Nothing will work except herd immunity.

Herd immunity would happen faster if more people took the vaccine, with a lot fewer people dying. It isn’t impossible.

I won’t be taking any vaccine. No siree

hank wrote:

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/19/coronavirus-dr-fauci-says-vaccinating-pe...

So give ‘em fake vaccines?

It’s a very aggressive virus, very efficient at spreading.

Quote:

In August, an estimated 460,000 visitors from all across the country entered the city of Sturgis, South Dakota, for the annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, despite other large events being canceled due to the pandemic. By the end of the month, Sturgis attendees began testing positive for COVID-19 and by early September, a working paper from the IZA Institute of Labor Economics said the 10-day event may have led to nearly 267,000 cases across the country.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/south-dakota-nurse-dying-covid-patients-d...

https://www.stltoday.com/lifestyles/health-med-fit/coronavirus/can-first...

EXCERPT

Quote:

…
… For a start, figuring out what’s needed to achieve herd immunity with COVID-19 vaccines involves a range of factors, several of which are unknown.

What is the rate of the spread of the COVID-19-causing virus?

*Will the first vaccines deployed be able to stop transmission of the virus, or just stop people getting ill? *

How many people in a population will accept a vaccine? Will vaccines offer the same protection to everyone?

“Herd immunity is sometimes wrongly understood as individual protection,” said Josep Jansa, an expert in health emergency preparedness and response at the Stockholm-based European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).

“It’s inappropriate to think ‘I will not be affected myself because there is herd immunity.’ Herd immunity refers to community protection, not to how an individual is protected.”

The ECDC uses an estimated herd immunity threshold of 67% for its models, while Chancellor Angela Merkel said this month that COVID-19 restrictions in Germany could be lifted if 60% to 70% of the population acquired immunity, either via a COVID-19 vaccine or through infection.

World Health Organization experts have also pointed to a 65%-70% vaccine coverage rate as a way to reach population immunity through vaccination.

“The idea of herd community is to protect the vulnerable,” said Eleanor Riley, a professor of immunology and infectious disease at the University of Edinburgh. “And the idea behind it is that if, say, 98% of a population have all been vaccinated, there will be so little virus in the community that the 2% will be protected. That’s the point of it.”…

Emphasis added

Hi everyone, posting vaccine related news here is fine, but please try to reserve your personal opinions. Prior conversations about the pro/anti-vaccine controversy have not ended up well here. Thanks a lot.

Surely the whole concept of “herd immunity” went out the window when it was found that any so called “immunity” is very short lived! I personally know 2 people (health care workers) that have had covid Twice! the second time around is actually quite bad too, Much worse than the first

I apologize for not answering some of your questions about my experience. Please be patient. I am still struggling trying to adjust being home….BUT, I am getting better and will try to update ASAP. Seems I have been taking my previous independence for granted. Thanks for your well wishes.

@ Katherine Alicia

Im SURE I could not survive it again even if it was the same…….. it took all I had the first round!! Please wear your mask!!

This is something called ensemble forecast from CDC, which combines each of the independently developed forecasts into one aggregate forecast to improve prediction over the next 4 weeks.

Quote:

7,300 to 16,000 new deaths likely to be reported in the week ending December 12, 2020.

The data used was taken from September 12 through November 14. I you click on the image, on the CDC page you can see a few dozen of teams working on these predictions., B pagano seems to be the most pessimistic with 14000, on the other hand Iowa state University 8000. Even Wal-mart has a team on that list

Interesting paper from Spain found out that statistically speaking, if you get your stuff delivered (online), your chances of getting infected are almost twice as much as for people who buy their stuff on-site. Wiping stuff down you get from a market reduced chances by 94%. Not sure how reputable this paper is but very interesting.

Quote:

The home delivery acquisition of these products compared to the on-site shopping doubled the risk of contracting the disease, according to the odds ratio.

On the other hand, that study from Spain didn’t control for how often the respondents were exposed to the public overall, and how many people they were exposed to at once, which could skew the outcomes quite a bit. It’s difficult for me to understand why food delivery would be more likely to infect me than going to the store to buy food, with all those people sneezing, coughing, and refusing to distance. Not to mention handling the register/payment machine.

Experts in the US are no longer recommending that groceries be wiped down.

Washington Post Article

Chicago Tribune Article

Quote:

why food delivery would be more likely to infect

I’d guess because the delivery storeroom and loading dock and delivery trucks get visited by many employees, all huffing and puffing from carrying products and assembling shipping boxes.
Or working in a kitchen around open containers, for home delivery of cooked food.

There are a lot of reports of grocery store employees being likely to catch and spread the virus. More contact, more virus load spread around.

I’d rather pick out my own purchases, and wipe down the handle of the shopping cart with sanitizer I bring myself.

Just speculating mind you.

hank wrote:

Quote:

why food delivery would be more likely to infect

I’d guess because the delivery storeroom and loading dock and delivery trucks get visited by many employees, all huffing and puffing from carrying products and assembling shipping boxes.
Or working in a kitchen around open containers, for home delivery of cooked food.

There are a lot of reports of grocery store employees being likely to catch and spread the virus. More contact, more virus load spread around.

I’d rather pick out my own purchases, and wipe down the handle of the shopping cart with sanitizer I bring myself.

Just speculating mind you.

Yeah, that’s a reasonable speculation. I would rather buy my food at the store, too, but hauling it home for the last several months is doing serious damage to my arthritic knees, and I can’t do that anymore if I can help it. I will still go to the store every weekend to buy certain things, but I need to lighten my load. Now, I can be exposed to the virus through both in-store shopping and home delivery. Yipee!

On a more positive note, there’s a story posted on the CNN website today about a helicopter crew that discovered a large, rectangular monolith sticking out of the desert in Utah. See it here: Monolith Article

This explains why I woke up today with a taste for tapir. Now, I have to sign off, before my computer tries to kill me.

All these worlds are yours, except Europa. Attempt no landings there.

“I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.”

“I enjoy working with people.”

- HAL9000

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/11/24/938375308/vaccine-e...

EXCERPT

Quote:

… “One of the questions that I’m asked all the time is, ‘Hey, doc, which vaccine are you waiting for?’ And the answer is … I’m going to take any of those vaccines that’s made available to me that’s authorized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration,” he says. “Don’t overthink it. Don’t wait. Get what vaccine you can.”
…
Hotez urges people to continue physical distancing and wearing masks.

“Don’t be lax with it now, especially with the holidays,” he says. “It’s especially tragic if one of your loved one loses their life or has permanent, long-lasting injury during this period because it’s just a matter of staying disciplined for the next couple of months and getting them to the other side.”

Hotez’s forthcoming book is Preventing the Next Pandemic: Vaccine Diplomacy in a Time of Anti-Science

========
and
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/11/24/937178668/are-more-...

Are More Lockdowns Inevitable Or Can Other Measures Stop The Surge?
November 24, 2020

EXCERPT
========

Quote:

… . for the dark weeks ahead, the scattershot approach to the pandemic — where each state or region is left to sort out the trade-offs — will likely define the U.S. public health response.

“We’re going to see a sputtering of shutdowns in the same way that we saw only haphazard shutdowns in March, April and May,” says Dr. Michael Mina, a professor at Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, who has advocated for a nationwide rapid testing program.

“My concern is this is going to lead to the worst of all options, where we’re going to have massive economic destruction and the virus is barely going to be dented at a national level.”

Lockdowns work — but at a price

To see a place that’s returned to strict lockdown, look to New Mexico.

Calling it a “matter of life and death,” Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham ordered residents to shelter-in-place on Nov. 16, and closed all “non-essential” businesses for two weeks (this does not include big box retailers).

Broad lockdowns do work as a measure of last resort, says Ana Bento, an assistant professor at the School of Public Health at Indiana University.

It’s the simplest, most blunt tool to break the chain of transmission, which reduces the probability of people getting infected and lightens the load on the health care system.

“That’s the whole purpose of it,” Bento says.

Hat tip to Soylent News:

Quote:

| Researchers Identify Features that Could Make Someone a Virus Super-Spreader | | from the here’s-looking-achoo,-kid dept. | | posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday November 24, @11:19 (Science) | | https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=20/11/23/2333238 |
———————————————————————————————————————————————

[0]upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

[1]Researchers identify features that could make someone a virus
super-spreader:

In a study appearing this month in the journal Physics of Fluids, researchers in UCF’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering used computer-generated models to numerically simulate sneezes in different types of people and determine associations between people’s physiological features and how far their sneeze droplets travel and linger in the air. They found that people’s features, like a stopped-up nose or a full set of teeth, could increase their potential to spread viruses by affecting how far droplets travel when they sneeze….. … … “This is the first study that aims to understand the underlying ‘why’ of how far sneezes travel,” Kinzel says. “We show that the human body has influencers, such as a complex duct system associated with the nasal flow that actually disrupts the jet from your mouth and prevents it from dispersing droplets far distances.”

Journal Reference:
D. Fontes, J. Reyes, K. Ahmed, et al. A study of fluid dynamics and human
physiology factors driving droplet dispersion from a human sneeze,
Physics of Fluids (DOI: [2]10.1063/5.0032006)
….

hank wrote:

Says it all. Thank you.
I hope other Joe’s read this.

hank wrote:

I wish Joe a speedy recovery so he can get back to his job at the factory…

Can i get my 1:51 back…NO!

And yet, the Centers for Disease Control in the USA will probably shorten their quarantine recommendation to just seven to ten days, for people who test negative after seven to ten days in quarantine.

Article

Quote:

Mitchell Tsai
Virus researcher at Harvard Medical School in 1980s

Improved hygiene has dropped US flus to 1-2% of last-year’s levels (48 lab-reported cases last week, versus ~3,000 last year).

Covid is so much more infectious than flu…that Covid hygiene makes it very hard for influenza to spread.

https://www.quora.com/q/coronavirus?__ni__=0&__nsrc__=4&__snid3__=143026...

Yeah, there were initial fears that the intersection of COVID-19 and the flu season would be absolutely overwhelming to the medical system.
Thankfully, the measures we’re taking for the coronavirus are just as effective for stymying the seasonal flu.

@hank, your last two posts look like this in Firefox. (latest version)
You might want check out an image host like imgbb.com. I started using imgbb because some people were telling me they couldn’t see my images.

Looks like hank is posting Facebook images, which I can see fine, but clearly not everyone can.

@hank, I’m running Firefox ESR 52.9.0 (32 bits) and lately I’m having problems with some Imgur links. But your last two pictures are perfectly visible for me.

raccoon city wrote:

Looks like hank is posting Facebook images, which I can see fine, but clearly not everyone can.

Henk4U2 wrote:

@hank, I’m running Firefox ESR 52.9.0 (32 bits) and lately I’m having problems with some Imgur links. But your last two pictures are perfectly visible for me.

Bad news guys, I found the issue, and it’s not a compatibility problem. It’s a tracking-your-a$s problem. I have a plugin that cripples Facebooks ability to track my activity on BLF. If you can see hank’s images, facebook is watching you.

Oops, I’ll try to find an intermediate host. You mean not everyone in the world has a Facebook account? My gosh. My bad.

Let’s see if Postimage works:

https://postimg.cc/gallery/tYWrT6k

In other news: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/doctors-warn-about-eye-damage...

I do have a facebook account. The problem isn’t a matter of being logged into facebook or not. (I actually am logged in to FB.) It’s a matter of dirty tactics used by Facebook to see everyone on BLF.