Modern Vespa

I have not heard it called that yet...!

It is pronounced correctly, but it should be spelled J-A-P-I-E.
Afrikaans pronounces J as a Y - similar to German... Jawohl?

Is anyone taking bets on Jarpie vs Pommie Pox becoming the dominant strain?

The booze ban is aimed at the hordes of revellers on New Years Eve who get motherless by sundown and then continue drinking until sunup.
Then they bus down to the nearest beach for a braai (bbq) and go for a swim...
They lose all sense of decorum and normality, get into brawls and unsafe sex situations and even lose their kids along the way!
We need our medical staff to not be overloaded with trauma cases.
(The price of pineapples and apple juice will go up again as guys who didn't stock up on booze last week make cider again. Yeast will be in short supply too.)

The Brazilian Military Medical Service has an exchange program with South Africa to train their medics in combat wound management. They come over here and work is a few selected hospital's emergency departments. They see more gunshot and knife fights over a peace-time payday weekend than they would see in their military hospitals in a year !

I was once in Charlotte NC talking to a trauma surgeon involved in a mobile hospital program. I showed him a video of how our trauma docs deal with stab wounds in a Western Cape hospital known for its very high success rate in saving victims of stabbings.

(Sensitive reader warning - Vivid description follows...!)

The doctors cut the soft muscle between two ribs and gain access to the punctured heart. One doc finds the hole, sticks his gloved finger into the hole to block the bleeding and another sutures it closed around the finger, pulling tight when the finger is removed.
"These are rather rough and ready procedures in a theatre!" the surgeon commented, somewhat surprised. I corrected him.
"That's not in theatre - it is the resuscitation treatment bay just off the entrance waiting area - sometimes even in the ambulance at the scene.
If you wait until you get the victim into theatre, prepped and anaesthetised they will die!"
His jaw dropped!

Real *MASH* stuff over payday weekends here...

Unreal...

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/wisconsin-hospital-employee-fired-after-intentionally-destroying-500-doses-covid-n1252605

Yeah.

Unbelievable...humans continue to amaze.

I wonder if this could qualify for "intention to commit mass murder".

Miguel

Based on infection fatality rates, there's a better than even chance that it would have ended up getting someone killed because they thought they were safe. And that doesn't count probabilities on re-transmission, either.

I see that Florida and California have now got UK-bug as well.

I foresee that regional strains will combine and evolve COVID in general.
Hopefully this isn't the bug that reduces the human overpopulation to sustainable levels...

but in 20 years it may become just that.

Doubtful, there is very little chance it will mutate to the point the vaccine is not effective. The key is getting the vaccine distributed to the point we get herd immunity as a species.

Harbinger, I truly hope you are correct.

If a COVID-type virus mutates to the point where (as presently in the case of TB) a single bacillus can remain viable outside of a host's body fluids and remain airborne for a longer time in a wide range of air temperatures, then no amount of filters, mask-wearing or social distancing will prevent transmission.

If that virus' lethal potential increases tenfold or a hundredfold, then the social and economic effects will be catastrophic.

Hey ... I'm the pessimist.

While preliminary data suggests that the virus isn't getting more virulent and likely won't as yet; I hope you also understand that it will likely be more years than you can count with your fingers before a situation of herd immunity will be present. All you have to do to consider how long that will take, is to look at the incidences of polio which still has not been eradicated, although we have had effective vaccines and vaccination programs available for quite some time.

Since Covid-19 is a virus, it plays by virus rules and not by rules that bacteria do. It is a more fragile mechanism of existence, and attack, and needs active hosts to propagate from. It is not wise to suggest that it might become something else entirely.

Yep, I'm aware of that. Still an aggressive approach to vaccination is best, or do you feel otherwise?

The other thing is that the vaccines prime the immune system to recognize the virus's spike proteins, which are how the virus attacks cells. A mutation that changes those enough that the immune response can't recognize them, will also probably disable the virus's ability to get into cells to propagate. So that's unlikely to happen...

Well thinking that we can vaccinate our way out of this event, is a bit of a myth. Given the ease of transmission, you're probably talking 90% of the people on the planet would need to be vaccinated. Pushing the disappearing virus by vaccination, only helps support an idea that there will be a normal state of affairs to return to. My point is that won't happen any time soon with or without the vaccines. More hopefully though, the virus will do the melting away thing by mutating out on its own. And there's clearly no evidence at all for that type of change happening in the foreseeable future either.

If you're going to do something (masks, lockdown, vaccinations) don't do it half arsed.

How about Smallpox? I have a scar from the vaccination ... as many others from my generation ... by chance, bosco, were you vaccinated for smallpox? It all depends on when you were born (in the USA).

NIH: Vaccine herd effect "The importance of herd immunity was first recognized with smallpox, where the initial goal was to immunize 80% of the population in order to achieve such a herd effect. Although the ultimate eradication in 1977 was achieved with higher vaccine uptake rates, the herd effect contributed to the reduction of smallpox by a mass vaccination programme that focused on endemic countries."

We're still workingon the Australian version of the virus. Adding in some kangaroo DNA so that it can hop over closed borders. Should be ready for release soon.

Last edited by Mike Holland on Sat Jan 02, 2021 3:24 am; edited 1 time in total

Yes, but what about it? That it has a different level of penetration for it to reach herd immunity on? As it's transmission, and the infectivity rate is different than Sars-Cov-2.

It doesn't help us to understand the more nuanced ideas when the press states ideas as simple things without the proper context:

Infection levels will begin to drop as enough people are vaccinated.
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-55507012

It takes a bit to understand that means we have to vaccinate almost everyone in the world, and it won't be too soon when that happens:

Large parts of Africa may not get covid-19 vaccines for several years
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2263976-large-parts-of-africa-may-not-get-covid-19-vaccines-for-several-years/

Wikipedia, Polio Eradication:"Wild poliovirus has been eradicated in all continents except Asia, and as of 2020, Afghanistan and Pakistan are the only two countries where the disease is still classified as endemic."

Once herd immunity is established in developed countries, outbreaks in those countries can be contained using test/trace/isolation and ring-fence vaccinations to complete local-population vaccination where it might not already be complete.

Not going away while there's still a reservoir of infected hosts in the developing world, but it can be contained until it's eradicated.

We have bought enough vaccines for us and for our nicer pacific neighbours too.

That's very nice of you but I believe the minimum purchase was one freezer worth of vaccine. The left overs are going to your nice pacific neighbours :-p

Feels good to joke (albeit not a great one) abut this. NZ has the benefit of isolation and a small population base. We are similar in that our population is not that large but we have that behemoth to the south of us to worry about as well. I do believe the developed world will get this under control however there are still from very tough months ahead for us and our southern neighbour. The developing world will need our help and it is I believe our job and in our best interest to do so. This is part of why groups like the WHO are so important and politics has to take the backseat at times while we remember we are all in this together as a species. The AstraZeneca COVID-19 looks promising for use in more remote and rural locations, hopefully we continue to develop vaccine creation and production. This is no small challenge but I have to believe we will get there.

2020 has been one hell of a year and 2021 sure to be a challenge . We are living through history and that can feel a bit surreal at times.

So, we're getting vaccine for our frontline workers....unfortunately, one of my homies for some f'd up reason decided to leave some vials out of the cooler on purpose, depriving maybe 500 people of protection.

Guess the dude wanted to finish with his pharmacy career. Let's see what charges he gets to deal with.

Don't look this way for leadership or inspiration anytime soon, I'm afraid.

The South African virus is easily identifiable...

I realise that. I was giving an example of airborne infection risks.

"A virus is considered to be “airborne” if you can catch it from inhaling aerosols from the air – without being directly coughed on (aerosols are the particles of spit and mucus you emit when talking, sneezing, coughing, or even laughing). This can happen if an infected person coughs in an enclosed space and then moves on, leaving behind an invisible cloud of viral particles for someone else to inhale. Depending on various factors, such as the size of the viral particles and the volume of droplets coughed out, these aerosols can linger in the air for minutes to hours.

When it comes to COVID-19, scientists know the virus spreads through droplets - the aerosols you inhale directly from an infected person at close range, such as when they cough or sneeze on you (within six feet of your face). But many doctors and scientists now believe it also may spread via airborne transmission."


https://blogs.webmd.com/public-health/20200610/what-does-it-mean-for-a-virus-to-be-airborne
Source:

That WebMD link is from June, anything more recent?

No link, but a comment to the topic of how the virus spreads:

Our local healthcare authorities support the view that the majority of cases spread via droplets that stay airborn around 1-2 meters.

Still, they also think that there are cases (here in Finland) that can't be explained in any other way than that the virus have spread through aerosol particles that fly around 7-8 meters and stay in the air longer (think about spray can paint or hair spray). For example high contamination figures in some choir concerts.

Still, based on logic, not proof, they maintain that if the virus would spread more via long airborn routes, the spread numbers would be significantly higher - which makes sense.

In Finland, a tiny country, we are still able to track down about 80% of the contamination routes. We also have quite a lot of public transportation. There should be much more cases identified e.g. in the buses, if the airborn contamination was more common.

Africa always wins. This is not A Good Thing.

India seems to have their curves headed in the right direction via repurposed cheap therapeutics.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/india/

The developed world is too in thrall to big pharma, so this doesn't get talked about much in our media. They're selling an early treatment home Covid kit with Ivermectin, Doxycycline and zinc for ~$2. Add vitamin D3, and you've got something effective for 80+% of cases. It is working for them.

https://www.rxindia.com/medicines/medicines-by-therapeutic-class/covid-19/ziverdo-kit/

Vaccines aren't the only path to reducing Rt transmissibility to less than 1.

That kit does like promising as a therapeutic and a stopgap. It does not replace a vaccine however any inexpensive proven treatment would be a great thing.

I'm no fan of big Pharma either but without them we would very likely not have the vaccines available now and in trials. A lot of people that work for big Pharma worked with passion and dedication to bring us the vaccines and they should be thanked.

I was just wondering...

Is the term "herd immunity" disrespectful or not?
It is longer to say, but community immunity sounds so much better.

Not as far as I know. Sheeple is though.

Looks like the UK strain has won the race to the NZ border. I'm hoping that this has lower hospitalisation rates than previous strains otherwise things look very very bleak.

Mooooooo!

No!

People are too damn worried about shit that doesn't matter these days. Especially so in the Age of Covid.

Herd immunity has been a useful term for decades. Hell, I was using it in the context of enterprise computer antivirus in the late 1990s.

While I'm not personally offended by the term "Herd immunity", I'll just point out the plethora of highly dis-respectful terms that had been "useful...for decades".

You can buy Ivermectin and Doxycycline over the counter. At a pet store.

Same place you can get Chloroquine . Might be safe but I'd want something vetted for human use.

https://opendatadpc.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/b0c68bce2cce478eaac82fe38d4138b1

76,877 died.