A flatulent, opinionated uncle who won’t leave. Oh, wait, that would probably be him.
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Is Alberta gunning for Florida’s crown?
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No, it’s for real. Jason Kenney is the Canadian version of [pick one of the top five stupidest Republican governors].
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So do Germany.
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That would be the Beaverton.
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I see they are having the same issues that The Onion is regarding reality exceeding the possibility of parody in these dark times
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It seems that vaccine resistance in Japan isn’t as bad as I had thought. In a recent survey of 2,500 people between the ages of 20 and 60s, they found that only around 10% of young people absolutely refuse to get vaccinated. (12.7% among those in their 20s and 10.1% among those in their 30s). And of the vaccine hesitant, 48.4% said they are willing to change their mind if long-term safety is verified and another 44% said they are willing to change their mind if they get more information about the severity of side effects. That leaves 19.6% (the article seems to have fudged the math by a couple percent here…) who say that they will not change their mind.
Meanwhile, 75.76% of people over 65 are now fully vaccinated, while 86.22% in this age group have had at least one shot.
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That article you linked is not written clearly enough.
The STIKO still does not see enough evidence of a individual benefit plus a public health benefit to
generally recommend the EMA-approved vaccine for the age group down to 12 years. Their recommendation is non-binding. The government now starts actively promoting the vaccination of this age group.
The STIKO is an independent body. Their criteria based on scientific evidence, not politics.
While I personally disagree with their decision not to generally recommend the vaccination, I think they are very thorough. Their focus is different than mine, and definitely not the same as the government. FTR, to stress this: on the side of the government, this is politically motivated move. Elections are on sept. 26th.
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Maybe the sky isn’t falling after all?
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It’s remarkable how different it is in different areas. Locally, we are at 2 covid hospitalizations. Almost like politics decides our fates?
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The nasal vaccine described at the end of the Intelligencer piece sounds promising. First I’ve heard of it.
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It’s been in the works since the first reports of this thing, but live nasal vaccines are much trickier than mRNA or conventional killed virus preps. Look at what happened with Flumist a few years ago, coming in at 2% efficacy. The line between weakened enough to not cause infections but live enough to trigger the necessary immune response is tough to dance. (I still chuckle at the idea of “live” virus vaccines. I personally am in the viruses are life camp, but that is not the mainline view.)
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The article seems to be missing the key differences between the Us and the UK, which mean that the course of the Delta variant wave could be different in each country.
First of all- the Delta variant outbreak over here was clearly driven by younger people getting infected:
(Scotland Figures, but they generalise to the UK reasonably well, apart from the specifics of peak dates)
The onset, peak and decline of these curves are earliest in the 20-24 age group- With older cohorts getting infected later and in smaller numbers.
The big age difference is because younger people were less likely to be vaccinated at this point in time, and herein lies the big difference between the US and the UK. The UK has a national health service, which coordinated the roll-out of vaccines according to age group, on the basis that older people were more vulnerable. This is what the first dose take-up curves look like:
So the population that drove this surge went from largely unvaccinated, to largely vaccinated during the course of this Delta surge. And now second doses are still rolling out:
(Again, Scottish figures, because I have these to hand. Wales is doing slightly better than this, England and the north of Ireland slightly worse)
The USA is different.
Vaccine uptake has already plateaued
The age distribution of the vaccinated isn’t as skewed as it was in the UK.
So more older people are completely unvaccinated, while younger people are in a better place than they were before the UK Delta surge.
Also, there’s more difference between states when it comes to vaccination rates.
So, yeah… The USA is not likely to have the same experience of the Delta variant as the UK did.
It’s likely to last longer as the vaccination rate won’t ramp up so quickly. It’s likely to vary in severity from area to area depending on local vaccination rates and how quickly it spreads. And it’s likely to be more deadly, as a greater proportion of the vulnerable older population are unprotected.
But on the positive side, the UK shows that it’s still possible to make the situation better, as the Delta variant is bearing down on you. The USA has plenty of vaccine supply, so a big push to get people vaccinated as soon as possible will save lives.
P.S. Sorry if this seems like a bit of a rant. I wanted to back up what I was saying with data, and this just grew into a huge post. It’s not meant to be a rant directed at you- if you detect any anger, it’s at the people responsible for all this unnecessary suffering.
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No, this is exactly the sort of analysis backed up by evidence that helps us all understand the local differences.
And we are ALL angry at those people.
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