outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

Huge win for vaccines here.

Remember, Israel has a lot of COVID variants going around, including the scary South Africa variant.

Now we find that the Pfizer vaccine blocks 94% of ASYMPTOMATIC infections, even with variants in the mix!https://t.co/eZL9QsqJOZ

— Noah Smith 🐇 (@Noahpinion) March 11, 2021

tite

hell yeah

fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck yess

Nominating this cinematic masterpiece for an Oscar pic.twitter.com/YgiOpZRw1i

— Alex Cohen (@anothercohen) March 9, 2021

Interesting note today on the SF Covid update page:

https://data.sfgov.org/stories/s/COVID-19-Vaccinations/a49y-jeyc

March 2021 Update: Issues with the California Immunization Registry data system have resulted in the number of vaccinations being underreported since March 2nd. This affects all the dashboards on this page. Data will be updated as soon as these issues are resolved.

Which, great! If we're doing even better than has been reported, bring it on.

And we are down to 37 cases/day average, which is pre-holiday level!

From the SFGov page "vaccine approved for 16+ only" - I guess I've been under a rock, I didn't know that. Are 15yos less vulnerable somehow, or does it just suck to be 15? No driver's license, no vaccine ...

They're still doing trials on younger kids, and they probably won't have access til the fall.

boo

Yeah, that's been the case since the start. But as noted, trials with the currently approved vaccines are well under way.

Our office in Milan sent out notices earlier this afternoon that Milan/Northern Italy will be under stricter lockdown due to a surge in cases (their FOURTH wave iirc).

Trying to find data on vaccination levels...

This says almost a million doses:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1196406/number-of-covid-vaccine-doses-administered-in-italy-by-region/

Population of Milan is 1.4 million
Greater Lombardy population is ~10 million

Corriere says the last 3 days have seen a brutal explosion in cases:

https://www.corriere.it/

yup

Italy reports highest number of new cases since November, most of Italy on lockdown from Monday

- New cases: 26,824
- In hospital: 26,570 (+464)
- In ICU: 2,914 (+55)
- New deaths: 380

— BNO Newsroom (@BNODesk) March 12, 2021

i think they reopened restaurants recently and vaccine delivery in the EU is generally bad. italy is on 11 doses per 100 people. UK is on 37, US is on 30.

doses per 100 people
brazil 6
argentina 5
chile 33

chile wyd?

They have the Chinese vaccine that didn’t require special handling, didn’t they?

ah. serbia has one of them (i think there are two) and they're on 27 so i guess that makes sense.

100 million achieved in US

Chile is using the Sinovac vaccine (the other one is sinopharm I believe) and yeah,no special handling required.

This is devastating news. Global South countries have been fighting for the right to manufacture and import affordable versions of the covid vaccines. A few hours ago, the USA, UK and European Union joined forces to block them at the WTO. The West is indefensible.

— Jason Hickel (@jasonhickel) March 12, 2021

Are you fucking kidding me?

I mean yeah, not surprising, but still shocking.

Colonialism is alive and thriving.

You can add Canada to that shameful list:

https://www.rcinet.ca/en/2021/03/10/canada-others-accused-of-blocking-access-to-vaccines-for-poor-countries/

I just read an article in the Economist that talked about Chile's vaccine success, the two key factors they listed were registering early to run large scale trials of vaccines (at least one of the Chinese ones), and a well-run national database of vaccinations that already existed before the pandemic.

this is a disaster

🚨 AstraZeneca vaccinations being suspended in Ireland from this morning pic.twitter.com/SnoIb2DkEY

— Gabhán Ó Raghallaigh (@gavreilly) March 14, 2021

Covid-19: Netherlands suspend use of AstraZeneca vaccine https://t.co/08iwC0nvqV

— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) March 15, 2021

I read that the Pfizer blood clotting numbers are similar, idk if that is correct but if this is an excessive response then the only winners are going to be the tin-hat brigade and the Rona. Especially in regions with low take up rates.

Someone said this morning that (according to AZ for what it’s worth) the percentage of blood clots in vaccine recipients is actually *lower* than in the general population! I wonder if there’s something specific about the nature of these events that is leading all these public health bodies or if they are just being abundantly cautious

Yes I was going to ask the same thing, I read on BBC yesterday that they don't believe the numbers of clot issues is anything larger than what they normally expect and that there is no evidence that the vaccine is the cause. So why has a connection been made? Is it simply because the people have had the jab close to having the clot? Because if so, I foresee many more false connections for other side effects being made which is a bit depressing.

this just in, vaccine correlates with a craving for Krispy Kreme

Possibly multiple clots linked to the same batch? xp

I think it is the kind of thing they have to investigate but my (obviously) non-scientific opinion is that this is a cohort of people probably much more at high risk for blood clots - and probably even more so during a time when everyone is indoors and inactive - during normal times anyway. Still, it’s what they have to look into. Just surprised it hasn’t appeared to have shown up here yet with all the vaccinations done so far.

[Prof Andrew Pollard -director of the Oxford vaccine group]
(on BBC just now:)
He said there was "very reassuring evidence that there is no increase in a blood clot phenomenon here in the UK, where most of the doses in Europe been given so far".

Finland has also done a "very careful study" and not found an increased risk, he added.

Yes think I'm just doing what I actually hate and that's jumping at news headlines. This is just all precautionary and necessary and typical of what we'll be seeing for this year and behond I guess.

I mean..... he would say those things, wouldn’t he?

If it’s an excessive reaction it may well feed vaccine scepticism but maybe they are banking on it actually countering it: “look how careful we are about possible negative effects, which turned out not to be an issue”

Now they tell me, I had this vaccine yesterday.

Ah you’ll be fine

I was getting a bit paranoid because I was having chest pain/upper back pain but I just reminded myself that I get random sharp pains all the time. Today I am getting leg pains but again hardly surprising MMS

Whoops

...hardly surprising as I was confined to bed for the best part of 24hrs due to side effects. I wonder if that’s a factor, that ppl prone to thrombosis are at greater risk due to being... prone

All I can say is I'm glad I didn't read this thread before I went for the vaccination. Curiously, I've never had an injection that felt less like an injection, no idea why that should be.

That was my experience too! I certainly felt it later though

Interesting!

My main point of comparison is my annual flu jab - really feel that going in in a way I didn’t with this one

JCVI says no link fwiw.

“Safety is absolutely paramount, we monitor the data very carefully”

Prof Anthony Harnden, Deputy Chair of the JCVI tells #BBCBreakfast there is no link between blood clots and the Oxford-Astrazeneca jab, after the Netherlands suspended its rollout ⤵️https://t.co/xwRpjQDAUs pic.twitter.com/15Mez4AKBd

— BBC Breakfast (@BBCBreakfast) March 15, 2021

my take on why we need to be very careful when interpreting stories about the AZ vaccine and blood clots https://t.co/3IDchEmp8R

— David Spiegelhalter (@d_spiegel) March 15, 2021

My main point of comparison is my annual flu jab - really feel that going in in a way I didn’t with this one

I'd never had a flu jab till last year but it was definitely a lot jaggier than this covid one! By the way, I've just thought of a reason why the word 'jab' doesn't sit right with me, it's because you're more likely to say 'jag' if you're Scottish.

This is interesting too, but as the comments say, clots are a pretty high risk for covid itself, at a much higher rate than so far reported.

Def, and a thing to bear in mind about risk in general. My age group has a 1 in 1000 chance of being hospitalised due to covid iirc - if this reaction in like 50 out of 20 million ppl is due to the vaccine then we need to know, but it should still be emphasised that the maths is greatly in favour

xp yeah I think there’s a north/south divide

https://www.usnews.com/news/business/articles/2021-03-15/germany-suspends-astrazeneca-vaccine-amid-clotting-concerns

This is a disaster because there’s no evidence the AZ vaccine causes blood clots and these decisions, just as another wave starts in the EU, will kill thousands of people, and they will provide years of talking points to anti vaxxers.

eu rises seem to be because of the uk strain, which the uk is now mostly over, albeit after weeks of 1000+ casualties a day.

(that based on one news report i heard somewhere)

eu rises seem to be because of the uk strain, which the uk is now mostly over, albeit after weeks of 1000+ casualties a day.

Yes, the British media seems to have conveniently forgotten the horrendous death toll in the UK over the winter in the rush to gloat over/gawp at rising COVID deaths in the EU. This despite the fact that even in Italy, which is the favoured country for COVID horror stories in the UK, the figures are nowhere near as bad the UK was several weeks previously.

Speaking of Italy, they've suspended the AstraZeneca vaccine now.