Coronavirus (Covid-19)

[Ben]

It’s well made, and not to be a killjoy, but it does concern me when admittedly understandably excited folks start singing about being free and getting back to old times without masks.

Truth is we need to be preparing ourselves for the fact that masks will need to be worn and social distancing will be with us for a year or two yet, maybe longer, while the rest of the world gets immunised and we try to prevent variants from taking a hold and launching this whole thing off again!

As we can see fro. Europe, wave three is starting there and, because we dumb humans keep traveling, it will spread doing the globe before everyone can get vaxed, and that’s before we even hit the fall when the virus will bounce back if we don’t get our modified booster jabs.

Just hang tight in there: the vaxes are a great thing, and they are the answer to all this, but we're still a ways from being safe, both for ourselves and for the sake of others and still being able to catch it and spread it around, even if the protection means we hopefully won’t be affected as severely.

We need to wait until the majority of people are covered before getting back to "regular" activities, and even then it will be with guidelines in place until it’s so spaced out between people that variants can’t take hold and we can finally start to get back to the normal-normal...but we are months of not longer away from that.

As I half joked earlier in this thread, 2021 is largely going to be a rerun of 2020, though not quite so bad IF we don’t all just go mad after a first shot (which doesn’t give you the full protection anyway) and keep spreading it around. If the variants take hold, they can themselves be immunised from the vax...and then we're back to square one...

Be sensible! Be safe!

[Daniel]

Krispy Kreme started a promotion where if you show your vaccination card you can get one free glazed donut for the rest of the year! Not that I needed an enticement but I'll take it! Mmm, donuts. Now if I could actually book an appointment...

[Ben]

Free vax, free helping to save the world, plus a free donut!? What’s not to like!?

[James]

Interesting article in the NYT this week about how the US and UK are in much better positions than the EU when it comes to the vaccine due to the more aggressive moves they made last year helping companies working on them.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/20/worl ... eneca.html

The calls began in December, as the United States prepared to administer its first batches of Covid-19 vaccine. Even then, it was clear that the European Union was a few weeks behind, and its leaders wanted to know what they could learn from their American counterparts.

The questions were the same, from President Emmanuel Macron of France, President Ursula von der Leyen of the European Commission, and Alexander De Croo, the prime minister of Belgium.

“How did you do it?” Dr. Moncef Slaoui, the United States vaccine czar, recalled them asking on the calls. “And what do you think we missed?”

Since then, the rollout gap between Europe and the United States has only widened, and some of the countries hardest hit early in the pandemic are facing a deadly third wave of infections. France, large parts of Italy, and other regions are back in lockdown. Roughly 20,000 Europeans die of Covid-19 each week.

The Continent was dealt a further setback when a scare over blood clots and brain bleeds led several countries this week to temporarily halt the distribution of the AstraZeneca vaccine. Most of them resumed using it on Friday, after Europe’s top drug regulator vouched for its safety, but public confidence in the shot has been badly shaken.

Vaccine salvation remains, for now, still tantalizingly out of reach. Only about 10 percent of Europeans have received a first dose, compared with 23 percent in the United States and 39 percent in Britain.

There is no single culprit. Rather, a cascade of small decisions have led to increasingly long delays. The bloc was comparatively slow to negotiate contracts with drugmakers. Its regulators were cautious and deliberative in approving some vaccines. Europe also bet on vaccines that did not pan out or, significantly, had supply disruptions. And national governments snarled local efforts in red tape...

[Ben]

Our vaxing has been going great guns, because, as one government adviser said last week, it’s being handled by our health service and *not* the government!

But now the EU are screwing it all up for everyone, because of short-sightedness, slow uptake, anti-vax sentiment in some/most states, misleading and disparaging comments from leaders, misguided halting and restricting of vaxes for non-proven reasons, etc. The bottom line is that the UK and the US not only put their orders in early, but actively *developed* the very vaccines that are now saving the day. And now the EU have been caught out, they’re crying foul! Sorry guys...you didn’t put your orders in early enough, and then messed about with (and didn’t use for days!) the vaccines you were allocated!

Annoyingly, though, this is now having an effect here, with the EU threatening to retain "our" UK vax that we backed and developed, so that they can catch up, meaning no new under 50s first jabs in April, just as they also fail to contain the third wave that will inevitably hit us too. Their whole strategy has blown apart what an actually fractured and very fragile experiment the EU really is. And to think I was a remainer...!

[Randall]

In Canada, there has been criticism about us falling behind on vaccinations, after pre-buying a ton of them and approving them faster than other places. But of course, we have no more right to vaccines than anyone else. The problem is, we had lousy infrastructure to develop our own, so we were slowed down there, though we may have 2 or 3 homegrown ones by the end of the year. A co-development deal with China also fell through because of politics. The other problem is that we have almost no manufacturing capability for vaccines yet (with facilities being readied for year-end), so we are at the mercy of other countries to make the stuff for us, countries who naturally would prefer to look after their own first. Fair enough, especially since we have not been hit as hard as a lot of other places!

With about a hundred countries still having no vaccine at all, though, I am pleased that we at least are hitting around 10% being vaccinated now, and things are speeding up.

[James]

Got my second jab today! My son had his first last week and my daughter is getting the one dose version next week. The wife got hers back in January, so that will be all of us done soon!

The city I live in is already at 30% of the population having had at least one dose of vaccine, which is really great after just 90 days or so. And our active cases numbers have plummeted. So while I'm not going to go crazy once I reach the two-weeks-after-your-second-shot milestone, I am going to start getting back to a new sense of normal. The biggest thing we're all going to do is go out to eat in a restaurant for the first time in over a year! I'm going to keep wearing masks obviously, but I'll start feeling free to go out in public without a fear of potential death hanging over me!

[Ben]

Well done guys!

We took our first major trip out today to pick up some potato and onion planters for Jen's veg garden — the first store we have been in for over a year — and then visited family for a Chinese takeout.

While we're not second jabbed yet, we know that where we have been is safe, and Jen really needed to be somewhere else other than just being inside the four walls of the house! She should get her second in the next week or two, and I follow a couple of weeks after, although we’re going to continue to be careful for a while yet, especially while the threat of Eurowave three looms here.

But figures are coming down: cases continue to hover between 4000 and 5000 per day, but deaths are mid-double figures now, because of the vaxes, and hopefully we can keep them down or lower. Certainly seems things are getting better, although there are still too many high profile health people being worried about the country opening up too soon, so it makes sense to continue being wary for a while yet.

Figures today on the Pfizer vax we had are saying over 91% effectiveness after six months, so that kind of thing does make one feel better and more emboldened, and though caution is still key, it does feel like we’re getting there!

[Randall]

Congrats, guys! That's great news.

Our vaccinations are ramping up more now, but I'm still looking at May before I get my first shot. We have only about 15% of the population with at least one jab, but here in Saskatchewan we're about to receive a number of doses in the next week equal to how many we've used in the past three months combined, so things should improve relatively rapidly. COVID cases are still escalating all over here (though steady in my city), and Ontario is back in shutdown. Many of my own patients are healthcare workers or seniors, so lots of them have gotten shots already, as did my mom, so that makes me feel a little better. I do feel there's reason for optimism, even if we can't relax yet.

[droosan]

I got my first 'Fauci ouchie' this morning .. my second is scheduled for the first week of May.

[Daniel]

Congrats! Hopefully you don't get any nasty side effects. Now go get your donut!

[ShyViolet]

That’s wonderful, Droo! . Glad to hear it.

I actually got mine as well this past Sunday, second one scheduled for May 2nd.

[Dacey]

Too bad so many states are lifting mask mandates and such prematurely, which is going to set the progress we’ve been making backwards and slow everything down.

[EricJ]

I remember last summer, during the Mask Wars, Yankee Candle reported they had a sudden surge in customers making Amazon complaints and returning their scented candles as "defective", saying that they couldn't smell anything!!
Uh, ahem...

Me, I'd like to finally get my Discharge Papers, but I'm hoping to travel next early spring, and wanted to hold off on my "passport" till fall, so my immunity will seem fresher...I know I should rush instead, and angst whether I'm doing the right thing.

[Ben]

Er...it doesn’t work like that.

And you’ll likely all be getting booster jabs in the fall anyway. Why would anyone wait to get jabba-dabba-dood when they get the chance...!?