COVID-19 Coronavirus Thread

[Nigel]

Mexico has joined in with the Oxford testing, Brazil signing up for supply and manufacture this year.

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico is in talks with the Chinese government and private Chinese laboratories, as well as the University of Oxford and company AstraZeneca about running trials for experimental COVID-19 vaccines, a senior Mexican official said on Monday.

The South American countries seem to have brought their outbreaks more or less under control, the USA isn't trying:

CDC says U.S. has 'way too much virus' to control pandemic as cases surge across country

"What we have in the United States, it's hard to describe because it's so many different outbreaks," said Dr. Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director of the CDC.

www.cnbc.com

“This is really the beginning,” Schuchat said of the U.S.’s recent surge in new cases. “I think there was a lot of wishful thinking around the country that, hey it’s summer. Everything’s going to be fine. We’re over this and we are not even beginning to be over this. There are a lot of worrisome factors about the last week or so.”

Until today their deaths have been dropping, as Trump has been keen to point out while claiming success, but that won't last any longer... "Fauci says new US coronavirus cases could hit 100,000 a day in stark warning to Senate" - that is a lot of hospital space needed!
"Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, warned that the US may never achieve heard immunity for Covid-19, due to many people refusing a vaccine "


Re-reading the USA statement on their vaccine testing, it appears that maybe they were only funding testing, not actually helping with the work, Trump doesn't believe in vaccines.
Back before USA became Trumpland, they used to properly help us with Oxford University miracle cures, Sir Alexander Fleming discovered Penicillin, Oxford turned it into the very first antibiotic, the USA manufactured it for us because we were having problems with the Germans at the time:

 

[SawMaster]

I mentioned here weeks ago that we're screwed here in the US It was easy to see this coming to anyone really living with their eyes open. But even I didn't expect this much this soon and this widespread And once again our screwy way of governing ourselves is beginning to show that it can be good- Many State Governors are talking about 'rolling back' their re-openings, and targeting specific situations where it's been shown the mass infections are coming from. It wouldn't surprise me if some places (maybe every State?) re-enters lockdown and redefines what is truly essential while paying no attention to any voices coming from the White House Then the world will learn what us Southerners call a "hissie-fit" looks like

Phil

 

[kamkar]

Some UK city, cant remember name, but it also had the door slammed on it today after numbers spiking there lately.

 

[SawMaster]

Some UK city, cant remember name, but it also had the door slammed on it today after numbers spiking there lately.

It's got to happen that way. The only way to control this is to identify and isolate where the spikes or outbreaks are ASAP. No economic considerations, no exceptions, no tolerance for anyone not following the rules.

Phil

 

[Nigel]

Some UK city, cant remember name, but it also had the door slammed on it today after numbers spiking there lately.

Much better to lock down 1 city early than have to lock down the entire country. Melbourne has also locked down again but they are doing it on a postcode basis, not the whole city, seems a bit risky considering they have no immunity.

Our counts seem ridiculous at the moment, some days the new cases is only 4x the deaths, I suspect we are counting more flu deaths as covid-deaths than we are real covid deaths, you don't need to test positive to get counted so it's hard to tell what is really happening from the published figures! Best figures are the excess death figures, but they are currently negative.

 

[kamkar]

Yes cant be too careful about this.
I saw a headline yesterday, saying something about something new but similar nasty, dident bother to read it as corona alone have busted up my mood enough ( though it havent really had any effect on daily life for me )

 

[SawMaster]

China has identified a 'swine flu' variant which could transfer to humans and go pandemic. AFAIK no human infections yet, but it only takes the first one Better buy up all the toilet paper now

Phil

 

[kamkar]

Seem like corona have prompted "crazy old cat woman" do start dumping inventory, a lady here opening her garden shed yesterday found 30 cats in there, and no way for them to get in there on their own.

 

[Nigel]

Many State Governors are talking about 'rolling back' their re-openings,...

The trouble with this is that most state governors are totally unqualified and inexperienced for making those decisions, it really should be better for the national experts to at least give direct recommendations to the governors. Clearly that hasn't worked in USA though, made much worse by Trump's destruction of the scientific institutions.

 

[Nigel]

China has identified a 'swine flu' variant which could transfer to humans and go pandemic. AFAIK no human infections yet, but it only takes the first one Better buy up all the toilet paper now

Phil

I read that there were quite a few workers infected, but no human to human infections, hopefully it will stay that way, as I think it normally does, but that is what they said for covid at the start!

 

[kamkar]

China should know like anyone else, of you want good wholesome pigs, you buy Danish pigs

Some pig farmer have even planted a lot of poplar trees in his pig fields as pigs are after all a forest creature, and so 1 up on his pigs health and value.
And really those pig huts in a field, dont look so good, so they now go the way if the electric air wire and will slowly vanish over the next years.
The most popular trees for this use seem to be poplar trees, i think the Americans also call them cottonwood.

 

[SawMaster]

The trouble with this is that most state governors are totally unqualified and inexperienced for making those decisions, it really should be better for the national experts to at least give direct recommendations to the governors. Clearly that hasn't worked in USA though, made much worse by Trump's destruction of the scientific institutions.

Most of the Governor's are getting better advice than the White House gets, and now some of those Governors are acting on their advice instead of playing politics. Especially now that it's becoming clear that there will very likely be a different President after the next election, so nothing is to be gained by being a crony of Trump anymore. In fact it will be seen as a great strength for those who stand up against him and handle this pandemic better than he has which really isn't hard to do given how poorly he's done. But it may be past the point of handling already

Phil

 

[Nigel]

Especially now that it's becoming clear that there will very likely be a different President after the next election,

I've been enjoying the Lincoln Project adverts, was wondering why all these adverts for Bidon exclusively featured Trump, until I realised that they are campaign adverts from Trump's party!

The Lincoln Project

Paid for by The Lincoln Project. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee. www.lincolnproject.us

www.youtube.com

 

[Nigel]

Remdesivir: US buys up almost entire world supply of coronavirus drug, American purchase of 500,000 doses means drug will likely be scarce in rest of the world for months

The figure equates to Gilead’s entire production for July, as well as 90 per cent of its production in both August and September. The US’s decision to stockpile the drug means there will likely be little supply in the rest of the world for several months.

“The Trump Administration is doing everything in our power to learn more about life-saving therapeutics for Covid-19 and secure access to these options for the American people.”

Gilead has been criticised in recent days for its decision to charge $2,340 (£1,990) for a typical remdesivir treatment course for people covered by government health programmes in the US and other developed countries.

Presumably Trump is going to share it out for free to all people around the world that need it?

Mind you, $2,340 seems a lot for a drug that has not been shown to increase survival rates, or improve outcomes in any way!

 

[kamkar]

Trump have been told that 4 out of 6 killed by corona are democrats, so he figure thats good numbers

 

[Nigel]

That matches the numbers better, a believable immunity figure at last, there is hope for an end to the pandemic:

More people have got immunity to coronavirus than antibody tests suggest, according to new research from Sweden.
"Our results indicate that roughly twice as many people have developed T-cell immunity compared with those who we can detect antibodies in," he explained. Analysis of T-cells are more complicated than coronavirus antibody tests, so are usually done in specialist laboratories rather than the mobile testing sites some people showing symptoms will visit.

Soo Aleman, a consultant at Karolinska University Hospital, also said the T-cells were found not just in people who had had the coronavirus, but also their asymptomatic family members. She said around 30% of blood donors in May had those types of immunity cells - "a figure that’s much higher than previous antibody tests have shown".

Countries currently doing well in yellow, badly in blue, the ones with the lower immunity levels tend to be blue:

 

[country_hick]

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=270437234058180

 

[Nigel]

Some UK city, cant remember name, but it also had the door slammed on it today after numbers spiking there lately.

Apparently we are vaccinating people in areas that have spikes as part of the Oxford vaccine trials.

The USA is still supposed to carry out a 30,000 people trial on the Oxford vaccine, but they are not going to start until August, by which time it may be too late, you really want to vaccinate before the virus properly takes off to be able to see the result of the trials! Thankfully Brazil and South Africa haven't wasted time and are currently testing.

California reported 4,046 Covid-19 deaths and 6,800 excess deaths, leaving 41% of the excess deaths unattributed to Covid-19 they said.
Texas and Arizona had wider gaps, with roughly 55% and 53%, respectively, of excess deaths unattributed to Covid-19.

I thought the USA figures looked dodgy, but given that there should be less flu deaths than an average year, seems Texas is only counting about 40% of covid deaths! Is this another Trump strategy like "Slow the testing down please"? How can counting dead bodies be difficult?
Yesterday, USA passed 50,000 new infections per day, time to build some field hospitals!

 

[jokiin]

Is this another Trump strategy like "Slow the testing down please"? How can counting dead bodies be difficult?

today's soundbite was he still thinks it's going to just disappear, he's optimistic, I'll give him that

 

[Nigel]

today's soundbite was he still thinks it's going to just disappear, he's optimistic, I'll give him that

Evolution will take care of it eventually, it is a bit slow and wasteful of lives, but USA will get there eventually!

I think he is waiting for the Oxford vaccine, expecting delivery in October to wipe the virus out in time for celebrations the day before his re-election. Unfortunately the lack of virus in the UK combined with the USA failure to start testing before their new wave of infections has extended the timescale. With the help of Brazil and South Africa he may get it by end of October, but not in time for the vaccinated people to develop immunity from the vaccine, that takes 3 to 4 weeks, so their virus will be wiped out just as Biden takes over.

Trump is going to be in big international trouble for stockpiling the next quarter year's supply of Remdesivir, without doing anything to increase supply:

'The WHO and other groups have said that it's not good to hoard a drug that you don't need...people may argue that we should give it to the countries that need it most,' Dr Caplan said.

'But Trump has made it clear that he is going to provide drugs and vaccines - if they become available - to Americans first. He feels it's the right thing to do and I suspect that there's a little bit of a political motivation, given that there's an election coming up, I'm not surprised at all.'