04-22-2021, 07:31 PM
(04-21-2021, 11:03 PM)ijmorlan Wrote: No wonder we’re not making much progress on climate change. Covid and its associated mortality is all around us — the result of our collective behaviour is happening now, not years from now — and yet there are still many denialists. How much easier to be a denialist about something whose worst results are still in the future and where it takes more knowledge to understand the connection between action and result.
Depends on what people are exposed to. I think denialists aren't seeing, or are using motivated reasoning, to ignore facts that are clearly in front of them. Media has a large role to play here.
(04-22-2021, 08:45 AM)ac3r Wrote: B.1.617 - a variant responsible for the incredible surge in cases and deaths in India (314'835 cases today!) - has been found in both Vancouver and Quebec. The alarming thing is that the patient in Quebec was vaccinated back in January. We'll have to see how that impacts vaccinations across the board. The Prime Minister is considering severely limiting flights in from India, which if required I hope he would do even if it might be political suicide for the Liberal Party. That said, if it's already being detected in two provinces, I imagine it's out in the wild and there would be no containing it at this point.
Let's talk about containing it. There certainly can be containing something that's out there, with sufficiently good measures. We could have contained B117 even when there were some (but more than 0) cases. It's just harder. It's not clear that B1617 is actually more transmissible; its superpower seems to be reinfecting people, which is an issue in India but much less so in Canada. And having mandatory quarantine helps with not continuing to import it.
(04-22-2021, 02:22 PM)danbrotherston Wrote: I can't believe that folks wouldn't agree with this. Yes, we need to get community transmission in check. But look at the freedoms that Australia and NZ enjoy right now. Why would anyone NOT want that?!
Want pictures? It's pretty great. People have even been flying between Australia and New Zealand as of this week. The Australian foreign minister came for a visit yesterday, and the PM is supposed to come in a few weeks.
(04-22-2021, 02:25 PM)tomh009 Wrote: The vaccine does not provide 100% protection against infection. Protection against symptomatic infection is somewhere in the 80-90% range given the confidence intervals on the various vaccines. Protection against severe infection (requiring hospitalization) has been pretty close to 100% in the real world, though, based on data from the UK and Israel.
So, my question is, how severe were the symptoms for this person?
Yes. Alas, severity of symptoms is not in the public domain probably. It's likely that the vaccine reduces transmission (because fewer viral particles emitted) as well. There was a nursing home case in the US where a vaccinated resident died of COVID-19, but that should be quite rare (and is a worst-case situation).
(04-22-2021, 02:28 PM)tomh009 Wrote: This is of the screened cases, assuming I understood the description correctly: it's sampling, essentially.
The percentage of screened samples has been increasing, too.
Thanks! Yes, lack of B117 is surely helping Waterloo, which hasn't been doing the whole rocket thing as much as Toronto. And the stay-at-home order probably helps witht hat.
(04-22-2021, 04:44 PM)Rainrider22 Wrote: As a participant of judicial process, I could never champion for that idea...
I don't think it should even get to the judicial process stage. You get off the plane and you are escorted to a quarantine facility. Handling people returning by car needs something similar as well. It's expensive (the NZ hotel stay probably costs the government like $5k/2 weeks) but cheaper than COVID.