Re: New SARS type virus spreading in China

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Osaka, Japan’s #2 largest city and prefecture, just broke records for number of infected at 900. Gov of Osaka declares emergency and cancels Olympic torch relay through the city for a smaller, televised event. Tokyo infections are also rising at 500+ per day. Fears the hospital system on the verge of collapse has officials worried about casualties among the aged population.

Meanwhile, Brazil had a record breaking 4,249 deaths on Thursday, pushing the total to 345,025, according to their Health Ministry.
"It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of non-violence to cover impotence. There is hope for a violent man to become non-violent. There is no such hope for the impotent." -Gandhi

Re: New SARS type virus spreading in China

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Bisbee wrote: Fri Apr 09, 2021 5:17 am Osaka, Japan’s #2 largest city and prefecture, just broke records for number of infected at 900. Gov of Osaka declares emergency and cancels Olympic torch relay through the city for a smaller, televised event. Tokyo infections are also rising at 500+ per day. Fears the hospital system on the verge of collapse has officials worried about casualties among the aged population.

Meanwhile, Brazil had a record breaking 4,249 deaths on Thursday, pushing the total to 345,025, according to their Health Ministry.

Brazil is a huge tragedy, first it has two variants P.1 and P.2 that can re-infect people who already had COVID and they have Bolsonaro running the country with his Trumpian rhetoric. And their health care system probably struggles in the best of times. But Japan has a world class health system and shouldn't be in this situation. I doubt the Liberal Democratic Party that runs Japan is in jeopardy but it should be, they should resign in disgrace.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: New SARS type virus spreading in China

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Kern County (Bakersfield), CA is a bright red county. Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader of the US House represents Kern County in Congress.
As soon as Justin Perez left the vaccination clinic, his phone buzzed with a text message. A former co-worker had heard a hot rumor about a clinic where anyone, even young people like them, could get a COVID-19 vaccine. The clinic was in Bakersfield. “I am in Bakersfield,” texted Perez, a 35-year-old video game designer from Sherman Oaks, confirming the rumor. “I got injected 20 minutes ago.”

Cal State Bakersfield has been the go-to vaccination site for the young and the healthy from Los Angeles County for more than a week, ever since word spread that the facility had more doses than patients — thousands more — and no restrictions on age, eligibility or county of residency. Some vaccine seekers have been writers, engineers and Hollywood actors, who said the site was welcoming Angelenos with open arms.

Thousands of Southern California residents in recent days have headed over the Grapevine and into the Central Valley. By Monday night, “Bakersfield” was trending on Twitter, spurred by a wave of vaccine hunters who are young, healthy and have time to take a four-hour round-trip road trip. Though many will be eligible for the shot at home in a week or so, there’s no guarantee that appointments will be available right away.

Bakersfield’s open-door policy felt slightly surreal to some patients, especially compared with L.A. County’s busy, strict vaccine clinics. Some have described whirlwind days, waking up assuming they’ll have to wait weeks to get vaccinated, then, after seeing a stream of gleeful social media posts, deciding on a whim to drive up the 5 Freeway and getting the shot two hours later.

“The whole way there, and the whole way back, my friend and I were kind of in a daze,” said Julie Greiner, 25, a comedy writer from Glendale who got ice cream to celebrate her vaccination. “We were like, did this really happen?”

The site’s excess capacity is due at least in part to a relatively high rate of vaccine hesitancy in Kern County, including among evangelical Christians and low-income residents of color, according to officials at Kaiser Permanente, which is helping to run the clinic. Additionally, Kern skews young: About 11% of those in the county are 65 or older, meaning that many residents, perhaps the majority, became eligible for vaccination only in the last few weeks.

About 24% of people living in Kern County have received at least one dose, compared with 33% of residents statewide, according to the Los Angeles Times vaccine tracker.


Bakersfield officials say it’s true the site is vaccinating everyone 16 and older. But they stopped short of encouraging out-of-town visitors, cautioning that the clinic is meant to serve Kern County residents, and the appointment system is reserved for locals.

When officials were planning the site, the idea of people arriving from other counties “didn’t really cross our minds,” said David Womack, senior vice president of Kaiser Permanente in Kern County. But word spread quickly. By the third day, staff had noticed out-of-county visitors. Now, nurses are seeing “a few hundred” Southern California patients per day, he said.

“We have the capacity, we have the vaccine — it would be a crime to turn people away,” Womack said. “We want to get shots in arms.” About two-thirds of patients do not have appointments, Womack said. The walk-in policy, a rarity for mega-sites, is designed to improve vaccine access for seniors and others who’ve struggled with the state’s appointment software.

The site’s popularity exploded last weekend, when actor Wil Wheaton, known for his role in “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” told his 1.1 million Instagram followers that he had visited. After he got a Pfizer-BioNTech jab, he wrote in a photo caption, he “cried a little bit” with relief.
https://www.latimes.com/california/stor ... os-angeles
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: New SARS type virus spreading in China

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When it comes to getting the coronavirus vaccine, Mississippi residents have an abundance of options. On Thursday, there were more than 73,000 slots to be had on the state’s scheduling website, up from 68,000 on Tuesday. In some ways, the growing glut of appointments in Mississippi is something to celebrate: It reflects the mounting supplies that have prompted states across the country to open up eligibility to anyone over 16.

But public health experts say the pileup of unclaimed appointments in Mississippi exposes something more worrisome: the large number of people who are reluctant to get vaccinated. “It’s time to do the heavy lifting needed to overcome the hesitancy we’re encountering,” said Dr. Obie McNair, an internal medicine practitioner in Jackson, the state capital, whose office has a plentiful supply of vaccines but not enough takers.
When it comes to rates of vaccination, Mississippi still has a way to go, with just a quarter of all residents having received at least one dose compared to the nationwide average of 33 percent, according to state data. Other southern states, among them Tennessee, Arkansas, Alabama and Georgia, have similarly low rates of vaccination.
According to a survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation released last week, about 55 percent of Black adults said they had been vaccinated or planned to be soon, up 14 percentage points from February, a rate that approaches those of Hispanic-Americans, at 61 percent, and white Americans, at 64 percent.
A number of other heavily Republican states are also finding themselves with surfeits of doses. On Thursday, officials in Oklahoma, which has delivered at least one dose to 34 percent of its residents, announced they would open up eligibility to out-of-state residents, and in recent weeks, Republican governors in Ohio and Georgia voiced concern about the lackluster vaccine demand among their residents.

Tim Callaghan, an assistant professor at the Texas A&M University School of Public Health and an expert on vaccine skepticism, said that more research was needed to divine the reasons behind Mississippi’s slackening vaccine demand but that states with large rural populations, Republican voters and African-Americans were likely to be the first to confront the problem. “If you’re looking to see vaccine hesitancy to emerge, it’s going to be in red states like Mississippi,” he said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/09/heal ... emand.html

On average, states have administered 76% of the doses they've received from the federal government. New Hampshire has administered the largest share of all states, at 89.8%, while Alabama has administered the smallest — only 61.4% of its doses.

An analysis released by Surgo Ventures yesterday concluded that "the supply-demand shift for the vaccine will happen earlier than expected — as early as the end of April — and before the nation reaches the 70-90% threshold for achieving herd immunity."

It released a survey finding that 59% of U.S. adults say they're either already vaccinated, or plan to be as soon as the shot is made available to them. At the current U.S. vaccination rate, all of those vaccine-enthusiastic adults could be inoculated by the end of April.

Vaccination rates will then slow, and Surgo's projections show that only around 52% of Americans will be vaccinated by July. When combined with people who have already been infected, the immunity rate overall may be around 65% by then — still not high enough for herd immunity. This analysis shows that despite the general vaccine enthusiasm we are seeing now in the United States, things are going to get really difficult really soon,” said Sema Sgaier, Surgo's CEO.

“Without significant investment in addressing people’s barriers and making vaccines available to those below 18, reaching herd immunity will be a real challenge.”
A separate survey of rural Americans, released by KFF this morning, found that while they're more likely to have already been vaccinated than urban and suburban Americans, there are fewer remaining rural residents who are eager to get their shots.

39% have already gotten at least one dose of the vaccine, 16% say they'll get it as soon as possible, and 15% said they want to "wait and see." Another 9% said they'll only get vaccinated if required, and 21% said they definitely won't. In suburban areas, a combined 21% said they were vaccine resistant, and only a combined 16% of urban residents said the same.

Among rural residents who said they definitely won't get vaccinated, almost three-quarters were Republicans or Republican-leaning, and 41% were white Evangelical Christians. The bottom line: Rural, Republican-heavy states are likely blowing through their vaccine-eager populations.
https://www.axios.com/america-coronavir ... 81f6f.html


The Oklahoma state health department announced they will open their vaccination centers to non-residents of the state.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: New SARS type virus spreading in China

2632
Supplies of Johnson & Johnson’s one-dose coronavirus vaccine will be extremely limited until federal regulators approve production at a Baltimore manufacturing plant with a pattern of quality-control lapses, the White House’s pandemic response coordinator said on Friday.

With allocations of the company’s vaccine set to plunge by 86 percent next week, governors across the country warned that the loss of supplies they had been counting on would set back their vaccination drives.

Federal officials said Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech, the other two federally authorized vaccine manufacturers, could make up some of the shortfall. They also pointed out that some states were not currently using all the vaccine allocated to them.

But increases from Moderna and Pfizer will not make up for the plunge in Johnson & Johnson supply. California will receive 400,000 fewer overall doses next week than this week, a drop of 15 percent, even with slight increases from Pfizer and Moderna. That will be followed by another 5 percent decrease the next week, state officials said on Friday. Officials in a broad band of states said the sudden drop in Johnson & Johnson supply would significantly slow inoculation efforts.
Johnson & Johnson was a latecomer to winning federal authorization for emergency use, after Pfizer and Moderna. But as recently as late February, federal officials were projecting weekly deliveries of more than four million doses of the company’s vaccine in April, a significant increase to the nation’s vaccine stock. Only a quarter of those doses, at best, are now expected this month — all from the Netherlands — while federal regulators comb through the Baltimore factory that was supposed to take over for the Dutch plants.

The falloff comes as new, more contagious variants of the coronavirus are sending infection rates soaring in some parts of the country. In Michigan, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, said on Friday that she had urged Mr. Biden to surge vaccines into her state, where an outbreak, the worst in the nation, has filled hospitals and forced some schools to close.

But the White House is reluctant to change the allocation formula for states, which doles out doses equally based on population. Jeff Zients, the White House coronavirus coordinator, said on Friday that the administration did not plan to shift additional vaccine doses to hard-hit states like Michigan.

“At this point that’s not being deployed, but I am not giving up,” Ms. Whitmer said, describing a call Thursday evening with the president. “Today it’s Michigan and the Midwest. Tomorrow it could be another section of our country.”

The drop-off in Johnson & Johnson doses is directly tied to quality-control issues at the 112,000-square foot plant in southeast Baltimore, run by Emergent BioSolutions, a subcontractor to Johnson & Johnson. Johnson & Johnson discovered last month that Emergent workers had contaminated a batch of vaccine and was forced to discard the equivalent of 13 million to 15 million doses.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/04/09 ... irus-cases
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: New SARS type virus spreading in China

2633
The comments on Saturday by Gao Fu, the director of China’s disease control center, suggest that China and more than 60 countries that have approved Chinese vaccines could need to adjust their distribution programs. The widespread distribution of Chinese vaccines means that any changes could potentially affect hundreds of millions of people or more.

Possible steps to boost effectiveness of Chinese vaccines include changing the amount of vaccine given, the number of shots, the time between shots or the type of vaccines given, Mr. Gao said.

He also praised the possibilities offered by messenger RNA. That technology is used in the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines but not in any of the vaccines thus far approved in China.

Officials in Brazil said in January that the efficacy rate for the CoronaVac vaccine from the Beijing-based company Sinovac was just over 50 percent. By comparison, Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech were found to be 90 percent effective in real world conditions, researchers said last month.

Last month the distributor in the United Arab Emirates of vaccines from China’s Sinopharm said it was offering a third dose in addition to the standard two-dose regimen for a “very small number” of people who were “not really responsive” to the vaccine.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/04/11 ... irus-cases

The Chinese vaccine manufacturers haven't shared all their data from trials, so their effectiveness has come from countries using them like Brazil and UAE.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: New SARS type virus spreading in China

2634
Brazil's variant is hitting people already infected/recovered as well as putting many younger people in the hospital. Not good news.

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-04- ... -icus.html
Brazil now has more young than old COVID patients in ICUs

Another factor may be the new Brazilian variant, known as P1, which experts say is partly responsible for the country's COVID-19 death toll exploding in March.

The numbers suggest that P1, which can re-infect people who have had the original strain of the virus, may also be more virulent, Rezende said.

"The patients arriving in ICUs now are younger, have no pre-existing conditions and are developing more severe cases of the virus, too," he told AFP.

Re: New SARS type virus spreading in China

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most likely the numbers are horribly inaccurate in many countries, whether through deliberately suppressed reporting or hopelessly inadequate health care systems or both. i expect in the hinterlands of the amazon and the andes, (and africa and aisia and...) people are dropping like flies and the outside world will never hear about it.
Last edited by lurker on Mon Apr 12, 2021 10:43 am, edited 1 time in total.
i'm retired. what's your excuse?

Re: New SARS type virus spreading in China

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featureless wrote: Mon Apr 12, 2021 9:34 am "The patients arriving in ICUs now are younger, have no pre-existing conditions and are developing more severe cases of the virus, too," he told AFP.



That is scary, they are supposed to be the healthiest age group. The seasons are changing in Brazil from summer to fall, when people stay indoors more and the virus can spread faster.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: New SARS type virus spreading in China

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Are poverty and malnutrition preexisting conditions?

Brazil is facing this crisis due to mismanagement and lack of leadership. All countries with rampant infection rates for this coronavirus will face the dangers of mutations developing which will reinfect previously recovered patients. And once recovered, their body’s immune system may already be taxed and not strong enough for a second fight. Overall a very dangerous situation for the world. Expect to see more variant strains coming out of Brazil soon due to the sheer number of people infected and length of time the country is incubating the virus.
"It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of non-violence to cover impotence. There is hope for a violent man to become non-violent. There is no such hope for the impotent." -Gandhi

Re: New SARS type virus spreading in China

2638
lurker wrote: Mon Apr 12, 2021 9:59 am most likely the numbers are horribly inaccurate in many countries, whether through deliberately suppressed reporting or hopelessly inadequate health care systems or both. i expect in the hinterlands of the amazon and the andes, (and africa and aisia and...) people are dropping like flies and the outside world will never hear about it.

Yes, it will take historians decades to sort out this pandemic. The 1918 pandemic is estimated to have killed
500 million people world wide, the number of deaths from the 2020 pandemic will likely be an estimate also. Even New York State posted death numbers that were too low and had to revise them. And then there are places that obviously have posted unusually low numbers like China, Russia and Iran.


Bisbee wrote: Mon Apr 12, 2021 1:52 pm Are poverty and malnutrition preexisting conditions?

Brazil is facing this crisis due to mismanagement and lack of leadership. All countries with rampant infection rates for this coronavirus will face the dangers of mutations developing which will reinfect previously recovered patients. And once recovered, their body’s immune system may already be taxed and not strong enough for a second fight. Overall a very dangerous situation for the world. Expect to see more variant strains coming out of Brazil soon due to the sheer number of people infected and length of time the country is incubating the virus.

Yes, as an epidemiologist remarked, wealthy countries even if vaccinated won't be safe until we vaccinate the world to control variants. I agree, we'll probably see more variants coming our of Brazil not just the existing two P.1 and P.2.
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro on Friday blasted a pending Senate inquiry on his handling of a record-breaking COVID-19 outbreak, which global health officials compared to a “raging inferno.”
Supreme Court Justice Luis Roberto Barroso ruled late on Thursday that enough senators had signed on to a proposed inquiry on the government’s pandemic response to launch the probe despite stalling by Senate leadership.
A Senate investigation represents the most severe political consequence to date for Bolsonaro’s approach to the coronavirus, which he compared to a “little flu” last year as he ignored health experts calling for mask wearing and social distance.

Bolsonaro has backed off his criticism of COVID-19 vaccines, but he continues to attack governors attempting lockdowns and even milder measures, accusing them without proof of killing more with those restrictions than the virus itself.

COVID-19 has taken more than 345,000 lives in Brazil, second only to the United States. One in four deaths from the pandemic this week were in Brazil, where a brutal wave is overwhelming hospitals and setting records of more than 4,000 deaths per day.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-heal ... SKBN2BW2BP
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: New SARS type virus spreading in China

2639
highdesert wrote: Mon Apr 12, 2021 2:23 pm

Yes, it will take historians decades to sort out this pandemic. The 1918 pandemic is estimated to have killed
500 million people world wide, the number of deaths from the 2020 pandemic will likely be an estimate also. Even New York State posted death numbers that were too low and had to revise them. And then there are places that obviously have posted unusually low numbers like China, Russia and Iran.
I think you have an extra order of magnitude in there. 50,000,000 is usually the upper limit of estimated deaths from the 1918-19 epidemic. 500 million would have been 1/3 of humanity at that time.
"Even if the bee could explain to the fly why pollen is better than shit, the fly could never understand."

Re: New SARS type virus spreading in China

2640
YankeeTarheel wrote: Mon Apr 12, 2021 4:16 pm
highdesert wrote: Mon Apr 12, 2021 2:23 pm

Yes, it will take historians decades to sort out this pandemic. The 1918 pandemic is estimated to have killed
500 million people world wide, the number of deaths from the 2020 pandemic will likely be an estimate also. Even New York State posted death numbers that were too low and had to revise them. And then there are places that obviously have posted unusually low numbers like China, Russia and Iran.
I think you have an extra order of magnitude in there. 50,000,000 is usually the upper limit of estimated deaths from the 1918-19 epidemic. 500 million would have been 1/3 of humanity at that time.

You're right, 500 million were infected by the virus an H1N1 type and 50 million worldwide are estimated to have died, roughly 675,000 in the US. Should have put my glasses on.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: New SARS type virus spreading in China

2641
highdesert wrote: Mon Apr 12, 2021 4:28 pm
YankeeTarheel wrote: Mon Apr 12, 2021 4:16 pm
highdesert wrote: Mon Apr 12, 2021 2:23 pm

Yes, it will take historians decades to sort out this pandemic. The 1918 pandemic is estimated to have killed
500 million people world wide, the number of deaths from the 2020 pandemic will likely be an estimate also. Even New York State posted death numbers that were too low and had to revise them. And then there are places that obviously have posted unusually low numbers like China, Russia and Iran.
I think you have an extra order of magnitude in there. 50,000,000 is usually the upper limit of estimated deaths from the 1918-19 epidemic. 500 million would have been 1/3 of humanity at that time.

You're right, 500 million were infected by the virus an H1N1 type and 50 million worldwide are estimated to have died, roughly 675,000 in the US. Should have put my glasses on.
Ahh, what's an order of magnitude among friends? :beer2:
"Even if the bee could explain to the fly why pollen is better than shit, the fly could never understand."

Re: New SARS type virus spreading in China

2642
Federal health agencies on Tuesday called for an immediate pause in use of Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose coronavirus vaccine after six recipients in the United States developed a rare disorder involving blood clots within about two weeks of vaccination.

All six recipients were women between the ages of 18 and 48. One woman died and a second woman in Nebraska has been hospitalized in critical condition.

Nearly seven million people in the United States have received Johnson & Johnson shots so far, and roughly nine million more doses have been shipped out to the states, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“We are recommending a pause in the use of this vaccine out of an abundance of caution,” Dr. Peter Marks, director of the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, and Dr. Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director of the C.D.C., said in a joint statement. “Right now, these adverse events appear to be extremely rare.”
Scientists with the F.D.A. and C.D.C. will jointly examine possible links between the vaccine and the disorder and determine whether the F.D.A. should continue to authorize use of the vaccine for all adults or limit the authorization. An emergency meeting of the C.D.C.’s outside advisory committee has been scheduled for Wednesday.

The move could substantially complicate the nation’s vaccination efforts at a time when many states are confronting a surge in new cases and seeking to address vaccine hesitancy. Regulators in Europe and elsewhere are concerned about a similar issue with another coronavirus vaccine, developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University researchers. That concern has driven up some resistance to all vaccines, even though the AstraZeneca version has not been authorized for emergency use in the United States.
Federal officials are concerned that doctors may not be trained to look for the rare disorder if recipients of the vaccine develop symptoms of it. The federal health agencies said Tuesday morning that “treatment of this specific type of blood clot is different from the treatment that might typically be administered” for blood clots.

“Usually, an anticoagulant drug called heparin is used to treat blood clots. In this setting, administration of heparin may be dangerous, and alternative treatments need to be given,” the statement said.
In a news release, Johnson & Johnson said: “We are aware that thromboembolic events including those with thrombocytopenia have been reported with Covid-19 vaccines. At present, no clear causal relationship has been established between these rare events and the Janssen Covid-19 vaccine.” Janssen is the name of Johnson & Johnson’s division that developed the vaccine.

In the United States alone, 300,000 to 600,000 people a year develop blood clots, according to C.D.C. data. But the particular blood clotting disorder that the vaccine recipients developed, known as cerebral venous sinus thrombosis, is extremely rare.
It is common for regulators to investigate “safety signals” in new vaccines and other medical products. Very often, the signals prove not to be of concern. But the concerns about Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine mirror concerns about AstraZeneca’s, which European regulators began investigating last month after some recipients developed blood clots.

Out of 34 million people who received the vaccine in Britain, the European Union and three other countries, 222 experienced blood clots that were linked with a low level of platelets. The majority of these cases occurred within the first 14 days following vaccination, mostly in women under 60 years of age.

On April 7, the European Medicines Agency, the main regulatory agency, concluded that the disorder was a very rare side effect of the vaccine. Researchers in Germany and Norway published studies on April 9 suggesting that in very rare cases, the AstraZeneca vaccine caused people to make antibodies that activated their own platelets.

Nevertheless, the regulators argued, the benefit of the vaccine — keeping people from being infected with the coronavirus or keeping those few who get Covid-19 out of the hospital — vastly outweighed that small risk. Countries in Europe and elsewhere continued to give the vaccine to older people, who face a high risk of severe disease and death from Covid-19, while restricting it in younger people.
Both AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson use the same platform for their vaccine, a virus known as an adenovirus. On Tuesday, the Australian government announced it would not purchase Johnson & Johnson vaccines. They cited Johnson & Johnson’s use of an adenovirus. But there is no obvious reason adenovirus-based vaccines in particular would cause rare blood clots associated with low platelet levels.
The regulators described these reports as a “safety signal” — a cluster of cases requiring further investigation. But they said it wasn’t clear if the vaccine caused the clots.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/us/p ... e=Homepage

No cause and effective has so far been established between clots and the AstraZeneca and J&J vaccines, it could just be background rate. One theory advanced by German researchers studying clots from the AstraZeneca vaccine is that the clots were tied to pregnancy and women who took birth control pills. Many states have opened eligibility to 16 years and above, this will strain supplies of Pfizer and Moderna.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: New SARS type virus spreading in China

2643
Acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock said at a briefing that she expects the pause to only last "a matter of days," as health officials investigate the data surrounding the "extremely rare" blood clots.
The FDA's recommendation was issued "out of an abundance of caution" and to prepare health providers to recognize and treat patients appropriately, since these types of blood clots require a different kind of treatment.

The White House said in a statement Tuesday that the pause "will not have a significant impact" on the administration's vaccination plans, noting that it has secured enough Moderna and Pfizer doses for 300 million Americans.

Nonetheless, some White House officials are concerned that the FDA's decision could increase vaccine hesitancy.
The CDC said there are too few cases to determine whether there are any subpopulations particularly at risk. The health agencies are not ready to single out any subgroups at this time.
https://www.axios.com/johnson-vaccine-b ... 9c85d.html
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: New SARS type virus spreading in China

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featureless wrote: Tue Apr 13, 2021 12:42 pm The blood clotting is interesting. It seems one of the severe symptoms of Covid is blood clotting.

Yes, interesting. This is a rare clotting condition and so far they haven't connected getting the vaccines directly with this condition. IIRC the UK did a review and announced that there were 30 cases of this rare clotting condition out of 18 million people vaccinated in the UK and 6 of those 30 people died. More people die in road accidents in the UK every month. However government agencies have an obligation to review these cases to see if there is any connection. Interesting that it's two adenovirus vaccines and not the mRNA vaccines that are connected to the condition.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: New SARS type virus spreading in China

2646
Back in Japan, Osaka prefecture reported another record shattering day in a dire surge in Covid-19 cases: over 1,000 new cases reported Monday.

http://www.asahi.com/sp/ajw/articles/14329874
The situation has been especially serious this month as daily case records were set on three consecutive days from April 6 when there were 719 cases. The figure rose to 878 the next day and to 905 on April 8. Another record of 918 was set on April 10.
In the seven days between March 31 to April 6, a record 4,146 new cases were reported, about four times the figure for two weeks earlier.
One prefectural government official dealing with the health crisis said, “The peak in infections will likely come this week or next.”
One characteristic of what prefectural government officials are calling the fourth wave of infections is the large ratio of young people infected.
Between March 15 and April 5, 55.1 percent of all new cases were patients under 40. That's about 10 percentage points higher than the 45.6 percent of the third wave that came last autumn.
Osaka prefectural government officials had urged caution about the risks of developing serious symptoms among senior citizens, but the ratio of those with serious symptoms and under 60 in age was 27.9 percent, much higher than the 17.5 percent of the third wave.
Prefectural government officials predict a further increase in those with serious symptoms as more infections spread from younger people to senior citizens.
That means an increasing urgency will be securing hospital beds for those with serious symptoms.
The prefectural government had secured 224 hospital beds for patients with serious symptoms and as of April 12, 90.6 percent of those beds were being used. Of the 219 hospital beds that can immediately accept patients, 92.7 percent are already in use.
“The tight situation among hospital beds for those with serious symptoms will likely continue for about a month," a prefectural government source said.
This now just 100 days from the delayed start of the 2020 Olympics... Officials and all Japanese are now debating the wisdom of holding the Olympics at all or possibly in some some reduced capacity, televised only without audiences, etc. What a disaster for Japan!
"It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of non-violence to cover impotence. There is hope for a violent man to become non-violent. There is no such hope for the impotent." -Gandhi

Re: New SARS type virus spreading in China

2647
Officials and all Japanese are now debating the wisdom of holding the Olympics at all or possibly in some some reduced capacity, televised only without audiences, etc. What a disaster for Japan!
Even if Japan had vaccinated 70% of their population, I think it should be rescheduled. It's a gathering of people from all over the world, some vaccinated and maybe some not vaccinated and variants and maybe some new variants. It's not my decision to make, but I do hope the Japanese government makes it soon.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: New SARS type virus spreading in China

2648
A study by researchers at Oxford University in England suggests the risks of experiencing dangerous, rare blood clots in the brain are far higher in those who catch the coronavirus than in those who get either the AstraZeneca vaccine, or the vaccines made by Pfizer and Moderna in the U.S. The research shows that the number of people who experience clots after getting the vaccines made by the American pharmaceutical giants appears very similar to the number who get the rare condition after a shot of the AstraZeneca drug, which was developed in conjunction with Oxford's vaccine institute.

A key finding of the research, revealed Thursday as a "pre-print" study which has yet to be reviewed by other scientists, was that the risk of experiencing a blood clot in the brain was about 95 times higher for people who contract COVID-19 than in the general population.

That's yet another serious health threat associated with the disease, and one the scientists hoped would boost confidence in all of the major vaccines currently available in the Western world, as their research suggests the drugs carry a significantly lower threat of clotting than the disease they've been proven to fend off.

"This is more evidence of the vaccine helping people in a dramatic way from the ravages of COVID-19," CBS News medical consultant Dr. David Agus said of the study on "CBS This Morning."

The analysis of real-world data collated by the global health research network TriNetX and European agencies included information on hundreds of thousands of people who either caught COVID-19, or who were given the AstraZeneca, Pfizer or Moderna shots. Most of the data on the mRNA-type vaccines, which are the American drugs, was from the U.S., while data on the AstraZeneca shots came largely from Europe's mass-vaccination programs.

The data showed that about 4 in every 1 million people who get the American-made vaccines experience cerebral venous thrombosis (CVT), or blood clots in the brain. With the AstraZeneca vaccine, which works in a different way and is similar to the Johnson & Johnson shot, the research showed an incidence rate of about 5 in every 1 million.

That equates to a risk of CVT 10-times greater for people who catch the coronavirus than for those who get the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, and 8-times greater for those given the AstraZeneca shot.

"There are concerns about possible associations between vaccines, and CVT, causing governments and regulators to restrict the use of certain vaccines," noted Paul Harrison, Professor of Psychiatry and Head of Oxford's Translational Neurobiology Group. "We've reached two important conclusions. Firstly, COVID-19 markedly increases the risk of CVT, adding to the list of blood clotting problems this infection causes. Secondly, the COVID-19 risk is higher than seen with the current vaccines, even for those under 30; something that should be taken into account when considering the balances between risks and benefits for vaccination."

The research released by Oxford on Thursday found that about 39 of every 1 million people who contract COVID-19 are likely to experience the clots on the brain. The scientists stressed that the point of their research was not to compare vaccines, but to gather firm data on the risks of all the vaccines compared to the risks associated with catching COVID-19.

"The signals that COVID-19 is linked to CVT, as well as portal vein thrombosis — a clotting disorder of the liver — are clear, and one we should take note of," said Dr. Maxime Taquet, another of the researchers from the Translational Neurobiology Group.

As the figures used to determine the overall incidence rates were being constantly updated, the researchers stressed that "all comparisons must be interpreted cautiously as data are still accruing."

They noted also that it was still unclear whether "COVID-19 and vaccines lead to CVT by the same or different mechanisms," and said that would be the subject of their ongoing research.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-vacc ... na-oxford/
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: New SARS type virus spreading in China

2649
Think Brazil has problems.
India Reports More Than 200,000 New Coronavirus Cases In A Single Day

NEW DELHI (AP) — India reported more than 200,000 new coronavirus cases Thursday, skyrocketing past 14 million overall as an intensifying outbreak puts a grim weight on its fragile health care system.

In the capital, New Delhi, more than a dozen hotels and wedding banquet halls were ordered to be converted into COVID-19 centers attached to hospitals.

“The surge is alarming,” said S.K. Sarin, a government health expert in New Delhi.

Arvind Kejriwal, Delhi’s top elected official, announced weekend curfews to break the chain of infections in the capital, which added 17,282 new cases and 104 more deaths in the previous 24 hours.

Trips to railway stations, hospitals and airports will be allowed as essential services, but shopping malls, gymnasiums, spas and auditoriums must close, he said in a statement. He also said 5,000 hospital beds are available and more capacity is being added, so there was no bed shortage in the capital.

The bustle of India’s biggest city and financial capital, Mumbai, ebbed under lockdown-like curbs to curb the spread of the virus. The action imposed by worst-hit Maharashtra state Wednesday night closed most industries, businesses and public places and limits the movement of people for 15 days, but didn’t stop train and air services.

In recent days, migrant workers hauling backpacks have swarmed overcrowded trains leaving Mumbai, an exodus among panic-stricken day laborers.

In addition to the 200,739 new cases of infection, the Health Ministry also reported 1,038 fatalities from COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, taking deaths to 173,123 since the pandemic started last year.

India’s total cases are second behind the United States and its deaths are fourth behind the U.S., Brazil and Mexico. The actual numbers may be much higher with limited testing among India’s nearly 1.4 billion people.

Shahid Jamil, a virologist, said the recent local and state elections with massive political rallies and a major Hindu festival with hundreds of thousands of devotees bathing in the Ganges river in the northern city of Haridwar were super-spreader events.

India is ramping up its vaccination drive. The Health Ministry said the total vaccinations crossed 114 million with more than 3 million doses administered on Wednesday.

Hospitals in Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and several others state were overwhelmed with patients with several hospitals reporting shortage of oxygen cylinders.

Cremation and burial grounds in the worst-hit area also were finding it difficult to cope with the increasing number of bodies arriving for last rites, Indian media reports said.

Imran Sheikh, a resident of the western city of Pune, said hospital authorities asked him to arrange for an oxygen gas cylinder for his relative undergoing COVID-19 treatment.

New Delhi and dozens of other cities and towns imposed night curfews as they battled an infection rate that almost doubled within 11 days.

When infections began plummeting in India in September, many concluded the worst had passed. Masks and social distancing were abandoned. When cases began rising again in February, authorities were left scrambling.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/india-co ... befb70d13f
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.-Huxley
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis,

Re: New SARS type virus spreading in China

2650
Yup. As long as we have massive surges anywhere, current vaccines are just a stalling tactic for wealthy countries. Mutations will evade them at some point since there is just too much opportunity being given globally for those mutations to occur. Here's hoping we can contain them with boosters. I for one intend to enjoy my seemingly short period of protection after mid-May, hope for the best and prepare for the worst.

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