The COVID-2019 Thread

[Little Chuchok]

[harrybarracuda]

Wow, breaking news from Youtube. Maybe not that breaking.



https://teakdoor.com/thailand-and-as...ml#post4295478 (The COVID-2019 Thread)

[misskit]

Philippines logs record daily COVID-19 deaths as data reclassified

Russia hits new record for coronavirus infections - ABC News

New Covid-19 Infections in Greece Break All-Time Record

[Buckaroo Banzai]

Philippines logs record daily COVID-19 deaths as data reclassified

Russia hits new record for coronavirus infections - ABC News

New Covid-19 Infections in Greece Break All-Time Record

Yes
I have been reading the same reports
What is worrisome is that Greece has a 60% fully vaccinated with quality vaccines.
If these things are happening in countries significantly more and better vaccinated , how far behind can Thailand be?

[harrybarracuda]

Yes
I have been reading the same reports
What is worrisome is that Greece has a 60% fully vaccinated with quality vaccines.
If these things are happening in countries significantly more and better vaccinated , how far behind can Thailand be?

You cannot take the infection rate on its own; you have to add

Vaccination rate
Demographics of those vaccinated


E.g. Greece has had these infection numbers before but with twice the death rate.

[Norton]

If these things are happening in countries significantly more and better vaccinated , how far behind can Thailand be?

1 year +.

[baldrick]

PNG has about 3% vaccinated and delta is swamping the country

[harrybarracuda]

PNG has about 3% vaccinated and delta is swamping the country

No surprise there then.

Actually it's only 1.2% fully vaccinated which is even worse.

[harrybarracuda]

US adults who previously had COVID-19 contracted the disease at more than five times the rate of those who were fully vaccinated, according to data published today in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR).
Rolling out vaccines during a pandemic is not easy, and people can get confused by evidence that shows COVID vaccines don't work perfectly, including a study yesterday showing that household spread with the Delta (B1617.2) variant still happens after vaccination, albeit not as readily in the unvaccinated and not leading to severe cases (see today's CIDRAP News story).
Yet the body of evidence continues to grow that, despite their imperfections, COVID-19 vaccines continue to work very well, and today's study adds to that. Officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), who led the study, say of the results, "All eligible persons should be vaccinated against COVID-19 as soon as possible, including unvaccinated persons previously infected with SARS-CoV-2."
Unvaccinated at 5.5 times the risk

The researchers looked at data from nine states on 201,269 hospitalizations for COVID-like illness from Jan 1 to Sep 2, 2021. Of these, 94,264 had molecular testing for SARS-CoV-2, and 7,348 (7.8%) had lab-confirmed COVID-19. Among that group, 1,020 hospitalizations were among previously infected and unvaccinated people, and 6,328 cases were among fully vaccinated people who were not previously infected.
Lab-confirmed COVID-19 was found in 324 (5.1%) of the fully vaccinated people and in 89 (8.7%) of the unvaccinated, previously infected people.
In comparing unvaccinated people who were infected 90 to 179 days after a previous infection compared with those who were vaccinated 90 to 179 days before their COVID infection, the researchers found the incidence of infection to be 5.49 times higher in the unvaccinated (95% confidence interval, 2.75 to 10.99).

COVID-19 vaccine gives 5 times the protection of 'natural immunity,' data show | CIDRAP

[misskit]

COVID-19's global death toll tops 5 million in under 2 years

The global death toll from COVID-19 topped 5 million on Monday, less than two years into a crisis that has not only devastated poor countries but also humbled wealthy ones with first-rate health care systems.


Together, the United States, the European Union, Britain and Brazil — all upper-middle- or high-income countries — account for one-eighth of the world’s population but nearly half of all reported deaths. The U.S. alone has recorded over 740,000 lives lost, more than any other nation.


“This is a defining moment in our lifetime,” said Dr. Albert Ko, an infectious disease specialist at the Yale School of Public Health. “What do we have to do to protect ourselves so we don’t get to another 5 million?”

The death toll, as tallied by Johns Hopkins University, is about equal to the populations of Los Angeles and San Francisco combined. It rivals the number of people killed in battles among nations since 1950, according to estimates from the Peace Research Institute Oslo. Globally, COVID-19 is now the third leading cause of death, after heart disease and stroke.


The staggering figure is almost certainly an undercount because of limited testing and people dying at home without medical attention, especially in poor parts of the world, such as India.


Hot spots have shifted over the 22 months since the outbreak began, turning different places on the world map red. Now, the virus is pummeling Russia, Ukraine and other parts of Eastern Europe, especially where rumors, misinformation and distrust in government have hobbled vaccination efforts. In Ukraine, only 17% of the adult population is fully vaccinated; in Armenia, only 7%.


“What’s uniquely different about this pandemic is it hit hardest the high-resource countries,” said Dr. Wafaa El-Sadr, director of ICAP, a global health center at Columbia University. “That’s the irony of COVID-19.”


Wealthier nations with longer life expectancies have larger proportions of older people, cancer survivors and nursing home residents, all of whom are especially vulnerable to COVID-19, El-Sadr noted. Poorer countries tend to have larger shares of children, teens and young adults, who are less likely to fall seriously ill from the coronavirus.


India, despite its terrifying delta surge that peaked in early May, now has a much lower reported daily death rate than wealthier Russia, the U.S. or Britain, though there is uncertainty around its figures.


The seeming disconnect between wealth and health is a paradox that disease experts will be pondering for years. But the pattern that is seen on the grand scale, when nations are compared, is different when examined at closer range. Within each wealthy country, when deaths and infections are mapped, poorer neighborhoods are hit hardest.


In the U.S., for example, COVID-19 has taken an outsize toll on Black and Hispanic people, who are more likely than white people to live in poverty and have less access to health care.


“When we get out our microscopes, we see that within countries, the most vulnerable have suffered most,” Ko said.


Wealth has also played a role in the global vaccination drive, with rich countries accused of locking up supplies. The U.S. and others are already dispensing booster shots at a time when millions across Africa haven’t received a single dose, though the rich countries are also shipping hundreds of millions of shots to the rest of the world.


Africa remains the world’s least vaccinated region, with just 5% of the population of 1.3 billion people fully covered.


In Kampala, Uganda, Cissy Kagaba lost her 62-year-old mother on Christmas Day and her 76-year-old father days later.


“Christmas will never be the same for me,” said Kagaba, an anti-corruption activist in the East African country that has been through multiple lockdowns against the virus and where a curfew remains in place.


The pandemic has united the globe in grief and pushed survivors to the breaking point.


“Who else is there now? The responsibility is on me. COVID has changed my life,” said 32-year-old Reena Kesarwani, a mother of two boys, who was left to manage her late husband’s modest hardware store in a village in India.


Her husband, Anand Babu Kesarwani, died at 38 during India's crushing coronavirus surge earlier this year. It overwhelmed one of the most chronically underfunded public health systems in the world and killed tens of thousands as hospitals ran out of oxygen and medicine.


In Bergamo, Italy, once the site of the West’s first deadly wave, 51-year-old Fabrizio Fidanza was deprived of a final farewell as his 86-year-old father lay dying in the hospital. He is still trying to come to terms with the loss more than a year later.


“For the last month, I never saw him,’’ Fidanza said during a visit to his father's grave. “It was the worst moment. But coming here every week, helps me.”


Today, 92% of Bergamo’s eligible population have had at least one shot, the highest vaccination rate in Italy. The chief of medicine at Pope John XXIII Hospital, Dr. Stefano Fagiuoli, said he believes that’s a clear result of the city’s collective trauma, when the wail of ambulances was constant.


In Lake City, Florida, LaTasha Graham, 38, still gets mail almost daily for her 17-year-old daughter, Jo’Keria, who died of COVID-19 in August, days before starting her senior year of high school. The teen, who was buried in her cap and gown, wanted to be a trauma surgeon.


“I know that she would have made it. I know that she would have been where she wanted to go,” her mother said.


In Rio de Janeiro, Erika Machado scanned the list of names engraved on a long, undulating sculpture of oxidized steel that stands in Penitencia cemetery as an homage to some of Brazil’s COVID-19 victims. Then she found him: Wagner Machado, her father.


“My dad was the love of my life, my best friend,” said Machado, 40, a saleswoman who traveled from Sao Paulo to see her father’s name. “He was everything to me.”

COVID-19's global death toll tops 5 million in under 2 years | Taiwan News | 2021-11-01 18:00:00

[Buckaroo Banzai]

Together, the United States, the European Union, Britain and Brazil — all upper-middle- or high-income countries — account for one-eighth of the world’s population but nearly half of all reported deaths.

To be fair the US was hit with two viruses the covid Virus and the trump virus. Come to think of it Brazil has a similar problem.

[Latindancer]

Brazil is worse off. Bolsonaro just signed some sort of bill that will really screw the amazon

[harrybarracuda]

Brazil is worse off. Bolsonaro just signed some sort of bill that will really screw the amazon

Great, maybe post that in the Climate Change thread where it's relevant. With some kind of link would be even better.

[harrybarracuda]

Another fucking dumbarse.

Original “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” star Kristy Swanson has reportedly been hospitalized with “COVID-related” complications.
“Prayers for me please. Yesterday I took an ambulance ride to the hospital. I’m still here with pneumonia, I’m on oxygen etc, all covid related of course. I’m in good spirits and in great hands,” the 51-year-old actor wrote on Twitter Monday.
More than 21,000 Twitter TWTR, +2.93% users offered support in the form of “likes” and retweets.
At the same time, the ’80s icon has drawn criticism for her openly held opinions against vaccination, with some on the platform calling her a contender for the “Herman Cain Awards” — a topical take on the legendary “Darwin Awards,” which honor recently deceased individuals who perish in generally embarrassing ways.
Of course, former presidential candidate Cain, who denounced coronavirus safety guidelines set by health officials, died as a result of COVID-19 infection in July 2020, after attending a Donald Trump “comeback” rally in Tulsa, Okla. He is among the highest-profile political figures to die of the preventable disease.
One Twitter user, a self-described hospital nurse, also reprimanded Swanson, urging her to get jabbed as soon as possible. I’m sure you are in the great hands of doctors and nurses who are stretched to the max because of people like you — who not only won’t get vaccinated but encourage others not to,” they wrote. “Signed, A tired nurse.”

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/va...19-11635801592

[David48atTD]

Apologies if posted previously ...


Fake arm for anti vaxxers

" In a move that defies belief, a Melbourne anti-vaxxer is hocking prosthetic arms for $1500 on Facebook to sidestep getting the jab"

[harrybarracuda]

You can sell anything to these thick fuckers.

[harrybarracuda]

JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Biotechnology company Novavax said Monday that Indonesia has given the world's first emergency use authorization for its COVID-19 vaccine, which uses a different technology than current shots.

The vaccine is easier to store and transport than some other shots, which could allow it to play an important role in boosting supplies in poorer countries around the world.

The two-dose Novavax vaccine is made with lab-grown copies of the spike protein that coats the coronavirus. That’s very different from widely used mRNA vaccines such as Pfizer and Moderna that deliver genetic instructions for the body to make its own spike protein.

The emergency authorization of the vaccine is a “very important step” for Indonesia's COVID-19 vaccination program, Indonesian epidemiologist Dicky Budiman said.

“This vaccine will be much easier to transport, store and distribute in a place like Indonesia, where we have many islands,” he said.

Budiman said if the rollout of the vaccine is successful, it could lead to its approval and use in other developing nations.

The need for more vaccines remains critical in many countries, including Indonesia.

In June, U.S.-based Novavax announced the vaccine had proven about 90% effective against symptomatic COVID-19 in a study of nearly 30,000 people in the U.S. and Mexico. It also worked against variants circulating in those countries at the time, it said.

The company said side effects were mild and included tenderness at the injection site, headache, aches and pains and fatigue.

In October, it addressed concerns that production of the vaccine had been slowed due to a lack of raw materials and other issues, saying it planned to “achieve a capacity of 150 million doses per month by the end of the fourth quarter” through partnerships with Serum Institute of India, SK Bioscience in South Korea and Takeda in Japan, among others.

Novavax said it has already filed for authorization of the vaccine in the United Kingdom, European Union, Canada, Australia, India and the Philippines.

Indonesia first to greenlight Novavax COVID-19 vaccine - ABC News

[harrybarracuda]

Warning: Be cautious if you are a fragile pink

The U.S Embassy welcomed the arrival of the third shipment in three weeks of Pfizer’s Coronavirus vaccines to Cairo on October 30. This shipment of an additional 3.6 million Pfizer doses, part of 8.25 million doses donated from the United States to Egypt through COVAX, will help protect Egyptians from Coronavirus and prevent the spread of the virus’s dangerous new strains.
Ambassador Cohen noted, “These 3.6 million Pfizer doses represent the largest ever donation of vaccines to Egypt and the fourth direct donation of Pfizer vaccines from the people of the United States to the people of Egypt. Today’s vaccine donation underscores our continuing commitment to support Egypt through this global health crisis. The United States has now supplied 8.25 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine to Egypt.”
These Pfizer doses will be swiftly dispatched to Ministry of Health and Population facilities in Cairo, Port Said, Daqahlya, Behaira, Luxor, and Assiut, and stored in UNICEF-funded ultra-cold storage equipment used exclusively for the Pfizer vaccine. They will be distributed to vaccination centers across the country and given to Egyptian citizens and residents.

United States Donates 3.6 Million More COVID-19 Pfizer Vaccines to Egypt - U.S. Embassy in Egypt

[harrybarracuda]

Oh dear, this could be messy. If they want to invalidate all the fakes, they are going to have to invalidate all of them.

The private key used to sign EU Digital Covid certificates has been reportedly leaked and is being circulated on messaging apps and online data breach marketplaces.
The key has also been misused to generate forged certificates, such as those for Adolf Hitler, Mickey Mouse, Sponge Bob—all of which are being recognized as valid by the official government apps.
The Digital Covid certificate, or the "Green Pass" helps European Union residents travel across borders seamlessly by proving that they have either been vaccinated against COVID-19, received a negative test result, or successfully recovered from COVID-19.

<snip>


The fact that anybody is able to forge cryptographically-valid COVID certificates brings into question the authenticity of even legitimate certificates issued by EU government bodies.
Should this be the case, the private key would need to be revoked by the government authorities for the entire EU, thereby invalidating both forged and legitimate COVID certificates.
As such, by the time the situation is resolved and the private keys are reset, holders of legitimate EU Digital Covid certificates will very likely need to generate fresh Green Passes.

EU investigating leak of private key used to forge Covid passes

[OhOh]

Major shipment of Sputnik V arrives in Philippines, says Russian embassy

For now, the Philippines has received a total of 4.39 million doses of Sputnik V



2 Nov, 22:39

"BANGKOK, November 2. /TASS/.

A shipment of Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine was delivered to the Philippines on Tuesday, the Russian Embassy in Manila told TASS.

According to an embassy spokesman, "the shipment of 2.7 million doses of Russia’s Sputnik V jab has been delivered to the Philippines.’’ Both components of the shot, 1.35 million doses of each, have arrived in the archipelagic island country.


The Philippines has received a total of 4.39 million doses of Sputnik V for now. In total, more than 106.2 million doses of various coronavirus vaccines have been delivered to the Philippines since February.


The first coronavirus infection case was reported in the Philippines, whose population exceeds 109 million, on January 30, 2020. By now, the total number of people that contracted the infection has topped 2.79 million, while more than 2.7 million recovered and 43,400 patients died. More than 27 million people have been fully vaccinated.

The southeast Asian country has approved a number of jabs for use, including Russia’s Sputinik V and Sputnik Light."

Major shipment of Sputnik V arrives in Philippines, says Russian embassy - Society & Culture - TASS

[harrybarracuda]

Major shipment of Sputnik V arrives in Philippines, says Russian embassy

It's good they're doing something with them, especially since Russian citizens don't seem to want them.

[misskit]

World Economic Forum event in China postponed due to COVID-19 outbreak


The World Economic Forum event scheduled in China this month has been postponed after COVID-19 cases in the city of Tianjin hit a three-month high, according to Reuters.


The event, called the Annual Meeting of the New Champions, was scheduled for Nov. 16-18. However, the WEF said that the meeting will be moved to a different date.


"Regretfully, due to the circumstances around the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and recent cases in major cities and provinces in China, the Annual Meeting of the New Champions will be rescheduled," the WEF said in an email.

The meeting was supposed to be the forum's first global gathering since the COVID-19 outbreak.


The forum sought to bring together over 500 leaders representing the world’s largest businesses as well as public figures from around the globe to gather under the theme of Championing a New Sustainable Innovation Agenda.


The WEF did not immediately respond to The Hill's request for comment.

China also issued notices to citizens to stock up on essential items and "daily necessities," sparking panicked buying among citizens, according to Reuters.

A notice posted on the Ministry of Commerce's website on Monday asked residents “to store a certain amount of daily necessities as needed to meet daily life and emergencies”.

The country's National Health Commission confirmed 93 new local symptomatic cases on Nov. 2, up from 54 on Nov. 1. This is the highest daily count since Aug. 9 when China's last major outbreak peaked.


Beijing authorities have also told residents to avoid traveling out of the city, postpone weddings and cut back on all non-essential gatherings.

World Economic Forum event in China postponed due to COVID-19 outbreak | TheHill

[harrybarracuda]

Yeah you just knew the chinkies are playing it down again. Probably riddled with it.

[misskit]

China, India, Russia Data Masks the World's Real COVID Death Toll

The global death toll from COVID-19 topped 5 million this week, with more deaths in the United States than any other country in the world.

High and middle-income countries make up more than half of all reported coronavirus fatalities, according to the tally by Johns Hopkins University. The U.S. alone has recorded more than 748,000 lives lost since the virus emerged almost two years ago.


Experts dispute the official figure, however, saying it does not reflect the true death toll, particularly in countries with massive populations such as India and China.

"It's difficult to know how much higher, but certainly possible that it is two or three times higher than the number of deaths we know about," Amber D'Souza, a professor of epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told Newsweek.


D'Souza and other researchers also pointed out that the official tally counts only confirmed COVID-19 deaths, but the standards for reporting these vary by country.


The official death toll is a "false figure," according to David Spiegelhalter, a statistician at the University of Cambridge. "It's much worse than that," he told Newsweek. "I think there's no doubt that some countries are under-reporting COVID-19 deaths… Some of the countries with the worst death tolls are the ones that are poorest at reporting COVID deaths."

Spiegelhalter says a more accurate figure could be reached by looking at excess deaths, pointing to The Economist's analysis of how many more people have died during the pandemic than would typically be expected.


He noted that this analysis demonstrates how some countries, including the U.S., the U.K. and Brazil, have official tallies of COVID-19 deaths that "roughly match" the number of excess deaths, while other nations have massive gaps.


Russia, he said, has reported about 235,000 deaths from COVID-19, but the number of excess deaths in the country is estimated to be as high as 850,000, indicating that many more people have likely died from the virus.


Another country with a large gap between its official count and estimated excess deaths is India. The country has reported more than 459,000 COVID-19 deaths, but excess death estimates vary between 1.2 million and 7.2 million.


China, where the virus first emerged in late 2019, has reported less than 5,000 deaths from COVID-19. The Economist's analysis shows that China has had up to 1.7 million estimated excess deaths during the pandemic.


The use of excess deaths to calculate the pandemic's death toll does have challenges, Spiegelhalter added. "We cannot attribute all those to the virus," he said, adding that some fatalities would have come as a result of measures imposed to combat the spread of COVID-19.


Another shortcoming is that reliable estimates of deaths before the pandemic are needed, but these are difficult to determine for some parts of the world, said Dr. Albert Ko, a professor of epidemiology and medicine at the Yale School of Public Health.


That's a particular issue in India, Ko told Newsweek, pointing to a paper that analyzed three different estimates of excess deaths in the country, which has a population of more than 1 billion people. It concluded that millions more have died of COVID-19 than official counts show.


A key reason why COVID-19 deaths have been under-reported is limited testing, especially in poorer parts of the world, according to Ko. "Reported cases depend on the robustness of surveillance systems. Part of that is also dependent on access to testing," he said.


Testing was a barrier in many countries including the U.S. early in the pandemic, D'Souza added. "There were many cases that occurred that were not counted, because we didn't have testing," she said. "Even now, there are people who die at home, or choose not to go to hospitals, because the hospitals are overwhelmed and there are capacity limitations."

Higher death tolls in the U.S. and Europe can also be explained because those countries tend to have older populations, with more people who suffer from other conditions that make them more vulnerable to COVID-19, she said.


Other factors that could account for the disparity include differences in the measures imposed to combat the spread of the virus and how long they were in place.


Ko pointed out that the official global toll doesn't capture those people whose lives may not have officially been claimed by the virus, but who died as a result of the pandemic.


"The pandemic has affected us much more beyond just the direct number of deaths that are caused by COVID," he said. "For example, the patients that couldn't get diagnosed with tuberculosis, women not getting their prenatal visits, people not getting their emergency surgical procedures, because the hospitals were overwhelmed."


Last month, the World Health Organization reported that deaths from tuberculosis had risen for the first time in more than a decade because of the pandemic, reversing "years of global progress."


D'Souza said although death counts may differ, few places had escaped the toll of the pandemic. "To me, the question is not really who has the most deaths. It is the dramatic toll that COVID is taking in country after country," she said.


That toll will rise significantly, she warned, unless more countries achieve higher rates of vaccination.


Africa has the slowest vaccination rate of any continent, with only 8.7 percent of the population having received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine. In some countries, uptake continues to lag behind the levels needed to end the pandemic, D'Souza added.


Although 5 million is a "devastating" milestone, Ko said, "a big question is: how are we going to prevent the next 5 million? The pandemic is not over and many parts of the world are not vaccinated."


D'Souza said there was reason to hope that COVID-19 deaths would drop significantly in 2022. "We do have the beginnings of high population immunity in some countries," she said. "But we still have a long way to go."


China, India, Russia Data Masks the World&#39;s Real COVID Death Toll

[harrybarracuda]

Yeah but we know the countries that systematically lie through their teeth so that is no surprise really.