Emergence of a Deadly Coronavirus

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Glitches in the Vaccination System

I have received my first shot of the vaccine (Moderna) and experienced first hand some of the glitches in the system. I am not throwings stones here. Just looking for improvements. So here are my observations.

1. The most vulnerable people to dying from the coronavirus are the elderly. The older you are the more likely you will die from contracting the virus. Now it makes sense to target initially the nursing homes and the medical staff. But after that population is given the option of getting the vaccine, the next targeted group is the elderly. Those individuals that are living at home or in assisted living accommodations. So when it came my turn standing in line to receive the vaccine, the system was not tweeked for my age group. Many of the seniors do not have smart phones, or computers, or even set up on the internet. In my area the internet is incredibly slow because I live in a rural area. So when I logged onto the website in order to register for the vaccine, I sat at my desk for over 30 minutes just watching a bar go back and forth on my screen telling me the site was loading. I called the 2-1-1 alternate telephone number to register and was told the wait time was greater than one hour. So I just sat there waiting for a connection. Many seniors experienced this problem. So my daughter who lives around 400 miles away, two states over, registered me. She had a fast internet connection. One of my neighbor had her daughter, a two thousand miles away in California register her for the shot. The key to the solution is the children. They can step in and help their aging parents with this problem.

2. Another problem is that many of the aged have medical issues that make it difficult for them to get vaccinated. One of the friends of the family has COPD. It is very difficult for him to even move from his living room to his dining room. He is out of breath and hauls around oxygen tanks with him. How does he get the shot? So when I went to get my shot, I asked a number of questions he needed answers for. This streamlined his process:
* He needed someone to accompany him.
* When he arrived he is to park in bay 1 or 2, right near the door and the person accompanying him would bring in his ID and Medical Insurance cards and register him.
* Then the nurse would walk to his car and give him the shot.

3. Another problem is sometimes the seniors need a little help. One of our friends had an appointment yesterday to get the shot. But it snowed between 2-3 inches the night before. Since the roadway was above freezing when the snow fell and then the temperatures drop quickly to around 10 degrees F. The initial layer of snow melted and then refroze. That produced ice covered with snow. Dangerous driving. So I called and offered to drive her to the vaccination site. I am running snow tires, so it was much safer than her fretting about getting to the site or accidentally sliding off the road.

4. After I received my shot, they gave me information on tracking system to track any adverse side effects that I might experience. The only problem with that was it was all designed for SMART PHONES. I do not have a smart phone. Why don't I have a SMART PHONE you might ask. Well I live in a very rural area with hills and my home gets zero bars. If you have no reception, why have a SMART PHONE. Now if they designed the system to the internet, I would be fine submitting my daily status, but they didn't.

Aerosol Transmission

The scientific consensus is that the vast majority of COVID-19 cases are spread through indoor transmission – whether via aerosols or droplets. Now that winter has arrived in the northern hemisphere and people are spending more time indoors, there has been a corresponding rise in the number of COVID-19 cases.

The researchers found that when two people are in a poorly ventilated space and neither is wearing a mask, prolonged talking is far more likely to spread the virus than a short cough. When speaking, we exhale small droplets, or aerosols, which spread easily around a room, and accumulate if ventilation is not adequate. In contrast, coughing expels more large droplets, which are more likely to settle on surfaces after they are emitted.

It only takes a matter of seconds for aerosols to spread over two meters when masks are not worn, implying that physical distancing in the absence of ventilation is not sufficient to provide safety for long exposure times. When masks of any kind are worn however, they slow the breath’s momentum and filter a portion of the exhaled droplets, in turn reducing the amount of virus in aerosols that can spread through the space.

Source: Coronavirus more likely to spread inside through maskless talking than coughing

How Effective will the Vaccines be against the New Variants

Last week I mentioned that one of the first bellwether indicators will be the results from the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 Phase 3 Vaccine Trials. These trials took place in Brazil and South Africa. The South African variant is a really nasty variant that could potential bring us back to square one in the battle against the coronavirus. So the trials in South Africa where nearly all cases of COVID-19 (95%) were due to infection with a SARS-CoV-2 variant from the B.1.351 lineage.

So now the results of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine trials are in.

Johnson & Johnson on Friday said its single-shot coronavirus vaccine was 72% effective in preventing moderate-to-severe COVID-19 in the U.S. The shot was found to be 66% effective in preventing moderate-to-severe illness in Latin America, and 57% effective in South Africa at 28 days post-vaccination. So the South African variant reduced the vaccines effectiveness.

But when they looked at the vaccines ability to protect against the severest symptoms they found that:
in the severe cases, protection rose to 85% (which means that the J&J vaccine was effective in the most important parameter, the matter of life & death).

Source: Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine 66% effective in global trial, company says

How Effective will the Vaccines be against the New Variants

Some results are in from another vaccine manufacturer.

New findings from Novavax reveal its vaccine is 89% against COVID-19 illness, but plummeted to 60% among trial volunteers in South Africa. Including volunteers with HIV, overall the protection against the South African variant was 49%.

Source: How can I avoid coronavirus variants?

The California Variant

According to a preliminary study, one factor driving the area's recent coronavirus surge may be a new variant called CAL.20C. The variant, which is different than the more infectious strains first detected in the UK (B.1.1.7) and South Africa (B.1.351), has become one of the prominent versions of the virus in Los Angeles county.

More than 1 million people in Los Angeles County have gotten COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic. Two-thirds of those cases were reported in the last two months. By December, however, 36% of virus samples from Cedars-Sinai COVID-19 patients were identified as CAL2.0C. The variant also represented nearly one-quarter of all samples from Southern California. New York, Washington DC, and island countries in the Pacific Ocean have also reported cases involving the strain.

Source: Researchers say a new coronavirus variant found in California may have contributed to Los Angeles' case surge

When you get the vaccine

After you get to the front of the line for your vaccine shot, there is one thing that might be important to know. Avoid taking over the counter medication to treat any side effects from the vaccine.

The two coronavirus vaccines that have seen emergency approval in the U.S. — one developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and the other by Moderna — may cause side effects after they’re administered, such as pain and swelling at the injection site and/or fever, chills and headache, per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In an attempt to prevent some of these unwanted reactions, some receiving the jab may choose to take over-the-counter pain relievers such as Tylenol (acetaminophen) or Advil (ibuprofen).

But doing so could impact the vaccines’ effectiveness, warn experts.

But taking pain relievers before receiving the jab could hinder the body’s ability to create antibodies against the virus, as these over-the-counter medications may slow the immune response, experts have theorized, largely pointing to a study out of Duke University that found children who took pain relievers prior to receiving childhood vaccines had lower antibody levels afterward compared to those who did not.

Source: Getting the COVID-19 vaccine? Don’t take over-the-counter pain relievers beforehand, experts say

Although this article stresses the importance of not taking this over the counter medication prior to the shot. Hospital staff are recommended to avoid this medication after the shot as symptoms begin to appear. SO TOUGH IT OUT

Progress of COVID Inoculations

According to the coronavirus vaccine tracker, the U.S. has now administered 28.95 million vaccine doses with around 8.7% of the U.S. population vaccinated (with at least one dose).

Globally 90.90 million vaccinate doses have been given with the U.S., China and U.K. in the top three positions. [The E.U. and also the individuals countries that make up the E.U are listed in the same table. Sort of redundant. In comparing vaccine inoculations I choose to compare individual countries.]

Source: COVID-19 Vaccine Tracker

China is Expanding Current Lockdown to Shanghai



All 13,000 residential complexes in Shanghai are under high alert. Before entering any complex, visitors must submit their health QR codes and do temperature checks. Civil affairs officials have announced that people who travel out of the city for the Lunar New Year festival will have to submit negative nucleic acid results once they return. Those who come from areas designated “medium-risk” will be placed under 14-day quarantine at home and will have to submit two nucleic acid tests. Those coming from high-risk areas will be under central quarantine for 14 days.

The first two cases of infections in Shanghai were discovered in two hospitals. Authorities have asked all personnel at the medical institutions to get tested for the virus. As of Jan. 22, more than 15,900 people have been tested. A team of around 3,100 people has been deployed in the city to investigate the infections as well as to help with contact tracing.

The shutdown of hospitals has created panic among medical students that are affiliated with these hospitals. Some students are worried that they may be forced to stay on campus. Many have left the campus before any movement restrictions were announced.

“Students who were scheduled to do experiments on Jan. 30 all rescheduled for today (Jan. 22)… The campus is full of the sound of suitcases rubbing the ground. I feel that the epidemic is so close to me. I really hope that the epidemic in Shanghai will be effectively controlled as soon as possible,” one student said in a social media post.

The CCP virus is spreading throughout other parts of China as well. On Jan. 19, Chinese Vice Premier Sun Chunlan blamed the outbreak in Hebei province on religious gatherings and asked officials to persuade people to change their religious customs. In the city of Shijiazhuang, officials laid the blame on events like weddings and funerals in which a large number of people are tightly packed indoors and shared food with each other. In the port city of Tianjin, authorities have shut down transportation routes into the city so that the virus isn’t brought in from neighboring Hebei.

Source: Shanghai Announces Lockdown as Coronavirus Infections Rise

Progress of COVID Inoculations

According to the coronavirus vaccine tracker, the U.S. has now administered 30.54 million vaccine doses with around 9.2% of the U.S. population vaccinated (with at least one dose).

Globally 94.50 million vaccinate doses have been given with the U.S., China and U.K. in the top three positions. India is beginning to move up the board. It has now vaccinated 3.5 million people.

Source: COVID-19 Vaccine Tracker

Surprise, Surprise - CNN Actually Published Something I Can Agree With

America needs better masks to fight Covid-19

On Wednesday night, Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden's top medical adviser on Covid-19, and Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), were asked at a CNN town hall whether the Biden administration would be focusing on getting higher filtration masks, such as the N95s commonly used by health care workers, to the American public. The question was in direct response to our proposal on the same topic, which we discussed recently with CNN's chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

From Dr. Fauci's and Dr. Walensky's responses, it was clear that the US government's Covid-19 response is not going to make delivering higher filtration masks to the general public a priority any time soon.

We are disappointed, and we disagree.

Dr. Fauci -- who reiterated that wearing any mask is most important -- is right. But that wasn't the question, nor is that the bar we should still be striving for. Sure, folding a cloth t-shirt around your nose and mouth is better than nothing. But the question is whether, a year into this pandemic, more protective masks are needed. We believe the answer is resoundingly yes, as we have advocated for this since last spring.

Part of the reason is that new Covid-19 variants are more transmissible -- meaning you are possibly more likely to be infected with even less exposure time and from greater distances than before. As Dr. Walensky herself mentions, ongoing studies are evaluating the efficacy of cloth masks in light of new variants. Without definitive answers, the precautionary principle -- erring on the side of caution -- should be invoked before more people become infected. Secondly, because -- regardless of variant -- the virus is still transmitted by both droplets and aerosols, the latter of which are best trapped by electrostatic charges found in N95 caliber masks.

The Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford university in the U.K. took a stab at comparing how restrictive the various lockdowns across the globe over the past year.



Source: Lockdowns compared: tracking governments’ coronavirus responses

Bad Proposal

Now that we finally got a couple very effective vaccines, the government is being urged to water them down.

Top epidemiologist urges single doses of COVID-19 vaccine

Michael Osterholm, who was an advisor to President Joe Biden’s transition team, said that even one dose could lessen the blow of a likely outbreak of infections driven by new, contagious strains of the virus.

On 28 October 2020 Joe Biden said during a speech in Wilmington, Delaware “Even if I win, it’s going to take a lot of hard work to end this pandemic.” “I do promise this: We will start on day one doing the right things.”

So is watering down the effectiveness of the current vaccines what Joe had in mind when he said he would be doing the right thing?

Progress of COVID Inoculations

According to the coronavirus vaccine tracker, the U.S. has now administered 31.83 million vaccine doses with around 9.6% of the U.S. population vaccinated (with at least one dose).

Globally 97.30 million vaccinate doses have been given with the U.S., China and U.K. in the top three positions. The U.K. will surpass the 10 million mark in the next couple days.

Source: COVID-19 Vaccine Tracker

How does COVID affect the Homeless

I came across an interesting article by Angela Giuffrida that looks at this question from an Italian perspective:

More people are sleeping on the streets in Rome after being turned away from shelters due to coronavirus restrictions, while the number of homeless people dying from the cold has surged this winter.

There are about 8,000 homeless people in the Italian capital, of whom 3,000 have no shelter for the night, according to figures provided by the Catholic charity Community of Sant’Egidio.

“The number is higher than a year ago,” said Massimiliano Signifredi, coordinator for homeless outreach at Sant’Egidio. “One of the main reasons being that shelters which could previously host 100 or 200 people have had to reduce numbers or completely close.”

The consequences of Covid-19 on the homeless have become increasingly visible in Rome in recent months. Makeshift beds have appeared on the plush shopping streets in the centre, or on the steps of churches or outside supermarkets.

Source: The Guardian: Live Updates

ASS-P had many conditions which were exacerbated by homelessness....true.