How are you dealing with the changes brought about by this pandemic?

[LaHermes]

Before everyone starts racing to build underground bunkers:

 

"The study has been accepted by medical journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, but the full research is yet to be published.

 

But experts in the UK say it is too early to say what the single case may mean on a global scale.

 

Professor of microbial pathogenesis, Brendan Wren, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said: “With over three million cases of Covid-19 worldwide, the first reported case of a potential reinfection with SARS-CoV-2 needs to be taken into context.

 

“It appears that the young and healthy adult has been reinfected with a slight SARS-CoV-2 variant from the initial infection three months previously.

 

“It is to be expected that the virus will naturally mutate over time. This is a very rare example of reinfection and it should not negate the global drive to develop Covid-19 vaccines.”

 

Dr Jeffrey Barrett, senior scientific consultant for Covid-19 Genome Project at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, said: “This is certainly stronger evidence of reinfection than some of the previous reports because it uses the genome sequence of the virus to separate the two infections.

 

“It seems much more likely that this patient has two distinct infections than a single infection followed by a relapse (due to the number of genetic differences between the two sequences).”

 

But he added that it is “very hard” to make any strong inference from a single observation, and that seeing one case of reinfection is not that surprising."

 

and

 

"Maria Van Kerkhove, technical lead for Covid-19 at the World Health Organisation, said she was still studying the Hong Kong reinfection case but urged people to put it into the context of 24m cases reported worldwide."

[Wiseman2]

Everybody just wants a solution.🙁

[LaHermes]

Hey Wise.

 

"What we want and what we actually get in this life tend to be two different things".

 

Short of aliens land on Earth with a weapon to zap that pesky virus and make it disappear it looks like any solution won't be tomorrow.

 

Everyone would like to see a return to a spontaneous way of life, and get the economy up and running again.

 

Meantime check out this man:

Professor Carl Henneghan

 

https://www.ox.ac.uk/news-and-events/find-an-expert/professor-carl-heneghan

[boltnrun]

There isn't going to be any "insta-solution". We are going to have to buckle down and realize we need to keep many of the changes for at least a period of months. Otherwise if we get impatient and stop being careful we can look forward to years of this in addition to losing more loved ones.

 

I'd rather wear a mask than wear a venilator. And I'd rather socially distance than inadvertently and unknowingly pass the virus on to someone I care about or to someone who's vulnerable and could die from it.

[LaHermes]

From "The Guardian" on 1st September.

 

 

 

News of the deal came as AstraZeneca announced on Monday night that it had begun late-stage trials of the vaccine in the US, where it plans to enrol 30,000 adults, as part of a global programme to test the product on 50,000 people.

 

AstraZeneca, along with US company Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech which are also developing a coronavirus vaccine, have said they could have data by October to secure approval from US regulators for emergency use of their respective products."

 

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/sep/01/astrazeneca-covid-19-vaccine-trials-oxford-biomedica-coronavirus

[Seraphim]

So far in the past week and a half every person coming to my daycare has been tested once. 🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️ it is barely September oh yeah I can’t wait for the fall and winter🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️

[FenixReborn]

There isn't going to be any "insta-solution". We are going to have to buckle down and realize we need to keep many of the changes for at least a period of months. Otherwise if we get impatient and stop being careful we can look forward to years of this in addition to losing more loved ones.

 

I'd rather wear a mask than wear a venilator. And I'd rather socially distance than inadvertently and unknowingly pass the virus on to someone I care about or to someone who's vulnerable and could die from it.

 

Yep, no miracle is coming that will solve this overnight. At least in the US, I see a holding pattern until next year when things will slowly get better. And even when the virus isn't running rampant, it will be awhile before things return to "normal." Buckle in for another year of this most likely.

[LaHermes]

From "The New Scientist"

 

"On 31 August, the US National Institutes of Health announced that the first of 30,000 volunteers had received either the Oxford vaccine, known as AZD1222, or a placebo consisting of salty water.

 

One in three volunteers will get the placebo, but the trial is double blind, meaning that neither the researchers nor the volunteers know which is being administered. The trial is being carried out at 80 sites across the US.

 

In the UK, nearly 10,000 volunteers have already been given either AZD1222 or a placebo.

 

Once a certain number of the volunteers in these trials test positive for covid-19, researchers will be allowed to unblind the data and look to see if there are fewer – or even no – cases in those given the vaccine.

 

[LaHermes]

From an article in The Telegraph

 

"According to a poll of 5,000 people last month by childcare.co.uk, almost half of all parents insisted they would not vaccinate their child if and when a vaccine became available. Eighty-six per cent of these “anti-vaxxers” said the vaccine would be unsafe with “nasty” side-effects: a fifth thought Covid-19 “doesn’t really exist.”"

 

"While the world strains to find a manufactured solution to “beat” the virus, there is the background noise of the “anti-vaxxers”. These are the people who are against inoculations - and are particularly against vaccinating their own children: who think vaccines cause autism, that politicians are scare-mongering about the disease to drum up profits for drug companies, and that Bill Gates will be using injections to plant microchips into their children. Piers Corbyn (brother of Jeremy) and Novak Djokovic are famous anti-vaxxers."

 

"The World Health Organisation cares so much about the anti-vaxxers that it has published a 44-page document for medical professionals called “How To Respond to Vocal Vaccine Deniers in Public.” It makes a distinction between “vaccine refusers” and “vaccine deniers”. The former “refuse vaccinations without doubting the wisdom of this decision. But this refusal still permits the refuser to consider other opinions and arguments.”

 

The vaccine deniers, on the other hand, “are members of a subgroup who have a very negative attitude towards vaccination and are not open to a change of mind, no matter what the evidence says.”

 

And the problem is that the deniers feed the anxiety of the refusers.

 

“Regrettably, the echo chamber of social media - where members of these groups find sympathetic like-minded ears - pours oil on the deniers and refuseniks’ fires,” says Dr Smith. “This leads them to believe they must have a point, because hundreds of people, who don’t know any better, ‘like’ the garbage they are spouting. The anti-vaxxers are certainly part of the problem.”"

 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness/mind/race-covid-vaccine-anti-vax-background-noise-getting-louder/

[LaHermes]

"The World Health Organization (WHO) has agreed rules for the testing of African herbal remedies to fight Covid-19.

Sound science would be the sole basis for safe and effective traditional therapies to be adopted, it said.

Any traditional remedies that are judged effective could be fast-tracked for large-scale manufacturing.

Madagascar's leader has been promoting an untested product he says can cure the disease despite the WHO warning against using untested remedies.

The WHO said the new rules were aimed at helping and empowering scientists in Africa to conduct proper clinical trials."

 

From:

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-54225118

[LaHermes]

Article by Dr. Margaret Harris of WHO.

 

It's a complex situation.

 

"A lockdown which effectively isolates everyone does work, Harris said, “but it also causes massive dislocation, massive disruption. And unless you’ve worked out how you can possibly put that pause button on and maintain your economic and social lives, the price you pay is very, very high.”

 

The WHO doesn’t say don’t do it, she said. “We just say, if you’re doing it, you’re paying a very high price, so therefore get some return for what you pay.”

 

That means getting test and trace to work efficiently “and you could think very hard about how to make self-isolation doable” she said."

 

"“There will be people who cannot possibly self-isolate, because they live in crowded conditions or on the streets. You may have to think of offering them somewhere else to stay."

 

"“You might have communities who don’t have access to standard English-language channels and all the rest of it, and don’t really know what is being asked of them or whether it’s possible.”"

[LaHermes]

"NHS England has agreed with the British Medical Association that family doctors will play the lead role in a vaccination drive of a scale and complexity unprecedented in the NHS’s 73-year history, described by the health secretary, Matt Hancock, as a “mammoth logistical operation”.

 

In a letter to GP leaders confirming the deal, NHS chiefs accept that GP surgeries cannot operate as usual while their doctors are engaged in the immunisation effort. “We also recognise that the additional workload of a Covid-19 vaccination programme may require practices to prioritise clinical activity,” wrote Dr Nikki Kanani, NHS England’s medical director for primary care.

 

GPs will open at least 1,260 mass vaccination centres across England. They will be paid £12.58 each time they or a practice nurse administers one of the two doses every recipient will be expected to have, several weeks apart, of whichever vaccines have been approved by European and British medicines regulators – hoped to include the Pfizer/BioNTech candidate. At least 975 people a week will have one dose at every site."

 

From an article in The Guardian

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/10/gps-in-england-will-scale-back-care-to-deliver-covid-vaccines