Sure, go out and about your everyday business, open everything up, live normally. Its all a hoax folks, nothing to worry about. Death counts are inflated, No worse than the flu. Wear more masks or more efficient ones? Why?
CAPE TOWN — South Africa was already one of the countries worst hit by the coronavirus, but in the six weeks since a new, more transmissible variant was first publicly announced here, an enormous spike of new cases and deaths has far surpassed previous waves of the pandemic.
The vari“Of the cases we’ve [DNA-]sequenced in South Africa, more than 90 percent are the new variant,” said Richard Lessells, a lead researcher at the KwaZulu-Natal Research and Innovation Sequencing Platform, or KRISP, which has played a pathbreaking role in identifying coronavirus variants in South Africa and elsewhere. “It’s amazing and terrifying how quickly it came to dominate, and it does feel like we’re in the beginning stages of watching this variant, and the other new ones, become more dominant around the world.”
South African studies have also documented dozens of instances of people who contracted earlier strains of the coronavirus being infected with the new variant, suggesting that those who had contracted mild cases or otherwise had low antibody counts might be prone to reinfection.
In South Africa, despite a return to a stricter lockdown and curfew, many hospitals are overwhelmed, especially in Eastern Cape, which has become the epicenter of the new variant’s spread. Harrowing statistics released this week by the South African Medical Research Council show excess mortality numbers shooting nearly straight up in all of the country’s nine provinces.
“Ambulances and family members have said they would drive from hospital to hospital for up to six hours looking for a spot to get some oxygen,” said Imtiaz Sooliman, founder of one of South Africa’s biggest charity organizations, Gift of the Givers, which has been helping distribute oxygen machines. “Doctors will tell you that people died in cars while waiting to be admitted to the casualty ward, or they died in casualty before they could be seen.”
Phumla Mnyanda, who runs a 260-bed hospital in Eastern Cape’s capital, Bhisho, said social media posts had spread misinformation on ways to avoid hospitals where people were dying, keeping an even greater number of people from coming in when they first felt symptoms. But as patients neared death, families would rush them to the hospital only to find that little could be done to save their relatives.
“They were coming too late and by then their oxygen levels are very low, and you saw it dropping and dropping, and there is nothing we could do,” she said in a telephone interview. “People are so scared because there are so many that have died.”
The SAMRC’s excess mortality figures indicate that more than 110,000 have likely died of covid-19 in South Africa since May, even though the official toll is just above 41,000. More than 30,000 excess deaths have been recorded in January alone.
If most of these excess deaths can be attributed to covid-19, which most South African experts believe they can, then the country’s death toll would be the highest as a proportion of its population in the world.
Debbie Bradshaw, a researcher at SAMRC, said that although South Africa generally had a good reputation of registering most deaths, those that took place outside hospitals often went undiagnosed and thus escaped the official toll.
“We think that most of the confirmed covid deaths are really only being reported from hospitals, whereas there are many who leave hospitals before death or never make it to the hospitals in the first place,” she said.
Despite potentially being the cause of tens of thousands of deaths, the South African variant has been sequenced by researchers fewer than 700 times. The British variant, on the other hand, has been sequenced almost 30,000 times. Nearly 80 percent of the South African variant sequences have been found in South Africa and another 10 percent in Britain.
Thirty other countries make up the remainder, but Lessells at KRISP said it was likely the variant was circulating much more widely, especially in African countries with closer economic ties to South Africa but where sequencing capacity is limited or nonexistent.
South Africa’s land borders have been closed to nonessential travel, but a long list of exceptions means thousands of people still cross them every week. They also remained open through the December holidays, when many migrant workers returned to their home countries on leave.
Some of those neighboring or nearby southern African countries, such as Zimbabwe, Zambia, Mozambique and Malawi, have seen soaring case numbers after months of relative calm.
Lessells said his lab was expecting to release sequences from samples taken from neighboring Mozambique this week.
“We’re engaged in a huge amount of collaborative science with partners around the world trying to understand what caused their rise,” he said.
The consensus, he said, is that it’s no coincidence that new variants emerged in South Africa, Britain and Brazil, which suffered some of the world’s biggest initial waves of the virus. It was likely that in places where the virus was running into large numbers of people who already had antibodies that it mutated to more easily find new hosts.
“Our failures to clamp down on community spread, wherever they may be, will almost certainly lead to even more new variants,” Lessells said.
I talked to my Mom earlier today. She’s 78 and a cancer survivor of 4 years. Her health hasn’t been great since her treatments.
She broke down over the phone. Weeping uncontrollably because she has no idea when she will receive the vaccine. Her state (KS) and mine (MO) are doing a terrible job of providing the public with basic vaccine information. She’s terrified and lonely and it simply breaks my heart.
So sorry to hear it totally sucks, my parents are both elderly and have to also wait for vaccine but I do believe we are on the right track now! We just have to hang on and don’t let our guard down, stay safe..
These variants are ruining all the good work done over a year now. Its utterly heartbreaking our kids are all mentally suffering beyond any other time they will ever know. All we are doing is talking each kid around each day to keep going. Our kids are young adults mainly and the toll on them is awful to see. There will be hope but not right now. Not here
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I'm so proud of you to take the kids out of class. Sorry it's so rough there. It's hard to imagine. The variants aren't due to explode in Ontario until March. BC is not half as rough as there, so maybe April/May for us here? I sure hope we have the bonus seasonality effect by then because the vaccine isn't looking too good for us, judging from the shitshow so far.
God it feels so bleak right now here. Ive been pro vaccine the whole way . It is the only real way out but im scared for my mum and my elderly family most. Time as you say tish is slow and virus is faster than ever when these faster spread ones take a real hold in usa lets say ,like south Africa its going to hurt so bad. I know im a negative person but fuck all we are seeing here is strain on every single resource and we are in a full lockdown. You see it takes a while to get this bad and i cant help think. Our PM knew in sept about this kent variant and yet again left it boiling and encouraged people to get together on xmas day. Fucks me up. The new novavax vaccine looks good agains all strains. So thats a positive .
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My sister and I called my Mom’s doctors and nurses several times over the last couple of days to check on when she’d be able to receive the vaccine. Well, she got the call last night and is getting her first shot later today!! To say that I’m relieved is an understatement. Thank you all for your pm’s and posts of support and encouragement. It really means a lot. Sending love and hope to you all. Be well & stay safe.
My sister and I called my Mom’s doctors and nurses several times over the last couple of days to check on when she’d be able to receive the vaccine. Well, she got the call last night and is getting her first shot later today!! To say that I’m relieved is an understatement. Thank you all for your pm’s and posts of support and encouragement. It really means a lot. Sending love and hope to you all. Be well & stay safe.
My sister and I called my Mom’s doctors and nurses several times over the last couple of days to check on when she’d be able to receive the vaccine. Well, she got the call last night and is getting her first shot later today!! To say that I’m relieved is an understatement. Thank you all for your pm’s and posts of support and encouragement. It really means a lot. Sending love and hope to you all. Be well & stay safe.
Great news.
This weekend we rock Portland
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i can't read the article (paywall). I agree it's a great idea in theory, but if they were stuck out there, what would they have done in the situation of one of the recipients experiencing an adverse event?
My sister and I called my Mom’s doctors and nurses several times over the last couple of days to check on when she’d be able to receive the vaccine. Well, she got the call last night and is getting her first shot later today!! To say that I’m relieved is an understatement. Thank you all for your pm’s and posts of support and encouragement. It really means a lot. Sending love and hope to you all. Be well & stay safe.
Very cool, hope this brings some relief to you and your family.
i can't read the article (paywall). I agree it's a great idea in theory, but if they were stuck out there, what would they have done in the situation of one of the recipients experiencing an adverse event?
Doctor and ambulance on site. I would have happily rolled up my sleeve had I been in that situation.
How many MIT alumnae worked in the Obama Administration and how many worked in the POOTWH Administration? How many times did Obama visit MIT to better understand scientific achievement? How many times did POOTWH? Exactly. Too bad this isn't a twitter post, it'd have more cache.
“I plan to be vaccinated as soon I can, and I am urging everyone at MIT and well beyond to get themselves vaccinated at their first opportunity,” says Institute Professor and Nobel laureate Phillip Sharp, whose pioneering research in the 1970s helped pave the way for today’s generation of mRNA vaccines. “These vaccines have been shown to reduce the risk of infection and the severity of infection. They have been produced in record time, some by local biotechnology firms with strong connections to MIT, and they are triumphs of biomedical research. Getting vaccinated is a simple step to protect yourself, and if we all do it, it will make it possible to get back to the way of life we miss so much — to work side-by-side with colleagues and students, to hug our friends, and more.”
Elazer Edelman, the Edward J. Poitras Professor in Medical Engineering and Science, director of MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering and Science, and a practicing cardiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, adds: “Our MIT community is unlike any other. Our friends and colleagues are on the front lines of providing medical care, devising new strategies for treating those who are stricken, and protecting the world around us. The world has been waiting for a vaccine for almost a year, understanding that it is only through global immunization that we can provide universal protection. Now that MIT and others have contributed to making vaccination a reality, we all have an obligation to use it as soon as possible. In this way, we simultaneously honor health care providers, scientists, and our community.”
My sister and I called my Mom’s doctors and nurses several times over the last couple of days to check on when she’d be able to receive the vaccine. Well, she got the call last night and is getting her first shot later today!! To say that I’m relieved is an understatement. Thank you all for your pm’s and posts of support and encouragement. It really means a lot. Sending love and hope to you all. Be well & stay safe.
Great news. My parents got their first dose last week. It is a great feeling of relief to know that they are on their way to being protected.
i can't read the article (paywall). I agree it's a great idea in theory, but if they were stuck out there, what would they have done in the situation of one of the recipients experiencing an adverse event?
Doctor and ambulance on site. I would have happily rolled up my sleeve had I been in that situation.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced new COVID-19 border measures this morning:
- Canadian airlines including Air Canada, Westjet, Sunwing and Air Transat are cancelling air service to all Caribbean destinations and Mexico starting this Sunday and lasting through April 30th
- All international passenger flights must land in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto or Montreal
- The government will soon introduce mandatory COVID-19 testing at airports for people coming into Canada and travellers will have to wait in hotels for test results for up to 3 days at their own expense (expected to be more than $2,000, he says)
- If negative, travellers will be able to quarantine at home with "significantly increased surveillance and enforcement"
- If positive, travellers will be required to quarantine in designated government facilities to "make sure they're not carrying [COVID-19] variants of potential concern"
- The government will soon require non-essential travellers to show a negative test entering at land borders with the U.S. and Trudeau says they're working on additional testing requirements soon
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced new COVID-19 border measures this morning:
- Canadian airlines including Air Canada, Westjet, Sunwing and Air Transat are cancelling air service to all Caribbean destinations and Mexico starting this Sunday and lasting through April 30th
- All international passenger flights must land in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto or Montreal
- The government will soon introduce mandatory COVID-19 testing at airports for people coming into Canada and travellers will have to wait in hotels for test results for up to 3 days at their own expense (expected to be more than $2,000, he says)
- If negative, travellers will be able to quarantine at home with "significantly increased surveillance and enforcement"
- If positive, travellers will be required to quarantine in designated government facilities to "make sure they're not carrying [COVID-19] variants of potential concern"
- The government will soon require non-essential travellers to show a negative test entering at land borders with the U.S. and Trudeau says they're working on additional testing requirements soon
Long overdue..
Sounds like reasonable steps. Cases from international arrivals are a tiny minority of cases so this is not really going to do much of anything to reduce cases and certainly won't stop spread within the country, but given all of the howls to tighten up the border this plan is a reasonable compromise.
I'm guessing that the $2000 cost for three days in the hotel does not in fact mean it's an absolutely fabulous hotel, though
(Edit: I thought international arrivals were already only going through those 4 airports)
my small self... like a book amongst the many on a shelf
my dad is 86 and has severe asthma. He lives in his own home (thankfully)...he has no idea when or if he‘ll get the vaccine this year.
a fact the Ontario government leaves out...90% of seniors live outside LTC homes. So vaccinating long term care homes was very necessary...we are no where even close to getting our seniors vaccinated.
Many more will die, sadly...
Ontario somehow double counted the doses administered...
^^ We're opening up land borders to non essential travel now, for travellers with negative tests?
I'm gonna catch up on news because a quick glance shows maybe the essential travellers at land borders will have heightened testing negative restrictions.
Edit: I guess that means essential travelers don't need further testing. And the non essential family unification etc get tests...
Comments
Sure, go out and about your everyday business, open everything up, live normally. Its all a hoax folks, nothing to worry about. Death counts are inflated, No worse than the flu. Wear more masks or more efficient ones? Why?
CAPE TOWN — South Africa was already one of the countries worst hit by the coronavirus, but in the six weeks since a new, more transmissible variant was first publicly announced here, an enormous spike of new cases and deaths has far surpassed previous waves of the pandemic.
The vari“Of the cases we’ve [DNA-]sequenced in South Africa, more than 90 percent are the new variant,” said Richard Lessells, a lead researcher at the KwaZulu-Natal Research and Innovation Sequencing Platform, or KRISP, which has played a pathbreaking role in identifying coronavirus variants in South Africa and elsewhere. “It’s amazing and terrifying how quickly it came to dominate, and it does feel like we’re in the beginning stages of watching this variant, and the other new ones, become more dominant around the world.”
South African studies have also documented dozens of instances of people who contracted earlier strains of the coronavirus being infected with the new variant, suggesting that those who had contracted mild cases or otherwise had low antibody counts might be prone to reinfection.
In South Africa, despite a return to a stricter lockdown and curfew, many hospitals are overwhelmed, especially in Eastern Cape, which has become the epicenter of the new variant’s spread. Harrowing statistics released this week by the South African Medical Research Council show excess mortality numbers shooting nearly straight up in all of the country’s nine provinces.
“Ambulances and family members have said they would drive from hospital to hospital for up to six hours looking for a spot to get some oxygen,” said Imtiaz Sooliman, founder of one of South Africa’s biggest charity organizations, Gift of the Givers, which has been helping distribute oxygen machines. “Doctors will tell you that people died in cars while waiting to be admitted to the casualty ward, or they died in casualty before they could be seen.”
Phumla Mnyanda, who runs a 260-bed hospital in Eastern Cape’s capital, Bhisho, said social media posts had spread misinformation on ways to avoid hospitals where people were dying, keeping an even greater number of people from coming in when they first felt symptoms. But as patients neared death, families would rush them to the hospital only to find that little could be done to save their relatives.
“They were coming too late and by then their oxygen levels are very low, and you saw it dropping and dropping, and there is nothing we could do,” she said in a telephone interview. “People are so scared because there are so many that have died.”
The SAMRC’s excess mortality figures indicate that more than 110,000 have likely died of covid-19 in South Africa since May, even though the official toll is just above 41,000. More than 30,000 excess deaths have been recorded in January alone.
If most of these excess deaths can be attributed to covid-19, which most South African experts believe they can, then the country’s death toll would be the highest as a proportion of its population in the world.
Debbie Bradshaw, a researcher at SAMRC, said that although South Africa generally had a good reputation of registering most deaths, those that took place outside hospitals often went undiagnosed and thus escaped the official toll.
“We think that most of the confirmed covid deaths are really only being reported from hospitals, whereas there are many who leave hospitals before death or never make it to the hospitals in the first place,” she said.
Despite potentially being the cause of tens of thousands of deaths, the South African variant has been sequenced by researchers fewer than 700 times. The British variant, on the other hand, has been sequenced almost 30,000 times. Nearly 80 percent of the South African variant sequences have been found in South Africa and another 10 percent in Britain.
Thirty other countries make up the remainder, but Lessells at KRISP said it was likely the variant was circulating much more widely, especially in African countries with closer economic ties to South Africa but where sequencing capacity is limited or nonexistent.
South Africa’s land borders have been closed to nonessential travel, but a long list of exceptions means thousands of people still cross them every week. They also remained open through the December holidays, when many migrant workers returned to their home countries on leave.
Some of those neighboring or nearby southern African countries, such as Zimbabwe, Zambia, Mozambique and Malawi, have seen soaring case numbers after months of relative calm.
Lessells said his lab was expecting to release sequences from samples taken from neighboring Mozambique this week.
“We’re engaged in a huge amount of collaborative science with partners around the world trying to understand what caused their rise,” he said.
The consensus, he said, is that it’s no coincidence that new variants emerged in South Africa, Britain and Brazil, which suffered some of the world’s biggest initial waves of the virus. It was likely that in places where the virus was running into large numbers of people who already had antibodies that it mutated to more easily find new hosts.
South African variant dominates as deaths soar - The Washington Post
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
All we are doing is talking each kid around each day to keep going. Our kids are young adults mainly and the toll on them is awful to see.
There will be hope but not right now. Not here
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this song is meant to be called i got shit,itshould be called i got shit tickets-hartford 06 -
I know im a negative person but fuck all we are seeing here is strain on every single resource and we are in a full lockdown. You see it takes a while to get this bad and i cant help think. Our PM knew in sept about this kent variant and yet again left it boiling and encouraged people to get together on xmas day. Fucks me up.
The new novavax vaccine looks good agains all strains. So thats a positive .
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reading 06
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this song is meant to be called i got shit,itshould be called i got shit tickets-hartford 06 -
Prague Krakow Berlin 2018. Berlin 2022
EV, Taormina 1+2 2017.
I wish i was the souvenir you kept your house key on..
https://www.esquiremag.ph/life/health-and-fitness/covid-butt-test-a2549-20210128
Prague Krakow Berlin 2018. Berlin 2022
EV, Taormina 1+2 2017.
I wish i was the souvenir you kept your house key on..
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this song is meant to be called i got shit,itshould be called i got shit tickets-hartford 06 -
The numbers are in: Canada’s COVID-fighting efforts are among world’s worst
Some great news out with J&J's vaccine.
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this song is meant to be called i got shit,itshould be called i got shit tickets-hartford 06 -
Single shot too. Hopefully a game changer once it is rolled out. They are still testing to see how much a booster would raise the numbers.
My sister and I called my Mom’s doctors and nurses several times over the last couple of days to check on when she’d be able to receive the vaccine. Well, she got the call last night and is getting her first shot later today!! To say that I’m relieved is an understatement. Thank you all for your pm’s and posts of support and encouragement. It really means a lot. Sending love and hope to you all. Be well & stay safe.
www.cluthelee.com
www.cluthe.com
Prague Krakow Berlin 2018. Berlin 2022
EV, Taormina 1+2 2017.
I wish i was the souvenir you kept your house key on..
Health Workers, Stuck in the Snow, Administer Coronavirus Vaccine to Stranded Drivers - The New York Times (nytimes.com)
www.headstonesband.com
“I plan to be vaccinated as soon I can, and I am urging everyone at MIT and well beyond to get themselves vaccinated at their first opportunity,” says Institute Professor and Nobel laureate Phillip Sharp, whose pioneering research in the 1970s helped pave the way for today’s generation of mRNA vaccines. “These vaccines have been shown to reduce the risk of infection and the severity of infection. They have been produced in record time, some by local biotechnology firms with strong connections to MIT, and they are triumphs of biomedical research. Getting vaccinated is a simple step to protect yourself, and if we all do it, it will make it possible to get back to the way of life we miss so much — to work side-by-side with colleagues and students, to hug our friends, and more.”
Elazer Edelman, the Edward J. Poitras Professor in Medical Engineering and Science, director of MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering and Science, and a practicing cardiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, adds: “Our MIT community is unlike any other. Our friends and colleagues are on the front lines of providing medical care, devising new strategies for treating those who are stricken, and protecting the world around us. The world has been waiting for a vaccine for almost a year, understanding that it is only through global immunization that we can provide universal protection. Now that MIT and others have contributed to making vaccination a reality, we all have an obligation to use it as soon as possible. In this way, we simultaneously honor health care providers, scientists, and our community.”
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Brilliantati©
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www.headstonesband.com
Long overdue..
Sounds like reasonable steps. Cases from international arrivals are a tiny minority of cases so this is not really going to do much of anything to reduce cases and certainly won't stop spread within the country, but given all of the howls to tighten up the border this plan is a reasonable compromise.
I'm guessing that the $2000 cost for three days in the hotel does not in fact mean it's an absolutely fabulous hotel, though
(Edit: I thought international arrivals were already only going through those 4 airports)
Moderna to cut deliveries to Canada in new blow to vaccination campaign
my dad is 86 and has severe asthma. He lives in his own home (thankfully)...he has no idea when or if he‘ll get the vaccine this year.
a fact the Ontario government leaves out...90% of seniors live outside LTC homes. So vaccinating long term care homes was very necessary...we are no where even close to getting our seniors vaccinated.
Ontario somehow double counted the doses administered...
At this point it’s a clusterfuck in Canada..
I'm gonna catch up on news because a quick glance shows maybe the essential travellers at land borders will have heightened testing negative restrictions.
Edit: I guess that means essential travelers don't need further testing. And the non essential family unification etc get tests...