind out of your sails.”

The contact tracers

The names of people to call are stacking up — hour after hour of conversations that need to be had to rein in what is now a full-blown coronavirus surge in Loudoun County, Va. Lauren Owensby, a county case investigator working from her home, is back to putting in 55 to 60 hours a week after the early summer lull in cases that allowed her enough time off to travel with her family to Hawaii. Now, she’s upstairs in her office into the evenings, offering a calm, reassuring voice to people who’ve recently tested positive for the coronavirus and are nervous and unsure about what to do next. Ideally, those conversations would happen within 24 hours of the test result, so arrangements could be made for the person to isolate and so a contact tracer can alert those who were around them. But many Washington-region health departments, such as Loudoun’s, cut back on their contact tracing staffs during the lull, thinking the slowdown would last. Now, Loudoun is averaging about 72 new cases per day, compared with one or two in early July, and the staff who remain are at their limits. “There aren’t enough hours in the day, to be honest,” Owensby said, during a recent break. “The overall feeling is disconcerting and overwhelming.” Contact tracer Kandace Haney says people are mostly grateful to hear from her. She’s helped an anxious single mother find government aid to cover expenses while in quarantine and has patiently answered questions from children who may have been infected. Haney, who is legally blind, had difficulty finding work before the pandemic due to her condition — but contact tracing has been perfect for her. Lately, there has been a rising drumbeat of worry in those conversations. Where Haney was just making a handful of calls per day in early July, she now talks to as many as 20 people every day. The higher volume has made Haney feel more vulnerable, her world again diminishing. She went out often when cases were low, including a family trip to New York. Now, she mostly stays home. “For me, I feel that’s been the safest thing to do at this point,” she said. “I don’t want to get covid.”

The respiratory therapist

The past 18 months have been, by far, the most labor intensive of Gina Degreenia’s career. After 12-hour shifts, most of which are spent on her feet, the respiratory therapist comes straight home, takes a shower, then crawls into bed. Degreenia has been helping people breathe for 35 years; 27 of them at the University of Maryland Baltimore Washington Medical Center. Before the pandemic began, she said, few people in her social circle understood what a respiratory therapist did: “We were the unknown people of the hospital.” That changed in the spring of 2020, when people struggling to breathe began arriving in droves at hospitals nationwide. Respiratory therapists, everyone realized, then would be integral to keeping people with severe covid-19 alive. Worried friends and acquaintances texted her checking in constantly. Meals, flowers and care packages were delivered to the hospital daily. Staff feared the virus and all its unknowns, Degreenia said, but that support boosted morale. “Anything you can think of, they brought,” said Degreenia, 57. “There is less of that now … I think they are still appreciative. But I think they are tired, just like we are tired.” The messages of support, too, have slowed, as life for many goes back to normal — even as disturbingly little changes in the hospital. At the peak at the hospital last year, Degreenia was helping intubate as many as six or seven patients per shift. The number these days has crept up to about three, she said, and she worries it is only getting higher. Her main feeling these days, she said, is of disbelief. She feels a deep sadness as she spends her days monitoring unvaccinated patients, checking their oxygen levels and blood gases and, every two hours, turning their faces side to side to ensure there is no skin breakdown. By the time patients reach her now, Degreenia said, it is too late to convince them to get vaccinated. But outside of work, Degreenia said she has been trying to convince as many people as she can to get a shot. “‘What about your loved ones?’” she asks them. “‘If not get vaccinated for yourself, get vaccinated for your loved ones.’ We were helpless then. Now, we can help ourselves.”

The nurse

They are back — the crying, anxious covid-19 patients who tug on Aliese Harrison’s sweaty plastic protective gown, pleading for her to not leave them alone with the disease that is devouring their bodies. Each time, the veteran southwest Virginia critical care nurse gently assures them that she’ll return. And then she beats back another wave of emotional exhaustion. Harrison has been a critical care nurse at Johnston Memorial Hospital in Abingdon, Va., since 1998. Though she’s still committed to her patients — to the point of calling their families with updates during her off hours — the pandemic’s seeming endlessness has her wondering how much longer she can go. “I don’t think that I’m burned out yet,” said Harrison, 51, now working extra shifts again after returning to 40 hours per week in the early summer when cases were low. “But if anything is going to do it, it’s going to be this past year.” About half of Johnston Memorial’s tiny critical care ward of 14 beds is occupied by a covid-19 patient after the delta variant swept into the rural communities of southwest Virginia. The Ballad Health system, which includes Johnston Memorial, has the most patients on ventilators than during any time of the pandemic, at 84 this month. The burden recently forced the 21-hospital system that straddles the Virginia and Tennessee border to cancel elective surgeries, so resources could be used on the nearly 400 covid-19 patients occupying beds. Two of them are children. One hospital, on the Tennessee side, is stretched so thin that 20 National Guard troops were deployed there to help, said Ballad spokeswoman Ashlea Ramey. Harrison and her Johnston Memorial colleagues saw the storm coming in early June. Vaccinations had dramatically reduced infections in the area. But news of the delta variant’s march through India and other countries blared on hospital TVs. “To see the way it was moving across the world, it was very similar to how the pandemic started,” Harrison recalled. “We were a little afraid and afraid for our families. And concerned that so many people were still getting together, not socially distancing.” In some surrounding counties, barely a third of the population has been fully vaccinated, according to the state health department. Harrison is frustrated by the attitude of invincibility that she sees in her quiet community. “I think if people could see what we’re seeing and experience what we’re experiencing, all those minutes in the day,” Harrison said. “How people suffer. If we could explain it to them in a way that they would feel that. I feel like it would help.” She thought of one covid-19 patient, an unvaccinated man in his 40s she met when he already had an oxygen mask strapped tightly to his face, carving into his nose. She saw the panic in his eyes when she removed it to give him water, the struggle he had to breathe. She stayed by him when he eventually worsened enough to need a ventilator — and again when he beat the odds and began breathing on his own. But he was far from well. His image is part of the countless covid-19 memories she carries around with her, a collage of anxious faces and alarm bells that sometimes keeps her up at night. “You can’t stop thinking about people,” she said.

The doctor

As he thinks about the dangers posed by this third wave, Patel, the ICU doctor, keeps coming back to a moment from the beginning. It was the spring of 2020, and everyone was terrified. Vaccines weren’t available. But that didn’t stop a nurse, who had an infant at home, from spending hour after hour with a covid-19 patient, helping the man FaceTime with his family as he died. The only time she left the patient’s room, Patel remembered, was to pump milk. Watching the scene that day, Patel said he felt reassured the hospital could make it through difficulties staff had never imagined. Now, after 18 months of putting their own health at risk for patients, he said, staff are still treating unvaccinated patients with the same care. But, he said, it is emotionally more difficult to care for people who could have gotten vaccinated but chose not to. Staff in the ICU at Doctors saw some of the sickest patients in one of the hardest hit counties in the state. They know how to treat the pain and anxiety that come with the virus, he said. What they can’t do is take away the guilt from people who haven’t been vaccinated. Sometimes it is a dying man telling his wife to get the shot, Patel said, and other times, it isn’t expressed aloud but is obvious in the eyes of the sickest patients. What he worries about these days is that the connection between providers and their patients — the same connection that drove the nurse to keep returning to the dying patient’s room — is at risk. “If that nurse or that provider who was that innovative and selfless gets disillusioned,” he said, “then we are really in trouble.”

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

This is from the USA Today "50 States column" yesterday Tuesday Sept 21, where quite a few of the 50 states comments are covid-19 related:

ARIZONA Tucson:
As the state's biggest hospitals fill up with COVID-19 patients - most unvaccinated - physicians in smaller communities say their patients who need speciality care are paying the ultimate price.

IDAHO Caldwell:
The principal at Heritage Community Charter School has died due to COVID-19, the school's board said.

SOUTH DAKOTA Sioux Falls:
Musicals scheduled in Sioux Falls and Rapid City have been postponed or scrapped over coronavirus concerns.

WYOMING Casper:
The city is considering offering employees a $250 incentive for getting COVID-19 shots.

Bjornulf

You can't make this stuff up. There was a business owner who tried this in California too. That business is now closed. The owner of the property didn't renew the lease.

A couple wore masks inside a Texas restaurant to protect their newborn son. The owner kicked them out.

[www.sfgate.com]

Natalie Wester and her husband were waiting for their appetizer to arrive when the server came to their table, not with the fried jalapeños, but an ultimatum.

Take your masks off or get out.

On Sept. 10, the couple left their 4-month-old son, Austin, with his maternal grandmother and went to Hang Time Sports Grill & Bar in Rowlett, Texas, a Dallas suburb - a rare night out for the young parents, Wester told The Washington Post. The plan was to have dinner and a couple of drinks, catch up with friends they hadn't seen in a while and call it a night.

Instead, they got kicked out in what Wester called a "bizarre" incident because they chose to wear masks to protect Austin, who has cystic fibrosis and is immunocompromised. The restaurant bans customers from wearing masks as part of its dress code, something owner Tom Blackmer said is his right as someone who purchased and has invested in a private business.

While the ban isn't posted anywhere in writing, the hostess asks everyone who enters with a mask to take it off, Blackmer told The Post.

Wester, 23, said that's what happened the night they came in, but she thought it was so the hostess could compare their faces to the photos on their IDs, a misunderstanding that may have been exacerbated because loud live music was playing. After they made their way into the restaurant, Wester and her husband, 25-year-old Jose Lopez, put the masks back on, met some friends and ordered drinks and an appetizer.

About 30 minutes later, their server came over and sat next to Wester. She told her that the manager had sent her "because I am nicer than he is. ... But this is political and I need you to take your masks off."

Wester said she informed the server of their son's disease, which is genetic and can be life-threatening. The server told her they could pay their bill and leave if following the restaurant's no-mask policy was a problem.

It was a problem. Austin's doctors have told Wester and Lopez they need to live their lives but also have to be careful about passing along the flu or common cold to their son, let alone covid-19, because he would have a hard time fighting it off.

"We have to be cautious," she said.

They got their fried jalapeños to go and picked up burgers and Dr. Peppers from Whataburger on the way home.

A couple of hours later, she published a post about the incident to Facebook.

Blackmer backed up Wester's version of events but said he has the right to refuse service to customers who don't abide by the restaurant's dress code. Blackmer said he implemented the ban in April because he doesn't think masks stop covid-19 from spreading and criminals can use them to get away with a robbery, theft or vandalism in a place where his two adult children work.

"I'm not doing things that put them at risk," he said.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that masks are effective at stopping the spread of the coronavirus. The agency recommends people who are not fully vaccinated to wear them in indoor public places and urges people to consider doing so outdoors where there is the potential for high numbers of covid cases. The CDC also warns that people with cystic fibrosis - which produces a thick mucus that can make moving air in and out of the lungs difficult and increase the chance of infection - could have a higher risk of severe covid symptoms.

The backlash against Blackmer and the restaurant has been swift and fierce, he said, adding that he hasn't slept in two days since news about Wester's experience took off.

The restaurant can't keep its phones charged because they ring constantly. People have flooded the restaurant's Facebook page with comments, which led Blackmer to briefly take it down. He said someone doxed him on Twitter, leading him to move out of his Dallas apartment into one he'd already rented but hadn't moved to.

"This town is trying to burn me down," he said. "They are just vicious."

But, Blackmer added, he doesn't plan on ending the ban and doesn't regret enforcing it on Sept. 10, when Wester and Lopez were in his restaurant.

"This is right," he said, "and if we don't have a business next week, we'll be fine."

Wester has also gotten some blowback. Strangers scoured her Facebook page and found a photo of her not wearing a mask in August while taking her mom to see a Chris Stapleton concert. Wester said she wore a mask inside the venue until they got to their seats and decided to take some pictures. The photos don't prove she's a "liar."

"[M]y husband and I have done our best in a really difficult time to stay happy, healthy, and sane, and us wanting to wear a mask to feel safer at Hang Time was part of that," Wester wrote in an email to The Post. "I don't think that going to a concert, or taking some photos without a mask, negate any part of our experience" at Hang Time.

Wester finished her email: "Tom has stated that he does not care for masks nor believes that they work - I am confused why me wearing one (or not wearing one) in any setting would matter to them?"

Why do the US federal authorities require BOTH fully vaccinated documentation AND a negative test for anyone entering the US starting early November?

Because of DELTA, and because of any new variants coming after DELTA. As many as 20% of positive COVID-19 test results in Norway are from fully vaccinated people. I am sure the same number applies to other countries as well. They get the virus from their children, or from friends, relatives or coworkers who are not vaccinated for some reason. Then they bring the virus on to others, and if that is another bad mutant, like DELTA, or even worse, any place with a low vaccination rate will have big problems.

Because of the low vaccination rate many places, as low as below 50%, the virus just live on and on.

From Boston Globe yesterday:
A recent CDC study found that people who were not fully vaccinated this spring and summer were more than 10 times more likely to be hospitalized, and more than 11 times more likely to die of COVID-19.

Some people simply can not take the vaccine, because they are on strong medication, due to cancer, transplant, arthritis or other issues. They have nowhere to go as long as perfectly healthy people do not take the vaccine simply because they think they are young, healthy and slim.

Bjornulf

Quote
bv
Why do the US federal authorities require BOTH fully vaccinated documentation AND a negative test for anyone entering the US starting early November?

Because of DELTA, and because of any new variants coming after DELTA. As many as 20% of positive COVID-19 test results in Norway are from fully vaccinated people. I am sure the same number applies to other countries as well. They get the virus from their children, or from friends, relatives or coworkers who are not vaccinated for some reason. Then they bring the virus on to others, and if that is another bad mutant, like DELTA, or even worse, any place with a low vaccination rate will have big problems.

Because of the low vaccination rate many places, as low as below 50%, the virus just live on and on.

From Boston Globe yesterday:
A recent CDC study found that people who were not fully vaccinated this spring and summer were more than 10 times more likely to be hospitalized, and more than 11 times more likely to die of COVID-19.

Some people simply can not take the vaccine, because they are on strong medication, due to cancer, transplant, arthritis or other issues. They have nowhere to go as long as perfectly healthy people do not take the vaccine simply because they think they are young, healthy and slim.

The proof of vaccination & negative test are required to get into Canada from the US, so most likely the US copied Canada. Hope you are having a good trip, BV.

More Covid news from the NFL as the coronavirus continues to run rampant in the USA:

NFL World Reacts To Wednesday’s Antonio Brown News

Corona

On Wednesday morning, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers learned some tough news about wide receiver Antonio Brown. According to multiple reports, the Buccaneers placed the talented wide receiver on the Reserve/COVID-19 list. Buccaneers insider Rick Stroud was the first one to break the news. “He’ll need to remain asymptomatic and have two negative tests 24 hours apart to be able to return, which makes it tough for him to get back for game at Rams on Sunday,” Buccaneers reporter Greg Auman said. While Buccaneers fans aren’t thrilled with the news, Rams fans are hoping Brown isn’t on the field this weekend. Of course, the only thing that truly matters here is Brown’s health. Hopefully he only has mild or no symptoms from the virus and can get back on the field soon. Losing Brown on a normal week wouldn’t be a huge loss for the Buccaneers. The team has two other great wide receivers in Mike Evans and Chris Godwin – as well as tight end Rob Gronkowski. However, Tampa Bay will need every helping hand it can get this weekend against the Los Angeles Rams. Matthew Stafford and company have shown they can put up points against even the league’s best defenses. Los Angeles and Tampa Bay kick off at 4:25 p.m. ET on FOX.

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

Meanwhile in Australia....

Coronavirus Protests

Far-right activists blamed for fueling anti-vaccine mobs in Melbourne, Australia

SYDNEY — Angry mobs swarmed Australia’s second-most-populous city, Melbourne, for a second straight day on Tuesday, after officials halted all nonessential building work in the city following a violent demonstration against vaccine mandates for the construction industry a day earlier. Australia has been grappling with an outbreak of the coronavirus’s highly contagious delta variant since mid-June, with Melbourne, Sydney and the capital Canberra in strict lockdowns for weeks. As frustrations grow over the long shutdowns, labor unions and some lawmakers have blamed right-wing activists for infiltrating the ranks of construction workers, fomenting trouble and spreading misinformation about vaccines ahead of a state government requirement that all construction workers have at least one vaccine dose by the end of this week to help curb the virus’s spread. “There is a very small group of people, not just in Melbourne but around the country, hard-right extremists who are trying to weaponize the covid-19 lockdown,” said Bill Shorten, a federal lawmaker with the main opposition Labor Party and a former union leader, describing the people as a “rent-a-crowd” organized by “hard-right man-baby Nazis, just people who just want to cause trouble.” Encrypted messages circulating on social media encouraged demonstrators to wear “hi-viz” construction gear to blend in, and several prominent far-right identities were spotted at Monday’s rally, according to local media reports.

The latest protests follow a string of recent demonstrations across the country, including one where construction workers blocked streets across Melbourne in a sit-down against the closure of construction site break rooms. Officials in Melbourne say the frequent movement of construction workers — and in some cases, failures to comply with public health orders — is spreading the coronavirus, leaving them with “no choice” but to pause construction for two weeks while they work with the industry to improve compliance and boost vaccinations. The government has linked the construction sector to more than 400 cases in the latest outbreak and said during recent inspections that half of all construction sites did not meet coronavirus safety requirements. Union leaders are broadly supportive of vaccines as a way to keep their industry working, but they have stopped short of endorsing the state government’s vaccine mandate.

Melbourne went through one of the world’s longest lockdowns last year. The city of 5 million was shuttered for almost four months. The latest shutdown is the city’s sixth since the pandemic began, and patience is wearing thin. Footage on television and social media shows protesters marching through the city’s streets, setting up flares and chanting, with mounted police and officers in riot gear following them. A local television reporter said he and his cameraman were sprayed with what he believed was urine by protesters. Footage shows him being tackled by protesters and later pelted with a soda can in the back of the head during a live broadcast. > Reporter
International border closures, snap lockdowns and a high rate of compliance with public health orders have made Australia a relative covid success story, with just fewer than 89,000 confirmed cases and 1,178 deaths since the start of the pandemic. However, a slow start to the country’s vaccination program meant it has struggled to suppress outbreaks of the delta variant, leading to fresh lockdowns just as the United States and Europe were enjoying vaccine-related freedoms over the summer. State border closures designed to keep the coronavirus from spreading to states where the virus has been stamped out have also upended domestic travel and stranded scores of Australians internally. Most of the restrictions in Victoria, New South Wales and Canberra will likely remain in place until at least 70 percent of the population age 16 and older are fully vaccinated, which based on the current pace of immunizations could be in late October or early November.

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

Tomorrow Saturday September 25 at 4pm, Norway will go back to normal life without covid-19 rules and regulations, according to a press conference by the government and health authorities today. More than 90% of all adults are now vaccinated, and will get their 2nd shot shortly. Children age 12 and up are being vaccinated now. PS. There will still be border control related to travel from other countries with high levels of covid-19.

Endelig - endelig - endelig! (VG)
English: Finally - finally - finally!

Bjornulf



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2021-09-24 16:19 by bv.

Quote
bv
Tomorrow Saturday September 25 at 4pm, Norway will go back to normal life without covid-19 rules and regulations, according to a press conference by the government and health authorities today. More than 90% of all adults are now vaccinated, and will get their 2nd shot shortly. Children age 12 and up are being vaccinated now. PS. There will still be border control related to travel from other countries with high levels of covid-19.

Endelig - endelig - endelig! (VG)
English: Finally - finally - finally!

Congratulations and best of luck. In BC Canada, we're similarly vaccinated, age 12+ almost 88% first vax and 80% double but our rates are at a high level and hospitals filling up with mainly non-vaxxers. Not sure what level of vaccination you have to get to, to have this start decreasing but patience is wearing thin for a lot of people who have done the right thing for some time.

In particular children 10 and under cases are starting to spike. Very sad.

I think it is all about the level of Delta in general. Delta is highly infectious even among children. It will not just go away. One and a half year ago covid-19 was not a problem among children, now it is. You need to have a vaccination rate of 90% or higher.

From USA Today Friday September 24:

KENTUCKY Frankfort:
The Coronavirus claimed 52 more lives, some in their 30s, as the governor warned Wednesday that it is hitting younger people harder than ever before.

LOUISIANA New Orleans:
The state reported its 16th child death from COVID-19 on Wednesday.

Bjornulf

I have to say I agree. These idiots should not be clogging the ICUs so people with heart attacks, strokes etc. have beds. If they want to go, let them go.....


'Vigilante treatments': Anti-vaccine groups push people to leave ICUs

[www.nbcnews.com]

Sept. 24, 2021, 6:08 AM PDT / Updated Sept. 24, 2021, 6:30 AM PDT
By Ben Collins
Anti-vaccine Facebook groups have a new message for their community members: Don’t go to the emergency room, and get your loved ones out of intensive care units.

Consumed by conspiracy theories claiming that doctors are preventing unvaccinated patients from receiving miracle cures or are even killing them on purpose, some people in anti-vaccine and pro-ivermectin Facebook groups are telling those with Covid-19 to stay away from hospitals and instead try increasingly dangerous at-home treatments, according to posts seen by NBC News over the past few weeks.

The messages represent an escalation in the mistrust of medical professionals in groups that have sprung up in recent months on social media platforms, which have tried to crack down on Covid misinformation. And it’s something that some doctors say they’re seeing manifest in their hospitals as they have filled up because of the most recent delta variant wave.

“We were down to four Covid patients two months ago. In this surge, we’ve had 40 to 50 patients with Covid on four different ICU services, 97 percent of them unvaccinated,” said Wes Ely, an ICU doctor and professor of medicine at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. “We were making headway, and now we’re just losing really, really badly. There’s something that’s happening on the internet, and it’s dramatically increasing steam.”

Those concerns echo various local reports about growing threats and violence directed toward medical professionals. In Branson, Missouri, a medical center recently introduced panic buttons on employee badges because of a spike in assaults. Violence and threats against medical professionals have recently been reported in Massachusetts, Texas, Georgia and Idaho.

While Covid misinformation has been a persistent problem since the start of the pandemic, the introduction of vaccines has invigorated the anti-vaccine community and sparked a renewed push to find and promote alternative treatments — some of which are potentially hazardous.

Others are turning away from hospitals altogether. In recent weeks, some anti-vaccine Facebook groups and conspiracy theory influencers on the encrypted messaging app Telegram have offered instructions on how to get family members released from the hospital, usually by insisting they be transferred into hospice care, and have recorded those they’ve successfully removed from hospitals for viral videos.

Some people in groups that formed recently to promote the false cure ivermectin, an anti-parasite treatment, have claimed extracting Covid patients from hospitals is pivotal so that they can self-medicate at home with ivermectin. But as the patients begin to realize that ivermectin by itself is not effective, the groups have begun recommending a series of increasingly hazardous at-home treatments, such as gargling with iodine, and nebulizing and inhaling hydrogen peroxide, calling it part of a “protocol.”

On Tuesday, the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America put out a warning against nebulizing hydrogen peroxide.

With Covid cases rising among people who refuse to get vaccinated, and disinformation continuing to spread on social media, anti-vaccine groups have given rise to what Harvard Medical School physician Aditi Nerurkar calls “vigilante medicine,” wherein patients are deferring potentially lifesaving care from doctors to try unproven cures pushed on Facebook.

“It’s vigilante medicine: medicine being practiced by laypeople who are reading groups created by other laypeople in echo chambers and silos that, likely, someone in the anti-vax movement is profiting from,” she said.

Facebook groups dedicated to purported miracle cures and at-home therapies, like ivermectin, have become de facto hubs for anti-vaccine content in the last month.

As Facebook has cracked down on groups and content with explicit anti-vaccine names and messages, groups with names like “Ivermectin MD Team” have popped up in their place, garnering tens of thousands of followers. In these pro-ivermectin spaces, endorsements of the vaccine are roundly mocked or viewed as a government plot, while unproven drugs are touted almost exclusively as alternatives.

A Facebook spokesperson said in an emailed statement: "We remove content that attempts to buy, sell, or donate for Ivermectin. We also enforce against any account or group that violates our COVID-19 and vaccine policies, including claims that Ivermectin is a guaranteed cure or guaranteed prevention, and we don’t allow ads promoting Ivermectin as a treatment for COVID-19."

Anti-vaccination activists falsely believe that ivermectin is a secret miracle cure for Covid. Prescriptions for the drug have skyrocketed, despite some pharmacists refusing to fill them. Horse owners are facing a shortage of dewormers, which contains ivermectin, because anti-vaccine influencers and Facebook groups have falsely claimed that the drugs are effectively the same.

Many users in the Ivermectin groups push conspiracy theories about how Food and Drug Administration-recommended treatments frequently used by doctors and nurses in hospitals are secretly killing patients, and some have implied doctors and nurses are killing patients on purpose so they can receive government payouts.

Conspiracy theorists have pushed the idea that the antiviral drug remdesivir and the use of ventilators are “drowning” unvaccinated Covid patients. In reality, unvaccinated patients are dying of the debilitating effects Covid has on the lungs.

“There’s no evidence whatsoever that works and it could potentially have toxicity,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the chief medical adviser to the president, said last month about ivermectin.

Still, viral rumors have led some Covid patients and their families to insist on receiving ivermectin from doctors who refuse to prescribe it as a treatment in their hospitals.

Earlier this month, QAnon supporters barraged a Chicago-area hospital with threats after a fellow QAnon supporter, Veronica Wolski, asked for and was not administered ivermectin.

Wolski, who was not vaccinated, later died in the hospital after three weeks of fighting Covid.

Nerurkar said patients are often understandably seeking immediate answers and relief once they contract Covid, but unlike snake oil and false miracle drugs, proven treatments for the virus can take days to be effective, “which has been a source of great frustration for clinicians, and also for patients and families.”

“When we’re feeling stressed, we need a target of that stress. For a long time, initially, the target might have been Covid,” she said. “But now, it’s no longer that. With the delta variant, and the stress of it has been so great that we are now no longer even looking at the virus and saying, ‘That is our common enemy,’ which is really how it should be. Instead, they’re starting to target people, the messengers — nurses and doctors.”

Ely said one particular patient who had been misinformed stuck with him. The woman who had Covid arrived in his ICU about five months pregnant. Ely said the woman was not vaccinated and refused any treatments that would help fight the virus.

“Why? Because, to her, it’s not real,” he said. “So now we’re dealing with a woman in the ICU, the baby too young to live. We’ve got to make it several more weeks for the baby to be viable.”

Ely said he takes the same approach with every patient who is skeptical of doctors or Covid.

He said he kneels down at his patients’ bedside to make sure that he’s not standing above them, so he can talk to them “from a place of reverence.”

“When I’m kneeling down with them, holding their hand, I look in their eyes, and I say, ‘Tell me. Tell me what you’re afraid of. I am your doctor. I want to help you. I’m here to serve you.' And I tell them 'it always is a privilege to serve you,’” Ely said.

“So, I kneel down. I look her in her eyes. I hold her hand. I tell her, ‘I’m hearing you. I’m not going to leave. I’m not going to abandon you.’ But there are some people that you can’t get on the other side of it,” he said. “When people get this sick, they are very likely going to die, and almost all pregnant moms in this situation lose their babies. So we have two people dying without treatment for Covid.”

Ely said this patient was not alone, and that some of those who refuse the vaccine “just keep denying until they’re dying.”

“And let me say, this is not rare. You asked me what I’m hearing, and this is happening. Real time. Right now.”

Who'd've thought that a President would be reduced to eating pizza on the streets of New York, where the unvaccinated are banned from restaurants?!

[www.reuters.com]

And now Bolsonaro is in isolation after his health minister tested positive:

[www.reuters.com]

Covid Covid Covid - So tired of it.
Mask Mask Mask - Distance Distance Distance.

Anyway, today Saturday at 4pm Norway officially declared Covid over.
I wish I was at home in Norway today, bigger party today than when we beat Brazil in football!

The main newspaper VG have got a "Konfetti" button on their top right. Click it fast many times, and you will get the feel of how it is to celebrate getting rid of Covid!

[www.vg.no]



Bjornulf



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2021-09-26 04:19 by bv.

Congrats. Glad to see Norway made it to the other side and hope it stays there.

England’s Covid travel rules spark outrage around the world

Refusal to recognise vaccines given across Latin America, Africa and south Asia has been denounced as ‘discriminatory’

Covid

England’s Covid travel rules and refusal to recognise vaccines administered across huge swaths of the world have sparked outrage and bewilderment across Latin America, Africa and south Asia, with critics denouncing what they called an illogical and discriminatory policy. The transport secretary, Grant Shapps, described England’s rules, unveiled last Friday, as “a new simplified system for international travel”. “The purpose is to make it easier for people to travel,” Shapps said. But in many parts of the world there is anger and frustration at the government’s decision to recognise only vaccinations given in a select group of countries. Under the new rules, travellers fully vaccinated with Oxford/AstraZeneca, Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna or Janssen shots in the US, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea or an EU country will be considered “fully vaccinated” and exempt from quarantine when they arrive in England from an amber list country. But people who have been fully vaccinated with the same vaccines in Africa or Latin America, as well as other countries including India, will be considered “not fully vaccinated” and forced to quarantine for 10 days on arrival from an amber list country.

In Europe, there is frustration at Britain’s refusal to accept as “fully vaccinated” people who have had Covid and then a single dose of a two-dose shot. Such people are considered fully vaccinated in most EU countries and are able to travel freely around the bloc with an EU digital Covid certificate. To visit the UK, however, they must quarantine for 10 days, with UK government guidelines currently requiring people vaccinated with a two-dose vaccine such as Moderna or Pfizer to have had both doses “even if you have recently recovered from Covid-19 and have natural immunity”. Britain did relax its rules on Wednesday to allow quarantine-free travel by people from Europe who have had doses of two different vaccines. Hundreds of thousands on the continent received mix-and-match shots after the use of AstraZeneca was restricted to older age groups over rare blood clot concerns. But amid mounting anger abroad at what many view as discriminatory treatment, the Indian politician Shashi Tharoor announced on Monday that he was pulling out of a series of appearances in England to protest the “offensive” decision to ask fully vaccinated Indians to quarantine. “There isn’t a single person I have spoken to who isn’t angry about this. People are perplexed,” said one exasperated Latin American diplomat. “How can a Pfizer or Moderna or AstraZeneca vaccine that is administered [in Latin America] not be sufficient for someone to be allowed in? I just don’t see how this can be acceptable. I simply cannot get my head around it,” they added. “I cannot explain what is behind this – I just know that it is very, very, very unfair.” A west African diplomat condemned the restrictions as “discriminatory”. “[But] it’s not even the discrimination that concerns me the most, it’s the message it sends out,” they added. “All around the world we’re struggling with vaccine hesitancy. There’s all sorts of fake news. When you say, ‘We are not going to accept the vaccine from Africa’, you lend credence to these kinds of theories. It’s only going to create a situation where it allows the pandemic to be prolonged.” Ifeanyi Nsofor, a doctor and chief executive of a public health consultancy in Nigeria, said: “The UK is one of the largest funders of the Covax facility and now the UK is saying that the same vaccines they have sent, will now not be considered. It’s sad, it’s wrong, it’s discriminatory.” “To me this is just another layer of Covid-19 vaccine inequity. We’ve been dealing with the fact that richer nations are hoarding vaccines, even when poorer countries can afford them they can’t access enough,” Nsofor added.

The new travel rules came as a severe blow to families who have spent many months separated from their England-based loved ones because of the pandemic. André Siqueira, a tropical diseases specialist from Rio de Janeiro, said he was desperate to see his four-year-old son who lives in London for the first time in a year. But the new rules made it almost impossible for him to travel to England – despite having been fully vaccinated in red-listed Brazil – since he would have to spend 10 days in an amber list country before spending another 10 days quarantining in England after he arrived. “There is simply no plausible justification as to why they accept vaccines given in certain countries but not from others,” said Siqueira, 40. “It doesn’t make sense. There’s no logic to this kind of screening,” he said, noting that there had never been such distinctions for the yellow fever vaccine. Maiara Folly, a UK-based Brazilian academic, said she was also shocked with the new rules. “I can’t see any health criteria to justify this,” said Folly, who runs the thinktank Plataforma Cipó and has been tracking UK travel guidelines for personal and professional reasons. “I can’t see any reason other than a racial issue, a xenophobia issue,” added Folly, voicing fears that many fellow academics from Brazil – where more than 80 million people have now been fully vaccinated – would be unable to attend the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow because of the harsh rules.

Prof Helen Rees, a medical researcher and chair of the World Health Organization’s African Regional Immunisation Technical Advisory Group on Immunization (Ritag), called the lack of explanation for the new travel rules “unfortunate” and the restrictions “inexplicable”. “Does the world do this for any other vaccines? Does the UK say we’re not going to recognise your polio vaccines from Pakistan? No. We accept that your vaccines are safely administered. If we’re worried that there are variants that are resistant to the vaccines, that’s happening all over the world. But the Delta variant is in 100 countries of the world and the vaccines do work against Delta.” Rees said she hoped the decision would be reconsidered. “I’m not worried that this is cast in stone but I think it’s something that really must be discussed. Not least because if the world starts closing borders to what looks like poorer countries, what does that mean for inequality? For refugees? We can’t close our borders, we must trust the vaccines and we must trust the governments that are administering the vaccines.” Asked to explain why vaccines administered in certain countries were acceptable but in others not, a government spokesperson said in a statement: “Our top priority remains protecting public health, and reopening travel in a safe and sustainable way, which is why vaccine certification from all countries must meet the minimum criteria taking into account public health and wider considerations.” The statement did not make clear what those wider considerations were.In response to international upset at the restrictions, the UK has pledged to work with some countries to recognise their vaccine passports. On Wednesday, the UK high commission in Kenya released a joint statement with the Kenya health ministry, saying the UK recognised vaccines administered in the east African country. The joint statement recognised there had been “significant public concern about the issue of vaccine certification” but added, “establishing a system to mutually recognise each other’s vaccine passport programme for travel takes time, particularly in an unprecedented pandemic”.

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

An American tragedy: US COVID death toll tops 700,000

1,500 American lives are still being reported lost COVID each day.

To put it in perspective, the staggering number of deaths is greater than the number of Americans who
were estimated to have died of cancer last year, one of the nation's leading causes of death.

Tragic

The United States reached another grim milestone on Friday, as the confirmed coronavirus death toll topped 700,000, just over a year and a half into the pandemic, and despite the wide availability of vaccines. The milestone, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, comes less than two weeks after the national death toll surpassed the estimated number of fatalities in the U.S. during the 1918 influenza pandemic. Despite national COVID-19 metrics showing encouraging signs of decline, approximately 1,500 Americans are dying from the virus every day, according to federal data. "Reaching 700,000 deaths is a tragic and completely avoidable milestone. We had the knowledge and the tools to prevent this from happening, and unfortunately politics, lack of urgency and mistrust in science got us here," said John Brownstein, Ph.D., an epidemiologist at Boston Children's Hospital and ABC News contributor. To put it in perspective, the staggering number of deaths is greater than the number of Americans who were estimated to have died of cancer last year, one of the nation's leading causes of death. It's higher than the total number of American troops who have died in battle throughout the recent history of the country, and it is about the same as the population of Boston, Massachusetts. Some experts believe that the current COVID-19 death count could already be greatly undercounted, due to inconsistent reporting by states and localities, and the exclusion of excess deaths, a measure of how many lives have been lost beyond what would be expected if the pandemic had not occurred. The country's four largest states -- California, Texas, New York and Florida -- all have recorded more than 50,000 deaths, close to a third of the overall total.

Once 'unimaginable'

The COVID death toll is now seven times what former President Donald Trump once predicted in the early days of the pandemic. "The minimum number was 100,000 lives, and I think we'll be substantially under that number. ... So we'll see what it ends up being, but it looks like we're headed to a number substantially below 100,000," Trump said in April 2020. However, many health experts, including Jeffrey Shaman, a professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia University, already were concerned at the onset of the pandemic of the potentially devastating impact of the virus. "My team and I could see very early on that this pathogen had the potential to kill this many people in the U.S. ... I did not anticipate just how fractious the response would be, how leaders would not be able to or interested in unifying the country to come together and overcome political differences in order to combat the virus," Shaman said. "I'm saddened this did not happen. I think if it had, fewer people would have died and the economic consequences of the pandemic would also have been lessened."

Each death is a unique tragedy and an irreparable loss. An analysis, tracking the extensive reach of COVID-19 loss of kin with a bereavement multiplier, published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, estimates that 6.3 million family members may be grieving the loss of a loved one due to the virus. Patricia Dowd, a 57-year-old San Jose resident, was the first known American to die of COVID-19 in February 2020. At first, Dowd's cause of death was not known to be from the virus. It was only months later, in April, when an autopsy would reveal that she had died of coronavirus, three weeks before the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had previously identified the first American coronavirus-related death. By late May of 2020, 100,000 Americans had been confirmed dead. In the months to come, the U.S. would log another 100,000 coronavirus deaths, and by the time a coronavirus vaccine was authorized for emergency use, a total of 300,000 Americans had died from it. When President Joe Biden took office in January, the U.S. death toll from COVID-19 had swelled to 400,000, and just a month later half a million Americans had died. By June, it was 600,000 Americans. "A year and half ago, the idea of hitting 700,000 coronavirus deaths was completely unimaginable. While these horrific milestones were once a reflection of the failures of public health response, they are now a reflection of our inability to get millions of vulnerable Americans vaccinated," Brownstein said.

Lower demand for vaccines

The milestone is juxtaposed with a drop in demand in among Americans getting vaccines, with the current rate of new vaccinations nearing its lowest point since the shots were introduced last December. Approximately 117.4 million Americans remain completely unvaccinated, nearly 70 million of whom are over the age of 12 and eligible for a vaccine. On average, the number of Americans receiving a newly authorized Pfizer third dose is now higher than the number of Americans initiating a vaccination each day. "Heading into the winter months, we can significantly delay the next grim milestone if more people, especially those at high risk for severe illness, choose to get vaccinated," said Ajay Sethi, an epidemiologist and associate professor of population health sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Earlier this week, the CDC released new data illustrating that, overall, vaccines are still dramatically reducing the risk of being hospitalized or dying of COVID-19 during the current delta variant surge, same as before. People who have not been fully vaccinated are eight times more likely to test positive, 41 times more likely to be hospitalized, and 57 times more likely to die, compared with people who are vaccinated, according to CDC Director Rochelle Walensky "We are laser-focused on getting more shots in arms, particularly to vaccinate the unvaccinated. That's our path out of this pandemic. So if you're unvaccinated, please go get a shot. It's free, it's safe, it's easy. It'll help make all of us safer," Walensky said at a press conference on Friday.

Disproportionate impact

Racial and ethnic minorities in the country have borne a disproportionate share of COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths. According to federal data, adjusted for age and population, the likelihood of death because of COVID-19, for Black, Latino and Native American people is two to three times that of white people. Although the metrics seem to show that the latest wave of the pandemic may be abating, experts caution. "We are not in the clear," Shaman said. "New variants may arise that cause more breakthrough and repeat infections, and the virus appears to be innately more transmissible during winter." Experts who spoke to ABC News agreed that it's critical for more Americans to get vaccinated. "The vast majority of deaths going forward will continue to be those that elected to delay vaccination," Brownstein added. "While the current downward trajectory of cases provides an optimistic outlook, this path will unfortunately continue to include tens of thousands of vaccine-preventable deaths."





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

I got my third dose of Moderna last week. I was fine after the first dose, so-so on the second dose, and the third dose laid me out.

Quote
Hairball
An American tragedy: US COVID death toll tops 700,000

1,500 American lives are still being reported lost COVID each day.

To put it in perspective, the staggering number of deaths is greater than the number of Americans who
were estimated to have died of cancer last year, one of the nation's leading causes of death.

Tragic

The United States reached another grim milestone on Friday, as the confirmed coronavirus death toll topped 700,000, just over a year and a half into the pandemic, and despite the wide availability of vaccines. The milestone, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, comes less than two weeks after the national death toll surpassed the estimated number of fatalities in the U.S. during the 1918 influenza pandemic. Despite national COVID-19 metrics showing encouraging signs of decline, approximately 1,500 Americans are dying from the virus every day, according to federal data. "Reaching 700,000 deaths is a tragic and completely avoidable milestone. We had the knowledge and the tools to prevent this from happening, and unfortunately politics, lack of urgency and mistrust in science got us here," said John Brownstein, Ph.D., an epidemiologist at Boston Children's Hospital and ABC News contributor. To put it in perspective, the staggering number of deaths is greater than the number of Americans who were estimated to have died of cancer last year, one of the nation's leading causes of death. It's higher than the total number of American troops who have died in battle throughout the recent history of the country, and it is about the same as the population of Boston, Massachusetts. Some experts believe that the current COVID-19 death count could already be greatly undercounted, due to inconsistent reporting by states and localities, and the exclusion of excess deaths, a measure of how many lives have been lost beyond what would be expected if the pandemic had not occurred. The country's four largest states -- California, Texas, New York and Florida -- all have recorded more than 50,000 deaths, close to a third of the overall total.

Once 'unimaginable'

The COVID death toll is now seven times what former President Donald Trump once predicted in the early days of the pandemic. "The minimum number was 100,000 lives, and I think we'll be substantially under that number. ... So we'll see what it ends up being, but it looks like we're headed to a number substantially below 100,000," Trump said in April 2020. However, many health experts, including Jeffrey Shaman, a professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia University, already were concerned at the onset of the pandemic of the potentially devastating impact of the virus. "My team and I could see very early on that this pathogen had the potential to kill this many people in the U.S. ... I did not anticipate just how fractious the response would be, how leaders would not be able to or interested in unifying the country to come together and overcome political differences in order to combat the virus," Shaman said. "I'm saddened this did not happen. I think if it had, fewer people would have died and the economic consequences of the pandemic would also have been lessened."

Each death is a unique tragedy and an irreparable loss. An analysis, tracking the extensive reach of COVID-19 loss of kin with a bereavement multiplier, published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, estimates that 6.3 million family members may be grieving the loss of a loved one due to the virus. Patricia Dowd, a 57-year-old San Jose resident, was the first known American to die of COVID-19 in February 2020. At first, Dowd's cause of death was not known to be from the virus. It was only months later, in April, when an autopsy would reveal that she had died of coronavirus, three weeks before the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had previously identified the first American coronavirus-related death. By late May of 2020, 100,000 Americans had been confirmed dead. In the months to come, the U.S. would log another 100,000 coronavirus deaths, and by the time a coronavirus vaccine was authorized for emergency use, a total of 300,000 Americans had died from it. When President Joe Biden took office in January, the U.S. death toll from COVID-19 had swelled to 400,000, and just a month later half a million Americans had died. By June, it was 600,000 Americans. "A year and half ago, the idea of hitting 700,000 coronavirus deaths was completely unimaginable. While these horrific milestones were once a reflection of the failures of public health response, they are now a reflection of our inability to get millions of vulnerable Americans vaccinated," Brownstein said.

Lower demand for vaccines

The milestone is juxtaposed with a drop in demand in among Americans getting vaccines, with the current rate of new vaccinations nearing its lowest point since the shots were introduced last December. Approximately 117.4 million Americans remain completely unvaccinated, nearly 70 million of whom are over the age of 12 and eligible for a vaccine. On average, the number of Americans receiving a newly authorized Pfizer third dose is now higher than the number of Americans initiating a vaccination each day. "Heading into the winter months, we can significantly delay the next grim milestone if more people, especially those at high risk for severe illness, choose to get vaccinated," said Ajay Sethi, an epidemiologist and associate professor of population health sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Earlier this week, the CDC released new data illustrating that, overall, vaccines are still dramatically reducing the risk of being hospitalized or dying of COVID-19 during the current delta variant surge, same as before. People who have not been fully vaccinated are eight times more likely to test positive, 41 times more likely to be hospitalized, and 57 times more likely to die, compared with people who are vaccinated, according to CDC Director Rochelle Walensky "We are laser-focused on getting more shots in arms, particularly to vaccinate the unvaccinated. That's our path out of this pandemic. So if you're unvaccinated, please go get a shot. It's free, it's safe, it's easy. It'll help make all of us safer," Walensky said at a press conference on Friday.

Disproportionate impact

Racial and ethnic minorities in the country have borne a disproportionate share of COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths. According to federal data, adjusted for age and population, the likelihood of death because of COVID-19, for Black, Latino and Native American people is two to three times that of white people. Although the metrics seem to show that the latest wave of the pandemic may be abating, experts caution. "We are not in the clear," Shaman said. "New variants may arise that cause more breakthrough and repeat infections, and the virus appears to be innately more transmissible during winter." Experts who spoke to ABC News agreed that it's critical for more Americans to get vaccinated. "The vast majority of deaths going forward will continue to be those that elected to delay vaccination," Brownstein added. "While the current downward trajectory of cases provides an optimistic outlook, this path will unfortunately continue to include tens of thousands of vaccine-preventable deaths."

Yeah Hairball,

The figures say it all! It's too bad to see that all around people switching to ignorent mode. In a way one can understand, because everybody wants this misery to end, but look at what happened for instance in the UK. All was great, so here it came ... FREEDOM DAY. Look at the UK now! For months the death toll is on average well over 100 (up to over 200) a day with positives well over 30000 a day. Norway is corona free according to bv, but I'd say ... don't announce a freedom day, simply look at the UK.
We still have a long way to go. Recently more and more cases surface with double vaccinated people testing positive, some infecting others who ... simply die
School kids under 12 are the most tricky group these days in the western world. Not vaccinated, they infect their double vaccinated parents ... and the testing starts all over again. I'm retired, but hear from close by how companies have to put people in quarantaine again, because some employees have been positive "thanks" to their children and they infect other colleagues, and so on. It's no big news, but apparently very annoying for employers. Still, I'm happy for the US fans who could share time with the Rolling Stones in St. Louis and Charlotte!

I'm a GHOST living in a ghost town

Global corona data overviews show that countries like Brazil and Peru haven't released any updates for well over a month! Just looking at the patterns of those two countries alone, we may be missing some 50.000 additional casualties that should have been reported. Brazil prefers to stay under 600.000 casualties and Peru under 200.000 casualties. Embarrassed to tell the truth? Additional positives over that "not reporting" period could easily run into several hundred thousands. The global figure of 4.82 million deaths surely means well over 10 million corona victims in reality.
The data China is putting out looks like just giving some data just for the sake of it. Less than 50 positives? No casualties? Give us a break. What did Mick say once upon a time in Hamburg? .... "Get the f*ck out of here".


I'm a GHOST living in a ghost town

50 positive Covid tests in the whole of China hahahahahahahaha

Nate

Eight days ago my wife began feeling symptoms of a cold. The following day the symptoms had progressed. The third day she went for a Covid test. The fourth day she got the result - POSITIVE.

The J&J vaccination she received in April or May is either ineffective, or she would have been in big trouble without the vaccination. She has been bed ridden the entire eight day stretch. Fever, headache, body aches, cough, loss of taste/smell, extreme fatigue - she has experienced all.
Be careful people. Covid is still out there. (USA. Minnesota)

RIP, Colin Powell.

[www.politico.com]

-



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2021-10-18 17:20 by Stoneage.

Quote
DandelionPowderman
RIP, Colin Powell.

[www.politico.com]

RIP

- Doxa