If there’s a Chuck Tingle one (and I’m sure there is), please don’t post.
Well, actually it was a tuberculosis poster:
Londoners’ reactions to the new heightened restrictions are predictable as they are disappointing.
Rules for the herd are different to the rules for the elite.
Eschaton
Sunday, December 20, 2020
The Good Doctor
Birx has had some pals in the media all along, desperate to keep her reputation intact, so this won’t hurt at all.
WASHINGTON (AP) — As COVID-19 cases skyrocketed before the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, Dr. Deborah Birx, coordinator of the White House coronavirus response, warned Americans to “be vigilant” and limit celebrations to “your immediate household.” For many Americans that guidance has been difficult to abide, including for Birx herself. The day after Thanksgiving, she traveled to one of her vacation properties on Fenwick Island in Delaware. She was accompanied by three generations of her family from two households. Birx, her husband Paige Reffe, a daughter, son-in-law and two young grandchildren were present.
Lives are complicated, but the people who rule us should at least try to pretend to set an example.
All going tits up in Britain.
Like it’s just piling up on them. And with that shower of wasters in charge. Stay safe British mutants.
This is concerning on a couple levels. The obvious one, more contagious equals more cases equals busted health care system and more body bags, but the bigger one for me is that this bug is not supposed to mutate all that quickly. From what I understand, this strain is still vulnerable to the vaccine, but if the virus is less stable than we thought, the slow rollout could be a set up for disaster. As soon as the vaccine is present in the wild, it puts selection pressure on the virus to sidestep the specific spike structure we have targeted. And, you know, life, umm, finds… a way. Or semilife, such as this particular bastard.
Isn’t it a slight positive then that we have several vaccines which are using different methods to target the virus? If there’s originally selection pressure against the exact method the Pfizer one uses, rolling out the Moderna, the Oxford and the others would mean that people would still be protected, no?
Thank you. I work in QC in a totally different field, and these discrepancies got me very nervous. I’m glad to know it’s pretty normal.
Stay safe.
I think we have just tipped over the rim.
Army General Gustave Perna, the chief operating officer of Operation Warp Speed, takes full responsibility for vaccine miscommunication
and why is the army heading up a civilian response exactly? that seems… wrong.
It hasn’t made much noise in the broader media, but throttling or shutting down hospitals to elective procedures has made a lot of noise in the medical device business. Hundreds of hospitals have done so in the last week or so. What’s scary is that we’re not just talking about cosmetic surgeries here. Depending on the hospital, we’re talking about pacemaker implants, liver biopsies, arterial clot removals - not exactly what most people would think of as “elective.”
it may(?) be too soon to tell.
from the eu’s cdc
… no data are available with respect to the ability of antibodies elicited by vaccines under development to neutralise this variant. As mentioned above, the new virus variant displays several mutations in the spike protein… [and] most of the new candidate vaccines are based upon the spike protein sequence. It is therefore essential to monitor changes in the spike protein among the circulating SARS-CoV-2 strains and assess possible antigenic changes… results are expected in the coming weeks.
One of my wife’s friends needs surgery for a broken knee: we’re not sure if she’ll get in or not.
It might be worthwhile to look for an ASC - Ambulatory Surgical Center - instead of a hospital. An ASC is like a stand-alone surgical facility outside of a hospital. ASCs don’t have ICUs or ERs, so their COVID burden is almost nonexistent. The two questions for your wife’s friend are: 1. Do they perform the needed procedure (some knee surgeries require overnight stays, not supported by ASCs) and 2. Does her health insurance cover it. They often do, because ASCs are less expensive than hospitals.