A Facebook acquaintance of mine (a foreigner residing in Japan) is trying to get people to sign a petition to stop the Japanese government from instituting vaccine passports with the following nonsense.
Probably not going to be Facebook acquaintances for much longer.
Tell them some rando in America said they sound dumb. Bakatare is the closest Japanese word I can think of, but that’s not precisely what I mean. I mean just plain old dumb.
Here’s what I already told them. I imagine that conversations like this must be happening every second of every minute of the day on Facebook…
In reply to a tweet saying “We promise to leave the rapping to Nikki Minaj if she leaves medicine to doctors and scientists”:
Classic Russian issue: high-quality, solid science, let down by corruption, lack of care, and lack of interest in quality when it comes to the application.
Christ, what an asshole.
I’m kind of kicking myself for not keeping better notes on the spread of COVID-19 in my kids’ region’s schools during waves 2 and 3. Ontario 
has been doing better with the 4th wave than Alberta, but case rates are still well ahead of last summer’s second wave, even with vaccination. The flatter curve for the first week of September might hint that, mid-August to the end of summer holidays, things have been coming under control.
This year the variant is Delta, spreading in an un-vaccinated under-12 population and a ~68% (fully) vaccinated high school population.
After 1 week open, we have 6% of our regional schools reporting cases and closing classrooms.
One of kids’ principals was on the voice-spam yesterday, sounding quite tired, reporting the first case of COVID at their high school.
I offer her my sincere Crocs and Snares.
And, ya know, maybe some hot sauce.
For this I guess I’ll go with some variation of “Nobody could possibly have foreseen…”
Generally a pretty hyperspecific paper, but there is an important takeaway. This is the first paper I have seen to document neurovascular changes after covid.
“The morphological differences may be due to the neuroinvasion and neuroinflammation potential of SARS-CoV-2, while the vascular differences may be due to hypercoagulation and enhanced thrombosis,” Semra Tiryaki Demir, MD, FEBO, said at the virtual Euretina congress.
So what? Well, the retina is essentially an extension of the brain, and this may be an indication of how the loss of cognitive abilities documented as “covid fog” and “cognitive decline” are occurring.
Maybe a bit in the weeds, but intriguing if it pans out as a possible target for therapy. And an idication of why “natural immunity” is a really, really bad idea.
I am conflicted on this. As a HCW frequently and intensely exposed, I would very much like to get whatever protection I can get. OTOH, I also understand the rationale of “get everybody vaccinated once before you come back for thirds.” OTTH, I really. really don’t want to get this thing, and not sure that less utilization here will actually make for more vaccine availability where it is truly needed.
God, I hate this timeline. It sucks on every possible level.
I’ve been listening in to the call this afternoon. Very little of the discussion was about “saving” the vaccine for places where it is truly needed, and that didn’t seem to drive the vote. The majority that voted no mostly did so because of the lack of data justifying it for most age groups, and the very sparse safety data for adverse events to a third dose. The Pfizer representatives on the call were unable to provide satisfactory answers to a number of their questions, especially when it comes to extrapolating safety data from older groups to younger groups.
You may be glad to know that, as of just a few seconds ago, they did vote to approve an EUA to allow the boosters to be given to individuals 65 and older, as well as “individuals at high risk of severe Covid-19.” There was some talk about whether or not HCWs are included in that second category and they’re currently discussing fine-tuning the language in the near future to clarify that. Sounds like maybe you can get it that way?
Edit: and now the group just did a new vote to explicitly include HCWs and others at high risk of occupational exposure” to be included in the EUA. So sounds like you’re covered now.
Man, listening in live to this decision process is really like seeing sausage get made. It’s amazing how ad-hoc so much of this seems to be, including how this addition of HCWs to the EUA was treated as a last-minute afterthought, with literally 5 or 10 minutes of discussion.
I guess there has to be some incentive to watch a game against Scunthorpe.
