Thread: Covid 19 C&P

The new mutant, called 501.V2, was announced in Cape Town last Friday and is believed to be a more extreme variant than Britain's new Covid strain which has plunged millions into miserable Christmas lockdowns.

South African doctors say their patients are younger and do not always have other conditions that amplify the virus' effect, but are nonetheless suffering from more severe forms of Covid-19.


Why is South Africa's new variant so scary? UK bans travel to SA (msn.com)

May as well put this here as well.

Coronavirus Rhapsody (Parody of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody) (msn.com)

Denial, then fear. COVID-19 patients in their own words. From the USA.

This is terrible.

Meredith Case: Today was the worst day anyone has ever seen, but tomorrow will be worse. We are on the precipice of rationing. Needless to say, these decisions run counter to everything we stand for and are incredibly painful.
Mary Macdonald: I didn’t choose nursing or the health care field to not help people, and that’s exactly what the choices are that they’re giving us. They’re giving us no choice but to help only the people that they think can survive.
Rob Davidson: In addition to our own safety, some of us have faced—and others will face—decisions we never thought possible in this country. We are making life-or-death decisions not based on research, data and evidence...but based on a lack of ventilators.

Esther Choo: This country is beginning to feel like the devil’s romper room



First Denial, Then Fear: Covid-19 Patients in Their Own Words | WIRED

A coffin maker in Los Angeles is running out of wood to make coffins . Words fail me.

Coffin manufacturer in east Los Angeles is facing a wood shortage amid rising demand due to COVID-19 deaths (msn.com)

Madness in France.

France couldn’t stop the New Year’s parties. One rave drew 2,500 people who fought off the police.







Some of the estimated 2,500 partiers dancing at a New Year’s Eve rave held in a disused hangar near Rennes, France. The party was still going on Friday morning. Credit...Jean-Francois Monier/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Faced with a resurgence of Covid-19 infections, French authorities pulled out all the stops to ensure that France would step into 2021 in safety. An existing nationwide overnight curfew was enforced on New Years’s Eve by some 130,000 police officers; all public celebrations were banned and the government advised to limit private gatherings to six people.

That did not prevent some 2,500 partygoers from attending an illegal New Year rave near the city of Rennes, in northwestern France.
A statement from local authorities said that many of the revelers were still on the site of the illegal party on Friday morning and that police had failed to stop it. Paramedics were deployed around the site to distribute gel and masks in a bid to limit the risks of coronavirus contaminations and prosecutors announced that they opened an investigation into the illegal organization of the event.

Police officers tried to prevent the rave “but faced fierce hostility from many partygoers,” the statement read, adding that stones and bottles were thrown at them and that a police car was set on fire.
The rave near Rennes, and some other large-scale illegal parties throughout France that were broken up by the police, sparked concern about the spread of the coronavirus, as the country still suffers from the second wave of the pandemic.

With more than 2.6 million confirmed cases of coronavirus — the highest number of cases in Europe — and some 65,000 deaths, France has paid a heavy toll to the pandemic.

On Thursday, health authorities announced that a first case of a new coronavirus variant linked to South Africa had been reported in France, while the seven-day average of new daily infections cases has surpassed 13,000 — more than double the government’s daily target of 5,000 new infections to ease restrictions.

To fight back a rise in infections in parts of the country, French authorities on Friday announced that it would bring forward by two hours the nighttime curfew in 15 of France’s 101 departments, or administrative divisions. The curfew will be at 6 p.m. rather than 8 p.m., starting on Saturday.
With hospitals still struggling to cope with the second wave of the pandemic and while authorities fear that end-of-year holiday gatherings will result in a rebound of Covid-19 infections, the French government is under pressure to act.
In a note submitted to the government on Dec. 23 and made public on Tuesday, France’s scientific council — a government advisory body for the Covid-19 crisis — recommended to act swiftly in the face of a “possible” resumption of the pandemic that could soon be “out of control.”

The French government has for the moment ruled out a return to a full lockdown, despite pressure from some local authorities, but Olivier Véran, France’s health minister, warned that a relaxation of the restrictions that have forced bars, restaurants, museums and theaters to close is likely to be delayed.
“At this stage, and depending on the evolution in the coming days, it seems hardly conceivable to lift all the restrictions,” Mr. Véran said.
— Constant Méheut

Panic in the UK.


Britain authorizes mix-and-match vaccinations, but experts warn vaccines may not be interchangeable.












It is far from certain that the vaccines are so interchangeable, several researchers warned.Credit...Andrew Testa for The New York Times

Amid a sputtering vaccine rollout, an onslaught of cases and fears of a new, highly transmissible variant of the coronavirus, Britain has quietly updated its vaccination playbook to allow for a mix-and-match vaccine regimen. If a second dose of the vaccine a patient originally received isn’t available, or if the manufacturer of the first shot isn’t known, health officials said, another vaccine may be substituted.

But it is far from certain that the vaccines are so interchangeable, several researchers warned.
“There are no data on this idea whatsoever,” said John Moore, a vaccine expert at Cornell University. Officials in Britain “seem to have abandoned science completely now and are just trying to guess their way out of a mess.”

In a separate, controversial move, the British government this week also decided to front-load its vaccine rollout, delivering as many first doses to people as possible — a decision that could delay second shots up to 12 weeks.
Britain, which is seeing tens of thousands of new infections reported each day, has issued emergency authorizations for two vaccines, one developed by Pfizer and BioNTech and the other by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca. According to the new guidance, “every effort should be made” to complete a dosing regimen with the same shot first used. But when “the same vaccine is not available, or if the first product received is unknown, it is reasonable to offer one dose of the locally available product” the second time around.
“This option is preferred if the individual is likely to be at immediate high risk or is considered unlikely to attend again,” the recommendations say. Because both vaccines target the spike protein of the coronavirus, “it is likely the second dose will help to boost the response to the first dose.”

The new guidance contradicts guidelines in the United States, where the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has noted that the authorized Covid-19 vaccines “are not interchangeable,” and that “the safety and efficacy of a mixed-product series have not been evaluated. Both doses of the series should be completed with the same product.”
Some scientists say Britain is gambling with its new guidance. “None of this is being data driven right now,” said Dr. Phyllis Tien, an infectious disease physician at the University of California, San Francisco. “We’re kind of in this Wild West.”
— Katherine J. Wu

Trump and Congress’s failure is mostly to blame

When a failure in the US is nationwide, chances are the problem is rooted in a common variable: a systemic factor that’s influencing the behavior of leaders across the country.
Particularly with an infectious disease, a big failure in one part of the country is typically going to result in some level of spread to others. It’s just too difficult, if not impossible, to restrict travel among states, due to the social, legal, and political issues involved. That’s what made a federal strategy so important for every single state — but such a federal plan never came, and the Trump administration and Congress actually pulled back from offering aid to states, counties, and cities as the pandemic progressed.



Everyone failed on Covid-19 (msn.com)

National Cabinet to meet on Friday to discuss mutant UK strain of COVID-19 (msn.com)