Coronavirus (way, way, off topic)

[NeverDie]

@berkseo said in Coronavirus (way, way, off topic):

Here, vaccination is not very popular, many are in no hurry to get vaccinated.

That's what I've heard, and that's why I thought Hek might have a chance at getting vaccinated there. I mean, if there's more than ample supply vs demand, then why not vaccinate anyone who shows up and wants it? It's a win-win for everybody. It appears to be as effective as the Moderna or Pfeizer vaccines.

The Chinese vaccine is reportedly effective against the Brazilian variant. If I had the choice I maybe would have gotten that one, but it wasn't on the local menu.

[NeverDie]

Both Pfeizer and Moderna are working on "booster" shots to supplement against virus's (e.g. the South African one) that their regular vaccine is much less effective against. No timeline on availability. Because there are 90+ variants to contend with, I get the impression that we're at the end of the beginning of the pandemic much more than the beginning of the end.

Meanwhile, people here have gotten tired of PPE and social distancing, and the state government just recently removed the laws mandating it, so I'm seeing less of it now than I did a year ago. The roads are full of cars again, and local retail businesses seem almost as full of people as they were in December 2019. A month ago everyone walking around the neighborhood where I live was wearing a mask. And now, starting this week, literally no one is. It's as though someone flipped a switch. It really boggles the mind. The groupthink error seems to be that falling infection/death rates mean that PPE is no longer needed rather than it was highly useful and the reason for the decline. :face_palm: Go figure.

[Nca78]

@NeverDie yeah the timing is pretty bad in the US while you are only a few months away of immunity with the fastest vaccination program except Israel. Letting the virus spread free again now is taking a lot of risks of seeing new variants that vaccines can't prevent, and making everything useless...

Here in Vietnam only 200 000 doses of AZ were received yet, only 30 millions are secured until now so only 15% of population will be vaccinated this summer. Local vaccines are still in clinical trials so won't be here before the end of the year, they probably will be the game changers here are they will allow mass availability and very low cost allowing a mass vaccination campaign.
But we still have a different situation, an outbreak of the UK variant has been found in the North end of January, they are still fighting with it but usual isolation of cases & contacts are showing their efficiency: in the last days the only new cases found were already in isolation so there was no risk of spread. There was also an outbreak here in Saigon in the team managing the freight at airport, it was contained in 2 weeks...

Nearly normal life here, everything is opened, but still many people are wearing masks, temperature is checked before entering public places like shops and restaurants. Masks are mandatory in closed places: elevators, shops, etc ... sounds overkill with no community transmission but it has shown efficiency when an outbreak occurs (many border jumpers with China, Cambodia, Laos), it limits the spread of the virus until people are tested, and shortens the contact tracing.

Wish all countries had the same strict measures than Vietnam, this pandemic would be long over like SRAS.

[Nca78]

@NeverDie said in Coronavirus (way, way, off topic):

@hek If you hop across over to Russia, you might be able to get inoculated with Sputnik V. Although it was initially greeted in the West with skepticism, it has since gotten thumbs up from a proper peer review in Lancet.

Read an article in a French newspaper yesterday about French people getting vaccinated with Sputnik in Russia while they were not supposed to be accepted at vaccination centres. But it seems it depends on the centers, and rules can change from one day to the other.

The problem of Sputnik V is they have a low production capacity at the moment, and that's the same problem than with all the vaccines. They're selling it everywhere but in the end like all other vaccines when countries start buying millions there will be delays due to production bottlenecks. They're signing deals with other countries to produce it but it will take time to get real mass production, and by that time other vaccines suppliers might have solved their production problems.

For the Chinese vaccine last time I read something about it there were doubts about the efficiency, Coronavac used in Brazil has shown poor efficiency against their local variant. Wouldn't rely on it for my vaccination :P

[NeverDie]

@Nca78 said in Coronavirus (way, way, off topic):

Here in Vietnam only 200 000 doses of AZ were received yet, only 30 millions are secured until now so only 15% of population will be vaccinated this summer.

Not sure if you saw this, but if not, South Africa actually halted distribution of AZ after they received a million doses because from their testing they found it not much better than placebo against the South African variant:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/07/world/africa/covid-vaccine-astrazeneca-south-africa.html

I wonder if other countries are thoroughly vetting their vaccines as well or whether they're just taking them on faith and sending them into immediate distribution. Either way the truth would come out eventually, but more testing after the doses are in hand means more delay for sure. As long as it isn't directly killing people, I don't see the downside of inoculating people with it in case it turns out to have some benefits in the more severe cases. It's already a sunk cost, and surely it does no good just sitting on the shelf.

Or is it that they're trying to avoid a possibly useless vaccine somehow interfering with a better vaccine that may become available in the future?

Anyhow, it's great to hear the updates directly from everyone about life and the pandemic in your respective countries. :smile:

[Nca78]

@NeverDie The study is only about "mild or moderate" illness, as long as there is a decent effect on severe cases, hospitalization and death, it's still worth distributing. And it is a preprint only, done on a low number of cases so it's a bit far fetched to draw some final conclusions from that.
AZ is very efficient against "old" variants and UK variant, and until now that's all we've seen arriving in Vietnam, so it's already a great progress if we can limit transmission of those variants. If people are less severely ill, it also means than in addition to limit the overload of hospitals people are less contagious (shown by all studies on this subject until now), so it will still slow down the spread of the virus, even for variants for which it can't really protect against.

And yes probably they don't want to use AZ in SA because the interaction with other vaccines is not known, so using AZ when the vast majority of cases in your country have a variant against which people will have a low protection is a loss of chances for people in the future. In their situation it's logic. But for most of the world where this variant is in minority in declared cases using AZ vaccine makes sense, it will help limit the propagation of the virus and limit the risk of seeing new variants appear.

[NeverDie]

Reporting back: My second vaccination was literally "drive through". You drive to the site, roll down your window, a nurse injects you in the arm that's facing the window, and like that, you're done. Very easy if you happen to drive a car.

Here, just this week, we've transitioned from vaccine shortage to a relatively large vaccine surplus: thanks to ramping production, supply exceeds demand. So, they're moving from mass vaccination, like what I had, to pushing the vaccine down to smaller medical clinics to reach more people.

I hear that in Russia, which has had a domestic surplus for quite some time, they're now paying citizens to get vaccinated. I hope we switch to that as well, because something like 25-33% of the population here doesn't want to be vaccinated, even though it's totally free for everyone. That idea isn't something even being talked about yet, let alone debated, and it may not fly politically. Fortunately, the vaccine really does seem to work quite well, and as evidence of that grows, I'm hoping more of the hesitant population will change their minds and decide to get vaccinated after all.

IIRC, back when smallpox vaccinations were deployed in a worldwide effort to eradicate smallpox, they were mandatory for everyone. So, if the political will for it exists, there is at least that as precedent. More likely they'll just make life inconvenient for those who aren't vaccinated by issuing vaccine "passports" for those who have been vaccinated. Because of the prior shortage, that hasn't happened yet, and perhaps it will remain just a theoretical option.

[NeverDie]

I'm presently sick with Covid-19, as confirmed by Abbott Lab's BinaxNow home test kit. I'm fully vaccinated plus boosted, yet I'm definitely feeling it. With society's return to normal here, Covid-19 is spreading like wildfire. Given that, I suppose contracting it is practically inevitable. Politicians here just seem to assume that the healthcare infrastructure can handle whatever happens--no real accountability for public policy decisions except for the next election cycle, and probably not even then because people have short memories.For instance, current hospital triage policy treats everyone (vaccinated and non-vaccinated alike) the same, with the result being that the non-vaccinated can displace some vaccinated people from getting critical care at a hospital. In some regions this is already happening. It's one thing for someone who opts out to accept higher risk for themselves, but this shows adverse outcomes can be spread beyond just themselves in a very concrete way. Yet, no one is willing to talk about this, let alone change policy.

For those of you in other countries, how is it there now?

[Nca78]

@NeverDie hello and happy new year ! I hope you will get well soon, but with 3 shots it should not last too long and you are safe for long term effects of covid.

In Vietnam there are a few "antivax" but they are a small minority. Especially here in Saigon where Delta hit really hard during the summer and everyone saw the overloaded hospital in Saigon, with people treated outside (filling up courts and parkings) on military beds and barely protected from tropical rain by tarpaulins, all while looking at corpses getting evacuated in plastic bags. Really terrible images, it was like a bad movie... Now 99+% of adult population in Saigon is fully vaccinated, 95+% of 12-17 yo old also and booster shots are progressing fast too with most 50+ already done.
The virus is under control at the moment with numbers falling (less than 500 new cases daily for 10 millions people), but Omicron had not spread yet due to strict border control and quarantine. It's arrived in the country though, so we will see how it spreads and if it can fill hospitals in a nearly completely vaccinated population and with nearly all fragile population having received a booster.
With nearly everyone vaccinated there is no need for prioritizing now it got under control.

In France situation is different, there is no "selection" based on covid patients vaccination status, but a lot of people with other conditions had surgeries delayed because of the Omicron wave. Around half of hospital admissions for covid are unvaccinated people (for only around 10% of unvaccinated population), and as they usually have more severe conditions and stay longer in hospital in critical care units 2/3 of people are unvaccinated. For only 10% of adult population (and an even tinier fraction in the 60+ age range) this is shockingly high.
So basically the unvaccinated are taking the beds of non-covid patients who might lose chances to survive, there are people having important surgeries like brain tumor removal delayed :(

The good news is that even if it now mostly fails to protect from Omicron contamination, the vaccine is very efficient against severe forms of covid, and unless you have immunodeficiency and/or very severe co morbidities you basically can't end up in hospital, in the worse case you have some traditional flu symptoms.

[chey]

Homemade HCQ Recipe

For anyone who needs a little extra help. I've found this to work myself. Take at the first sign of symptoms and stop taking once better.

https://www.nutritruth.org/single-post/home-recipe-for-hydroxychloroquine-hcq

[NeverDie]

@chey In which country are you? According to Wikipedia, it was recommended in 2021 for mild cases in India. Perhaps it still is?

I've heard first-hand reports that in Russia anti-coagulants are distributed for free to people who test positive for Covid. Well, for Delta, not sure about Omicron. That isn't the case here in the US, where most medicines just aren't available without a prescription.

We've been lucky that omiccron has been milder than the rest. Luck isn't a good strategy though. It makes sense to have a plan in place in case the next variant to come down the pike is far worse. The cost of preparedness is pretty low. For instance, I just recently purchased a FoodSaver vacuum sealer, for storing emergency rations, after witnessing how some rations degrade surprisingly quickly without it. This time around I'll be vacuum sealing with a desiccant, just like preserving a partially used roll of 3D printer filament. At the moment sachets of food safe desiccant are cheap and easy to come by, but it wouldn't take much of a change in demand to make it hard to come by. I purchased my Abbott Labs BinaxNow Covid test kits in August at around $20 each from Amazon. Now you can't find them on Amazon at any price, not even to backorder them, and they sell for $130 on ebay. And so it goes. Chance favors the prepared. Compared to the price of health insurance, the cost of all this is just a rounding error.

If it weren't for the savvy of the vaccine makers, we'd be in a heap of trouble. I give credit for vaccines to the companies that developed and manufactured them, not the government. About the only thing the government here did right was to secure enough of the vaccine for its own citizenry and perhaps help in the distribution of it by making it available to everyone for free. But something is clearly broken here when so many are refusing to get vaccinated for free. I just don't understand it.

[Nca78]

@chey given the same website has completely whacky stuff (like this: https://www.nutritruth.org/single-post/technological-parasitism-covid-vaccines-appear-to-contain-self-assembling-nano-octopus-microparti ) I wouldn't trust any "recipe" they share to cure anything... If you've done a few battery powered sensors you can easily realize that it would be impossible to make and then power mechanical and electronic structures small enough to go through the needle used for vaccines ;)

And regarding HCQ:

• quinine is not the same at all, so even if the recipe proposed was really producing quinine in sufficient quantities, it wouldn't make anything acting like HCQ
• HCQ has been proved inefficient long ago by many widescale studies. Initial proponent of the drug (Didier Raoult in France) has cheated in his initial study to make it appear efficient, but without cheating it was not at all. Main cheats were 1) the only death was in the HCQ group and the patient was removed from the study for no valid reason 2) PCR tests for HCQ group were done with fewer amplification cycles (meaning they were far less likely to end up positive) and performed on different days than initially planned in the study description
• in next studies, Raoult carefully avoided to have a control group so there was no good comparison possible, he just compared results of young people (average age 40) able to stand waiting hours in front of his hospital to get tested, and result of 60+ yo admitted in critical care in other hospitals. And the most ridiculous is his hospital has no critical care unit, patients in critical condition are sent in other hospitals and die there so he never had to account for them in his statistics, the only deaths were those with health degrading too fast to be transferred.
• opposite to what is claimed in the document (which looks pretty old...), even Trump doesn't believe in it any more, and was not treated with it but with cures that had proved their efficiencies.

[chey]

@NeverDie @Nca78

Don't read to much into what I posted.

Even if you don't believe all the HCQ hype in that article you can easily lookup yourself the health benefits of grapefruit and lemon peel.

That information may provide useful to someone here as it did for me, which is why I wanted to share it. :slightly_smiling_face:

[NeverDie]

Because the number of hospital admissions for Covid-19 is, as of today, is at an all-time high where I live, local government has reluctantly instituted its strictest protocols (Stage 5) for dealing with it. Of note, there's no mention of hand washing or hand sanitizers, or any form of surface transmission, such as doorknobs or other physical objects. That's a big difference from the beginning of the pandemic. Remember all the worry about how long the virus could live on various surfaces? Was all that completely baseless?

Here are the current, maximum strictness rules (there is no higher level of strictness, not even theoretically):

• Under Stage 5, if you're not fully protected with both initial vaccines and a booster shot, you should:
  Avoid indoor and outdoor gatherings.
  Avoid all travel.
  Only participate in takeaway and curbside dining.
  Only participate in curbside shopping.

• If you're fully vaccinated and boosted but at low-risk for severe symptoms you should:
  Wear a mask for all indoor and outdoor gatherings.
  Wear a mask when traveling.
  Wear a mask when dining outdoors. Also, only dine indoors, wearing a mask, at places that require vaccinations and masks.
  Wear a mask when shopping.

• If you're fully vaccinated and boosted but at high-risk for severe symptoms you should:
  Avoid all indoor and outdoor gatherings.
  Avoid all nonessential travel.
  Wear a mask when dining outdoors. Dine indoors, wearing a mask, only at places that require vaccinations and masks.
  Avoid all shopping, apart from takeaway and curbside.

That's it! That's my local government's official policy for maximum containment. What counts as an acceptable mask is left undefined. AFAIK, there is no national policy for containment, aside from politely asking people to pretty please get vaccinated, other than temporarily blocking travelers from entering from certain hotspot countries and, perhaps, requiring foreign travelers to be vaccinated before entering.

Remember the 6 foot separation space? Such as at schools? I believe that's been debunked for quite some time now, with the knowledge that 6 feet is not sufficient. Yet, that distance seems to be what's carved in stone and what everyone here still uses, if it's observed at all. And, almost beyond belief, the official position of some educators is that kids do not infect each other in school. Rather, if they get infected, it happens "out in the community", not at schools. :face_palm: What happened to common sense?

Is it this lax in other countries as well? Not much of substance is being done, other than "monitoring the situation." The news media hasn't yet reported that the number of new hospital admissions is now at an all time high--I had to pull that info from a graph on a government website:

Worthy of note is that these are 7 day averages, and the rate of increase is far steeper than before--plainly, this is fast becoming meaningfully worse than previously, though we can't yet see exactly how much worse. I would have thought that news reporters would be primed and ready to jump on a number like that, but instead they're sluggish. :face_palm: Well, we'll see if they notice by tomorrow. :face_with_rolling_eyes: In any case, with such weak public policy, I don't see that there's much to slow it down.

[zboblamont]

@NeverDie If you are experiencing the same as Europe, just as the Delta variant was more infectious, Omicron is worse with a doubling time of 2 days, hence a rapid escalation in cases.
Increased hospitalisations are a side effect of such rapid escalation in numbers, the only saving grace appears to be Omicron is less serious a variant on effects, but it is not benign by any means.
If you look up Prof John Campbell on Youtube you'll find plenty of information on what is happening, although he concentrates more on England, where hospitalisations have gone through the roof (not that you'd know it watching the media - Much as Brexit, Omerta)...
His opinion is none will escape infection, but precautionary measures such as vaccinations and masks will minimise effects and help slow spread to more prevent strain on medical facilities.

[Nca78]

@zboblamont said in Coronavirus (way, way, off topic):

His opinion is none will escape infection, but precautionary measures such as vaccinations and masks will minimise effects and help slow spread to more prevent strain on medical facilities.

Then he's joining the German health minister who declared sometime in November or December that by the end of winter people would be either vaccinated, cured or dead. Vaccinated category might be discarded now with Omicron variant, but clearly it helps staying in second category instead of the third...

@NeverDie for situations I know in other countries there are much more limitations in France where you need full vaccination (and booster shot soon) or fresh test to access most public places, and a law is being discussed to exclude the test and only allow in fully vaccinated people in malls, cinemas, any type of public show, etc etc But in the end Omicron variant started to spread in schools in December, continued in families during Christmas time and now the number of daily cases has been at 3-4 times the previous peak for over a week.
Hospital are full of covid cases, but it seems it's mostly the Delta wave (still running at the same level than in December), where Omicron cases have exploded there have been no meaningful increases in hospital admissions, which is good news.

In Vietnam the situation is much more controlled as I said before: strict border control+quarantine, with no vaccination you get basically nowhere (public places including supermarkets have a mandatory QR code scan at entrance to make sure you're vaccinated, not freshly positive or supposed to be in isolation), even if you are vaccinated you need a fresh negative covid test to take a plane for a local flight, schools have been closed for 8 months (:cry:). And here in Saigon the vaccination campaign for boosters is going full steam, I got mine 3 days ago, most people down to 30 yo had a booster shot in my district now.
Result in only a few hundred cases per day in the city, and 18 000 daily cases (peak but still low for 100 millions people) for the full country where vaccination rate is lower (but still around 80% of total population).
Just checked the number of doses administered in Saigon until yesterday and it's 18,099,453. More than 2 doses per inhabitant, while children under 12 are not vaccinated.

[NeverDie]

Sadly, according to NPR news, if you have to go to the ER in Tucson, Arizona, where I grew up, you now have to wait over 200 hours before a hospital bed frees up for you. That means you're laying on a gurney in a hallway for over 8 days! Plainly an overflow condition, literally.

Worthy of note, according to some European health agencies, is that mixing and matching the vector and mRNA machines may be optimal: https://fortune.com/2021/12/07/mix-and-match-vaccines-heterologous-boosters-pfizer-moderna-jnj-astrazeneca-sputnik-ema-ecdc/ I wasn't aware of this until I specifically went looking for the info. Too much "not invented here" mentality in the US when over the summer we could have been trading Pfeizer and Moderna vaccines for sputnik vaccines and had a true win-win outcome. Compared to both Pfeizer and Moderna, Sputnik protection loses effectiveness more slowly (4x more slowly than Pfeizer and 8x more slowly than Moderena).

[Nca78]

@NeverDie said in Coronavirus (way, way, off topic):

Sadly, according to NPR news, if you have to go to the ER in Tucson, Arizona, where I grew up, you now have to wait over 200 hours before a hospital bed frees up for you. That means you're laying on a gurney in a hallway for over 8 days! Plainly an overflow condition, literally.
Worthy of note, according to some European health agencies, is that mixing and matching the vector and mRNA machines may be optimal: https://fortune.com/2021/12/07/mix-and-match-vaccines-heterologous-boosters-pfizer-moderna-jnj-astrazeneca-sputnik-ema-ecdc/ I wasn't aware of this until I specifically went looking for the info. Too much "not invented here" mentality in the US when over the summer we could have been trading Pfeizer and Moderna vaccines for sputnik vaccines and had a true win-win outcome. Compared to both Pfeizer and Moderna, Sputnik protection loses effectiveness more slowly (4x more slowly than Pfeizer and 8x more slowly than Moderena).

Yes it's been known for some time now that mixing vaccine technologies is a good way to have better immunity. No need for Sputnik it also works with AstraZeneca vaccine, and you had some in the US but never used them.
Here in Vietnam they have mostly AZ and Pfizer but for booster dose they chose the "safe and fast" version: same injection than the second dose so they are sure you won't get an allergic reaction. Not best for personal immunity but faster for mass injections as they can skip the waiting time and process more people daily.

[zboblamont]

@NeverDie The latest update from Prof John Campbell you may find of particular interest since it incorporates the latest data from the US.

Whereas the Omicron variant is indeed causing a massive increase in cases presenting, the hospitalisation, ITU and death rates are markedly different to Delta which is being rapidly supplanted.

On vaccines and immunity some interesting observations also https://youtu.be/TrVGymR-jFU

[NeverDie]

@zboblamont Thanks for posting that youtube. That led me to an even more recent youtube by the same youtuber, where he made the point that because omicron is 1. so incredibly transmissible (in the youtube that you posted he quoted some un-named indian researchers who had declared it to be the most transmissible respiratory virus of all time, even more so than measles) and 2. offers back protection against the Delta variant, then 3. it is effectively helping to snuff-out the proliferation of Delta. That is very good news. Indeed, his analysis suggests contracting omicron is actually a good thing because it's so survivable and because it ultimately trains your immune system to be more resistant to other variants.

For reasons as yet unclear to me he seems to downplay the likelihood of possibly another future surge of a new, highly pathogenic variant (e.g. perhaps less transmissible than omicron, but far worse outcomes). I hope he's right, but unfortunately he didn't lay out an argument for why it is unlikely. Perhaps because after omicron so many people will have a natural resistance to any covid-19 variant, and so there will be a smaller pool of potential hosts for something really nasty to evolve within? Or is there some other Virology 101 explanation for why it would be unlikely?