“There has been no real science behind the IHU’s publications for years,” says one of the doctors interviewed. “The results presented must correspond to the hypotheses made by Didier Raoult. If not, the people concerned may be publicly devalued and their competence questioned,”
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If you think this is bad, just wait until we get some honest accounting from Florida.
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Good for Africa so far, but it would be really nice if we could figure this thing out.
Of course cases in Africa still might explode at any time. Back in February scientists were trying to figure out why cases in India had dropped to very low levels even before any vaccines had been administered. Then they ended up having an extremely bad April and May. And now they’re way back down below the rates in the US and Europe again. There are obviously some important factors we don’t fully understand yet.
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I miss simpler times when athletes were concerned about trying to hide PED and/or recreational drug use using gadgets like the Whizzinator as opposed to concealing their antivax fuckery and putting their contacts at risk.
Don’t wanna vax? That is really fucking dumb and incredibly selfish, but to go past that and fake your vaccination status is some sociopathic bullshit on an exponentially worse level.
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This issue is also about sponsorships and how long covid can affect athletic performance too.
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Austria are to make vaccine mandatory.
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I would not wish long covid on anyone, but I think it would be hilarious if Brown or Rodgers lost major $$$ over this.
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The models have been around for a while which predicted what is happening in the last months.
Basically, the RKI said in July “if we reach 95 % vaccination rate in late autumn, we’re gonna be fine”, and also predicted the alternatives.
Guess what?
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I think it’s actually a pretty easy puzzle to solve. Third World countries don’t have fancy vaccines and fancy medicines, so they have to use low-tech methods to keep disease away - and they have had plenty of horrendous epidemics to practice this on, so they know how serious it is and they know that they can’t afford to loosen their restrictions. Masks and social distancing are cheap or free. As it happened, these methods are much more effective against COVID than the fancy medications and the vaccines that the First World staked everything on. Also, the West hasn’t had a huge pandemic in about 100 years, so they’ve forgotten how serious it is.
Another factor - in the West, illness and death is highly sanitized and kept well away from the public, and even from family members. In a Third World country, the family members can see the full horror of a death from infectious disease firsthand, and so can most of the rest of the public, so they are much more likely to be careful.
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I’ve seen a lot of news articles about this (including the one I linked to) that suggest that mask wearing and social distancing is not more prevalent in these poor countries than in rich ones, and if was simply a matter of “poor countries tend to be better about masking” or “poor countries are better at maintaining strict lockdowns” then I don’t think we’d have so many puzzled public health experts.
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Not exactly. If 90%+ of people had vaccinated as soon as they were available, we would probably be done with this. It’s only because a significant pool of unvaccinated people remain that we’re still dealing with this disease as a pandemic.
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I bet they don’t have antimask protesters in those countries, though, or people purposely fighting for their right to NOT take COVID precautions.
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Not sure that’s a good bet. The US certainly isn’t an example for anyone to follow, but we’re far from alone in having a portion of our population who hate to follow rules about masking, social distancing and lockdowns.
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Here’s an odd one at the intersection of education and COVID. The Ontario 
Ministry of Education (run not by an educator but by a poli-sci grad) has decided to return to the regular 4 class per day schedule for high schools in February next year. They had been doing 2 classes a day, alternating pairs of classes every week.
Now… despite Ontario’s case rate nearly doubling to 4.3/100k (daily) since Hallowe’en, the rate in our local school board has remained fairly low. Fewer than 10% of Peel schools are reporting cases of COVID, which is far better than expected given our province’s rapid case rate increase in August.
Overall in the province, however, the number of outbreaks in day care and elementary schools is quite high, making up about half of the outbreak events currently active. With the vaccines in rolling out for the 5-12 age group, though, we might have a glimmer of hope. An Austrian-style vaccine mandate is probably not in the cards.
Let’s hope this 2-class per day arrangement for high schools wasn’t decisive for limiting COVID. What it certainly was was ineffective for learning. All-afternoon gym class notwithstanding, the week break between classes has been taking a toll on student’s understanding, at least if my pair are anything to go by.
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While I cannot say I have heard of those issues with Covid, there are certainly those fighting against other vaccination programs in Africa with claims that there are “female hormones” in the DTaP and polio vaccines seeking to demasculinize the boys or some such.
Before clicking through, be aware I am including this idiot antivaccine site only to show that I am not making this shit up, because it certainly seems like it could not possibly be a real thing. Sadly, it very much is.
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What part of you work for us now do they not understand?
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