Official Thread: Coronavirus "COVID-19"

[AllexxisF1]

Frankly, everyone was shocked that this widespread calamity didn't happen in India at the start of the pandemic.

The W.H.O. and other's have said for decades that volume and concentration of people in India would be kindling for a novel virus.

Yet, when it broke out, people took precautions and ran similar to other countries in Asia that were on it from the get go. Many of them already having loads of experience with H1N1 and SARS.

But what happened? The government figured hey, let's open things up, have a bunch of religious festivals, and here we are.

What makes India a vision of hell right now, with bodies being burned in open parking lots, is a lack of basic oxygen for hospitals. They are quite literally a minor step away from burning bodies in open streets.

But that's not the worst of it, those who are dying now, have spread the virus to fellow family members and neighborhoods in the past weeks. You want to know what the worst of COVID could do? - Just look at India.

Moreover, and pay attention because this part is important. If 50% of people in this country only get the vaccine, and everything opens back up, what is happening in India, will happen here. That sad sacks of stupid **** that refuse the vaccine, will be dancing in the streets acting like everything is fine, and COVID will now have a supply of bodies openly spreading it around like never before.

The real scare, is if this virus, does something not normally seen and mutates worse, rendering our current vaccine useless. People need to get vaccinated and now.

[Nunz]

Please, do enlighten me, what has been going on?

Eh. Take a look at FOX News, CBS, NBC.. echo chambers have been going on for years. News, especially on major networks, is not about facts and/or honest reporting; it's about ratings, money, and fitting the narrative that your viewer base believes is true to drive the first two.

I went to college for journalism and there are few honest sources anymore. NPR is one of the few places I trust, and the Associated Press is another that tends to focus on real facts and journalism rather than sensationalist reporting. At the end of the day, many of the articles you see come out of FOX articles specifically have "anonymous" sources.

Either way, I worked in journalism and went to college for this ****. The industry is an absolute wreck, especially with digital journalism continuing to phase out paper newspapers.

With that being said, got my 2nd shot of Pfizer this morning. The 5G signal on my phone is maxed out everywhere now ..
weird ..

[acroig]

Eh. Take a look at FOX News, CBS, NBC.. echo chambers have been going on for years. News, especially on major networks, is not about facts and/or honest reporting; it's about ratings, money, and fitting the narrative that your viewer base believes is true to drive the first two.

I went to college for journalism and there are few honest sources anymore. NPR is one of the few places I trust, and the Associated Press is another that tends to focus on real facts and journalism rather than sensationalist reporting. At the end of the day, many of the articles you see come out of FOX articles specifically have "anonymous" sources.

Either way, I worked in journalism and went to college for this ****. The industry is an absolute wreck, especially with digital journalism continuing to phase out paper newspapers.

With that being said, got my 2nd shot of Pfizer this morning. The 5G signal on my phone is maxed out everywhere now ..
weird ..

Good job on your second dose.

I try to avoid both Fox and MSNBC as they are poles of the same stick but CNN news (not commentary) and NBC news seems pretty good to me.

[pax]

Sorry but your post is a bunch of nonsense...how do you propose servicing a population of 1.4 billion people? Have you seen the conditions that tens of millions of people (in multiple areas) live in?...where they are literally stacked one on top of each other. A super contagious virus that has spread to hundreds of millions of people even with measures that we've never done and India is like the most ideal situation in the entire world for a virus to spread and spread FAST

And yet they didnt have much covid at first because why? They took basic precautions. They threw those policies out the window and now have a plague just like Ontario did.

They arent stacked on top of each other. You obviously have no concept and servicing any given population is a choice not a numbers issue. If those in power prefer corruption to enrich the upper class at the detriment of the lower classes you get poverty and plagues.

[Jay20016]

Good job on your second dose.

I try to avoid both Fox and MSNBC as they are poles of the same stick but CNN news (not commentary) and NBC news seems pretty good to me.

I would be careful with the poles of the same sick just because comparing anchors like Rachel Maddow, Chris Hayes, or Mehdi Hassan to the likes of Hannity, Ingram, or Carlson is.... like not even close and a huge disrespect to actual journalists.

You can say they have an angle and perspective, but... They're not outright lying like the last three.

Enlightened centrism is almost doing more damage than disinformation. Likening the two elevates one while being disingenuous to the other.

[Nunz]

Comparing Rachel Maddow to Hannity is disrespect to journalists? At best, it's disrespect to Maddow, but she's biased and reports on an angle that fits the narrative of her employer. Is she as blatant.. no, I wouldn't say so, but it's there nonetheless and clear as day.

Being critical of "enlightened" centrism and calling it damaging is amusing. I find those who sit on one side of the fence and refuse to see the faults and hypocrisy that their own side does while being critical of the same garbage the other side is doing as more dangerous than anything, and anyone, else.

The disinformation is rampant and disgusting on both ends. If you can't see that, or refuse to see that, and think that calling it out is something disingenuous... well, good luck with that. You're wrong. I'm left leaning but the amount of people that shove their fingers in their ears while burying their nose in the sand when it comes to the things their "side" does is one of the main reasons this country has become so polarized. We need to look at things from an objective angle, with statistics, logic, and reasoning behind them. The likes of Maddow do a better job of this than the folks from the other camp, but you can't deny that the left networks are manipulative with the way they present the information.

Luckily, there are still neutral parties; especially news coverage from outside the U.S. As with everything else corrupted by the greed of capitalism, it's become profit driven. This is ultimately the point that was being made.

[Jay20016]

Comparing Rachel Maddow to Hannity is disrespect to journalists? At best, it's disrespect to Maddow, but she's biased and reports on an angle that fits the narrative of her employer. Is she as blatant.. no, I wouldn't say so, but it's there nonetheless and clear as day.

Being critical of "enlightened" centrism and calling it damaging is amusing. I find those who sit on one side of the fence and refuse to see the faults and hypocrisy that their own side does while being critical of the same garbage the other side is doing as more dangerous than anything, and anyone, else.

The disinformation is rampant and disgusting on both ends. If you can't see that, or refuse to see that, and think that calling it out is something disingenuous... well, good luck with that. You're wrong. I'm left leaning but the amount of people that shove their fingers in their ears while burying their nose in the sand when it comes to the things their "side" does is one of the main reasons this country has become so polarized. We need to look at things from an objective angle, with statistics, logic, and reasoning behind them. The likes of Maddow do a better job of this than the folks from the other camp, but you can't deny that the left networks are manipulative with the way they present the information.

Luckily, there are still neutral parties; especially news coverage from outside the U.S. As with everything else corrupted by the greed of capitalism, it's become profit driven. This is ultimately the point that was being made.

Was clear with there being a slant and a perspective, and will agree that what gets in a paper or on air is a huge responsibility just as what did not. The knee jerk both sides part to compare one to the other is just so blatantly one sided that it does damage in its simplicity and leads credence in its omission. A look at the last weeks big stories of each would show this where one is talking about a ban on red meat that is completely made up and the other is in reality, with a slant.

As far as centrism and looking down on those who take a side, there isn't much time left to sit on the side lines. I wasn't this overtly political for a long time but the past administration and what happened on January 6th and since then should shake those who profess to love this country to their core, especially those who signed up to willingly fight for it. We are inching closer to a point of no return in being able to fix the problems that plague this nation and it seems one side is interested in fighting for it and the world while the other wants to talk about Dr. Seuss, cancel culture, and the like.... My disdain for both sides and centrism is that it expects a luxury of which we have none of: time. 2022 is going to be earth shattering in this country for which road we decide to take, will it be like in 2001 where we go on a 20 year distraction, or do we move into the future?

All of these posters interested in continuing this is really should hop over to P&R though. Lots of people are wanting to continue the discussion there, you just have to head back in. We have cookies and don't bite (unless that is your thing - no judgment here) I promise the water is nice. The only expectation is going to it with an open mind and in good faith.

[MyTMouse]

And yet they didnt have much covid at first because why? They took basic precautions. They threw those policies out the window and now have a plague just like Ontario did.

They arent stacked on top of each other. You obviously have no concept and servicing any given population is a choice not a numbers issue. If those in power prefer corruption to enrich the upper class at the detriment of the lower classes you get poverty and plagues.

You obviously don't have a damn clue about India...there's a Netflix documentary I think it's called Pandemic: How to prevent an Outbreak and you can see in some of the episodes how lots of people in India literally live stacked on top of each other separated by like grates and not much else. Also don't believe the numbers out of India whatsoever because of various reasons...resources being one of them.

As for the mainstream news discussions CNN has been exposed as putting out propaganda "news" for ratings and just outright lying for the same and to continue bs narratives. Their technical director was caught on camera multiple times detailing all the stuff they did.

[xCLAVEx]

Good job on your second dose.

I try to avoid both Fox and MSNBC as they are poles of the same stick but CNN news (not commentary) and NBC news seems pretty good to me.

CNN and NBC are among the worst of the worst, especially with their recent scandals. I used to trust CNN headline news nearly 20 years ago and watched it nearly every morning, but when their format changed they went down the tubes and now they are worse than ever.

I would be careful with the poles of the same sick just because comparing anchors like Rachel Maddow, Chris Hayes, or Mehdi Hassan to the likes of Hannity, Ingram, or Carlson is.... like not even close and a huge disrespect to actual journalists.

You can say they have an angle and perspective, but... They're not outright lying like the last three.

Enlightened centrism is almost doing more damage than disinformation. Likening the two elevates one while being disingenuous to the other.

None of those that you mentioned are actual journalists...they are polar opposites. One being the extreme left, the other being the right. To claim one is less extreme than the other is disingenuous at best, and a delusional lie at worst.

[xCLAVEx]

You obviously don't have a damn clue about India...there's a Netflix documentary I think it's called Pandemic: How to prevent an Outbreak and you can see in some of the episodes how lots of people in India literally live stacked on top of each other separated by like grates and not much else. Also don't believe the numbers out of India whatsoever because of various reasons...resources being one of them.

As for the mainstream news discussions CNN has been exposed as putting out propaganda "news" for ratings and just outright lying for the same and to continue bs narratives. Their technical director was caught on camera multiple times detailing all the stuff they did. Anyone with a brain should be able to see this stuff

It's ironic that Pandemic show came out shortly before covid went world wide.

[nutcrackr]

Discussion is good guys but please avoid personal attacks. thanks

[SD-[Inc]]

CNN and NBC are among the worst of the worst, especially with their recent scandals. I used to trust CNN headline news nearly 20 years ago and watched it nearly every morning, but when their format changed they went down the tubes and now they are worse than ever.



None of those that you mentioned are actual journalists...they are polar opposites. One being the extreme left, the other being the right. To claim one is less extreme than the other is disingenuous at best, and a delusional lie at worst.

There is only lies vs truth no left vs right. The minute you start to look at everything though a viewport of left vs right you become part of the problem. Disinformation is powered by manipulating the partisan belief systems of where people ideologically fall. If you can't separate your partisan beliefs from your search for truth then you become one of the sheeple that drive all the division in the US today. Most all news networks benefit from this division. So does social media. It's what makes their viewers sticky. Once they find their bubble they stick with it. The more outrage the more viewers they get. But that doesn't mean all sources don't sprinkle in some valued truths here and there. Sometimes it's hard to find them. But they are there. So, don't discount things so easily. You need a well balanced media diet to be healthy. And staying away from the bubbles of disinformation is the only way to be informed. But, and this is important, you can't tell one from the other without sampling everything.

[xCLAVEx]

There is only lies vs truth no left vs right. The minute you start to look at everything though a viewport of left vs right you become part of the problem. Disinformation is powered by manipulating the partisan belief systems of where people ideologically fall. If you can't separate your partisan beliefs from your search for truth then you become one of the sheeple that drive all the division in the US today. Most all news networks benefit from this division. So does social media. It's what makes their viewers sticky. Once they find their bubble they stick with it. The more outrage the more viewers they get. But that doesn't mean all sources don't sprinkle in some valued truths here and there. Sometimes it's hard to find them. But they are there. So, don't discount things so easily. You need a well balanced media diet to be healthy. And staying away from the bubbles of disinformation is the only way to be informed. But, and this is important, you can't tell one from the other without sampling everything.

And the lies and disinformation are why I stopped watching them all. Occasionally they "sprinkle" stories with truth from time to time as you say, but I trust none of them as they've all been exposed.

[Greasy]

Comparing Rachel Maddow to Hannity is disrespect to journalists? At best, it's disrespect to Maddow, but she's biased and reports on an angle that fits the narrative of her employer. Is she as blatant.. no, I wouldn't say so, but it's there nonetheless and clear as day.

Being critical of "enlightened" centrism and calling it damaging is amusing. I find those who sit on one side of the fence and refuse to see the faults and hypocrisy that their own side does while being critical of the same garbage the other side is doing as more dangerous than anything, and anyone, else.

The disinformation is rampant and disgusting on both ends. If you can't see that, or refuse to see that, and think that calling it out is something disingenuous... well, good luck with that. You're wrong. I'm left leaning but the amount of people that shove their fingers in their ears while burying their nose in the sand when it comes to the things their "side" does is one of the main reasons this country has become so polarized. We need to look at things from an objective angle, with statistics, logic, and reasoning behind them. The likes of Maddow do a better job of this than the folks from the other camp, but you can't deny that the left networks are manipulative with the way they present the information.

Luckily, there are still neutral parties; especially news coverage from outside the U.S. As with everything else corrupted by the greed of capitalism, it's become profit driven. This is ultimately the point that was being made.

If I could rep you I would! Damn you have grown up to be a wise man since I've been here!

[Java Cool Dude]

India "officially" reported near 400k new cases and the real number is most likely higher than that.
It pisses me off oh so much when a**holes downplay the severity of COVID; it may carry a 98% survivability rate but left unchecked it literally overwhelms the medical resources of ANY country in the world

[pax]

You obviously don't have a damn clue about India...there's a Netflix documentary I think it's called Pandemic: How to prevent an Outbreak and you can see in some of the episodes how lots of people in India literally live stacked on top of each other separated by like grates and not much else. Also don't believe the numbers out of India whatsoever because of various reasons...resources being one of them.

As for the mainstream news discussions CNN has been exposed as putting out propaganda "news" for ratings and just outright lying for the same and to continue bs narratives. Their technical director was caught on camera multiple times detailing all the stuff they did.

Poverty leads to crowding but poverty isnt caused by crowding its caused by the leadership unwilling to lend ressources to organize society properly. I could show you picts of NY circa 1900 that look every bit as bad as Delhi or Calcutta but they got out of it the same way India is well on its way to modernizing but it has HUGE corruption and classicist issues to get thru before they get there.

The bozos who wrote about overpopulation in India in the 60's were showcasing Calcutta that had half the popualtion density of Paris but no one was talking about how Paris was overpopulated. One was a corrupt hell hole and the other a modern law and order and democratic metropolis.

Has nothing to do with how many people are there today. India was poorer when it had half the population it does now.

I already posted on how India isnt keeping proper tabs on the outbreak. It was a CNN link. We can only speculate until the death rates come out in time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Kolkata#:~:text=Kolkata's%20economy%20is%20more%20than,GDP%20on%202020%20%2450.447%20 Billion.&text=According%20to%20this%20report%2C%20With,every%20Indian%20city%2C%20except%20Delhi.

Kolkata's economy is more than $50 billion nominal GDP. Kolkata's nominal GDP on 2020 $50.447 Billion.[5] In 2015, The Brookings Institution, a U.S. based think tank in collaboration with JPMorgan ranked Kolkata second among all Indian metros and 32nd among 300 major metropolitan economies of the world on overall economic performance for the year 2013-’14. According to this report, With annualised GDP per capita growth of 4.7% and employment growth of 2.5% Kolkata scored over every Indian city, except Delhi.[6][7] Kolkata's nominal GDP is expected to reach US$169 billion in 2030, with a per capita nominal GDP of US$7,400.[8]

Every malthusian's poster boy for poverty is *shock* growing its economy at a clip as its population grows.

Again India didnt have a blowout for the first year. You can hide infection rates for a time but you cant hide death rates. China and Russia both much more powerful police states couldnt hide their death rates. China also has just as much slum crowding as India does yet it quashed its covid outbreaks. Dont let modern city centers in China fool you 80% of chinese are poor and live on the outskirts of the cities they build but cant afford to live in. But even at its worse chinas death rate was a fraction of what India is seeing now. We all know how much more severe the restrictions chinese officials put on their population than india did.

[xCLAVEx]

Why the World Should Worry About India
The world’s largest vaccine producer is struggling to overcome its latest COVID-19 surge—and that’s everyone’s problem.

India considered itself to be “in the endgame” of the pandemic just a few weeks ago. Now it is the global epicenter. The country recently surpassed the devastating milestone of more than 345,000 new COVID-19 cases in a single day, the biggest total recorded globally since the pandemic began.

What is taking place in India isn’t so much a wave as it is a wall: Charts showing the country’s infection rate and death toll, which has also reached record numbers in the country, depict curves that have shot up into vertical lines. Public-health experts aren’t optimistic that they will slope down anytime soon.

India’s outbreak is an enormous tragedy for its own people, but it’s also a catastrophe for the rest of the world. Ninety-two developing nations rely on India, home to the Serum Institute, the world’s largest vaccine maker, for the doses to protect their own populations, a supply now constrained by India’s domestic obligations. Meanwhile, the coronavirus is mutating. Reports of double- and even triple-mutant strains of the virus, which experts fear could be driving the country’s latest surge, have prompted concerns that what has started in India won’t end there. Despite efforts to restrict the spread of India’s new COVID-19 variant, called B.1.617, it has already been identified in at least 10 countries, including the United States and Britain.

If ever there were a time for intervention, it would be now. But world leaders, who have so far only paid lip service to the need for global cooperation, have mostly been preoccupied by their own internal situations. Although this approach may have served vaccine-rich countries such as the U.S. so far, India could prove its limits.

How did India, which merely a month ago thought it had seen the worst of the pandemic, get to this point? Michael Kugelman, the deputy director of the Asia program at the Washington, D.C.–based Wilson Center, told me the answer comes down to a “perfect storm” of factors that includes new and existing variants (and a lack of robust genomic sequencing to track them), a continuous stream of widely attended political rallies and religious gatherings (with no social distancing or mask wearing), and a general complacency on the part of the Indian government, which was slow to respond to a crisis in which it had prematurely claimed victory.

The result has been overwhelmed hospitals, depleted oxygen supplies, morgues that have run out of space, and crematoria that are melting from near-constant use. The country surpassed 2,000 deaths a day last week—and those are just the cases that have been recorded. This time next month, that figure could rise to as high as 4,500 daily deaths, Bhramar Mukherjee, a biostatician and epidemiologist at the University of Michigan who is tracking the situation in India, told me. Others warn that it could get as high as 5,500. Though the projections vary, the conclusions are largely the same. “All the arrows are pointing to real darkness,” Mukherjee said.

The situation has become so dire that the Pune-based Serum Institute, the manufacturer of the AstraZeneca vaccine and a major contributor to the COVAX initiative to provide doses to low- and middle-income countries, said it will not be able to meet its international commitments amid India’s domestic shortage. Once considered the pharmacy of the world, India is now being forced to import doses.

None of the Indian government’s missteps absolve the world from caring about what happens to the country, nor should they. Beyond the obvious moral reasons are practical ones too. As I have repeatedly written before, uncontrolled outbreaks anywhere pose a threat everywhere, including vaccine-rich countries such as the United States. Perhaps the biggest concern right now, in India and elsewhere, is the threat posed by more transmissible variants and their potential ability to overcome vaccine immunity. Though virtually every known variant, including those from Britain, Brazil, and South Africa, has been identified in India, in some states the Indian strain has become the most prevalent.

“It’s very similar to what we saw in Manaus,” Christina Pagel, the director of clinical operational research at University College London, told me, referring to the badly hit Brazilian city. She noted that “it’s not a coincidence that these variants are arising in populations that have developed immunity through infection.”

Then there’s the issue of vaccine supply. India’s role as a major pharmaceutical producer has been spotlighted during the pandemic; it has provided 20 percent of the world’s generic drugs as well as more than 60 percent of the world’s vaccines, despite having inoculated just 1 percent of its own population against COVID-19.* The country has the capacity to manufacture 70 million doses a month, but even with all of those doses directed toward its domestic needs, they’re not enough to meet the overwhelming demand. At present, India is administering some 3 million doses a day. To protect its population of 1.4 billion, Mukherjee said that rate would need to increase threefold.

Donating doses directly to countries that need them, including India, is a nonstarter for many countries. Most of those that have vaccines don’t have enough of them, and those with an immense surplus, such as the United States, aren’t yet confident enough in their supply to part with the excess.

But these countries can help in other ways. The first is by lifting export controls on the raw materials that are used to produce vaccines. This is what the CEO of the Serum Institute asked of the Biden administration weeks ago. On Sunday, the U.S. government heeded the request, announcing that it would look to immediately provide the raw materials necessary to help India produce the AstraZeneca vaccine, locally known as Covishield, as well as other medical supplies. The British and German governments also pledged their support.

Another option is for countries to support the appeal, put forward by India and South Africa, for the World Trade Organization to temporarily relax patent rights related to COVID-19 vaccines and treatments so that they can be manufactured, without fear of being sued, by countries that are still struggling to inoculate their populations. More than 70 former world leaders and 100 Nobel Prize laureates have appealed to the Biden administration to back the waiver, as have several U.S. lawmakers.

There is a host of other ways for countries to help, irrespective of their resources. Assisting India with its sequencing is one option. Donating the oxygen the country so desperately needs is another.

Though mass vaccination has provided an off-ramp from the pandemic for some countries, India is a stark reminder that, for many others, a long road lies ahead. The world is on track to record more COVID-19 deaths this year than it did in 2020. The risks of allowing current outbreaks to ravage places such as India aren’t limited to those countries alone. Emerging variants and further delays to more equitable vaccine distribution stand to affect everyone, including vaccinated populations. India’s problem is the world’s problem.

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2021/04/india-covid-19-crisis/618691/?fbclid=IwAR14PkNxak4t9vo_F_1rlQYO8zxP3JLNziG7FwbXqjhES2YQWbZZxaGZRjk

New variants, some mutated 3 times already and spotted in countries such as the U.S. and U.K.

[pax]

Modi still doesnt want to to do a lockdown.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/01/world/asia/india-covid19-modi.html

Mr. Modi surrounded himself with allies rather than experts, analysts said. Officials felt too intimidated to point out mistakes, the analysts said, or to call into doubt his claims that the pandemic was over. His party and his allies have also moved to silence critics, ordering Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to take down critical posts and threatening to arrest ordinary people for pleading for oxygen.

India's Trump.

[nutcrackr]

Can't afford a lockdown probably. It's a tricky situation with vaccines rolling out. I doubt the official case numbers will go much higher (maybe 500-600k) because they've probably already hit a bit of a ceiling given hospitals are maxed and people are dealing with it at home.

[KAC]

Modi is one of the biggest dumbasses on the planet. Expecting him to do anything that makes sense would be stupidity itself.

However, we need to understand that countries like India can't afford a lockdown. People will go hungry and will die that way also. There are large amounts of people living on daily wages by selling very low value items. It barely buys them bread for the day.

Sub continent is full of extremely poor and vulnerable people and our politicians and whole government system is too corrupt to fix anything.

[Lazy8s]

Modi is one of the biggest dumbasses on the planet. Expecting him to do anything that makes sense would be stupidity itself.

However, we need to understand that countries like India can't afford a lockdown. People will go hungry and will die that way also. There are large amounts of people living on daily wages by selling very low value items. It barely buys them bread for the day.

Sub continent is full of extremely poor and vulnerable people and our politicians and whole government system is too corrupt to fix anything.

I think it might be difficult for "some" people who have always had needs met to remember that some other regions in the world might not. What a horrible way to live.

At the risk of skirting that p&r line, this current surge in India might be that government's undoing. Hopefully the next is better.

[Lazy8s]

https://news.google.com/articles/CAIiEGAG37kd0_wPYY3EmAl8964qFwgEKg8IACoHCAowjuuKAzCWrzwwqIQY?hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US%3Aen

Early in the pandemic, when vaccines for the coronavirus were still just a glimmer on the horizon, the term “herd immunity” came to signify the endgame: the point when enough Americans would be protected from the virus so we could be rid of the pathogen and reclaim our lives.

Now, more than half of adults in the United States have been inoculated with at least one dose of a vaccine. But daily vaccination rates are slipping, and there is widespread consensus among scientists and public health experts that the herd immunity threshold is not attainable — at least not in the foreseeable future, and perhaps not ever.

Polls show that about 30 percent of the U.S. population is still reluctant to be vaccinated. That number is expected to improve but probably not enough. “It is theoretically possible that we could get to about 90 percent vaccination coverage, but not super likely, I would say,” said Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Though resistance to the vaccines is a main reason the United States is unlikely to reach herd immunity, it is not the only one.

[AllexxisF1]

N.Y. Times this morning.

Reaching ‘Herd Immunity’ Is Unlikely in the U.S., Experts Now Believe
Widely circulating coronavirus variants and persistent hesitancy about vaccines will keep the goal out of reach. The virus is here to stay, but vaccinating the most vulnerable may be enough to restore normalcy.

LINK

I wish the selfish ignorant assholes who talked endlessly about herd immunity would actually get the damn vaccine so we can have herd immunity.

[Cyko]

Dumb. Get the effing vaccine. These are the types of scenarios where I get real authoritarian real quick (good thing I'm not in charge ), but that would derail this thread and I won't go there.

So disappointed in the selfishness and stupidity shown by people these days.

[MyTMouse]

For the people struggling to understand how bad things are in India (worse than reported) and that they don't have the resources to properly test enough people so the numbers are FAR less than reality...

Take a city like Mumbai, it has almost 21 million people. More than half the people there live in slums which only occupy about 8-9% of the geographic area...people are literally piled together in terrible living conditions. Back in the summer they were testing some of the people in the slums and, with the limited tests they did, found that 57% of the people there already had the antibodies for Covid-19...that means they already had the virus. At the time Mumbai was only reporting something like 110,000 cases so they were likely WAY off. There are literally dozens upon dozens of articles showing how India has been WAY underreporting infections and deaths for a multitude of reasons. A lot of people don't want to be tested out of possible shame for their family, they don't have enough tests for the almost 1.4 billion people there and they don't have enough people to get out to all these places to test them...not to mention labs would have to process all the millions of tests extra they would need to be doing. The UK was doing about 500k PCR tests a day and if India did the equivalent number of tests for their population like the UK they would need to do close to 10.3 million tests a day and they aren't anywhere near that, they are getting much better however.

I just hope they get out of this the best that they can given the circumstances

[pax]

N.Y. Times this morning.



LINK

I wish the selfish ignorant assholes who talked endlessly about herd immunity would actually get the damn vaccine so we can have herd immunity.

We will have herd immunity its just how soon and in what way, easy or hard. These bozos are taking the hard way and may wreck us in the process.

News out of India is showing much higher infectios rates form random sampling. Upside is the death rate is much lower than we feared. Maybe we'll luck out the same way in the west.

Recent studies of old blood samples shows Covid 19 in Italy in summer 2019.

[yt]i195K2vYfnY[/yt]

More studies are coming. Maybe its been in the west longer as well but also we have to consider the first waves might have been stealthier due to being less deadly. If large numbers of people got infected with a very low deadly form of it many may have gotten immunity for the 2% killers we see now.

At least to some extent.

[AllexxisF1]

I watch the good Doctor daily. His report yesterday on that Italian lung cancer study, that still have those blood samples showing COVID-19 antibodies from September 2001 is mind-blowing.

That is the first peer-reviewed study with actual proof that the virus was present in Italy in late August.

That brings up a whole lotta questions.

[dodger]

I watch the good Doctor daily. His report yesterday on that Italian lung cancer study, that still have those blood samples showing COVID-19 antibodies from September 2001 is mind-blowing.

That is the first peer-reviewed study with actual proof that the virus was present in Italy in late August.

That brings up a whole lotta questions.

His video with the clips from the BBC of what is going on in India now was heartbreaking. People literally dying in front of hospitals.

[AllexxisF1]

Late last night I checked out about half dozen news reports from India (major overseas outlets) and this is exactly the scenerio the W.H.O. and CDC feared for India.

Hell, just a few months before the pandemic hit, Netflix or Amazon had a great documentary about the next pandemic. One episode was specifically following a W.H.O. scientist in India explaining how bad it could be. Along with medical professionals in India who were still dealing with Swine Flu outbreaks.

What's playing out now is exactly what they said would happen.

Everyone is saying India will hit the peak deaths in 2-3 weeks. If you think its bad today (and it is), wait a couple of more weeks.

The same thing will happen in the States when they open things up and there's still 40% of folks not vaccinated.

[Lazy8s]

So disappointed in the selfishness and stupidity shown by people these days.

This pandemic is really bringing out the underlying nature of an awful lot of people. Those who are willing to sacrifice their own comfort and convenience for the welfare of those around them, and those who aren't.

Some have really valid concerns and I appreciate that, but I don't believe the majority have any such excuse.

[AllexxisF1]

This pandemic pulled away the veil that showed those who would stomach inconvenience for the survival of others and those who wouldn't be bothered.

Didn't bring out the best in people, it showed everyone who they really are.

[SD-[Inc]]

This pandemic is really bringing out the underlying nature of an awful lot of people. Those who are willing to sacrifice their own comfort and convenience for the welfare of those around them, and those who aren't.

Some have really valid concerns and I appreciate that, but I don't believe the majority have any such excuse.

It's hard to break through because they believe that those that try and deal with the facts are brainwashed. The real truth is only attainable for those that reject the standard sources of information (which are all corrupt). It sucks. The Internet was supposed to make people smarter and more informed. Unfortunately, the opposite occurred. The end result is Covid probably never goes away. It continues to mutate and we play wack a mole against new variants forever. Best case we can manage it like we do seasonal flu. Worst case, this is the new normal.

[xCLAVEx]

After living around trashy lower end models of humanity for nearly a decade who repeatedly demonstrate why they are where they are and forever will remain in life, nothing surprises me anymore about how disrespectful, rude, uncaring, loud, sloppy, messy, and dangerous people can be.

And there is nothing we can do to change it.

[Lazy8s]

A little levity, then we can get back to depressing each other



Lockdown has been rough

Lifted from imgur of course

[Cyko]

What the…

…

…sigh…

[Lazy8s]

[Lazy8s]

I only understand a fraction of the pics in this thread. 10 years ago it was fun I could relate to them, today I can't. Is it me getting old and don't have the associations anymore or is internet humor becoming like modernism in classical music?

It's safe to assume that Rage3d operates slightly outside established norms.

[UFO]

It's safe to assume that Rage3d operates slightly outside established norms.

I answered in the wrong thread but, ok.

[Sasquach]

Effing rights the age group eligibility has been lowered in our province and now i can go book a shot tomorrow!

I CAN FINALLY JOIN THE MOTHERSHIP IN ALL ITS BORG GLORY!!!

[Crawdaddy79]

Effing rights the age group eligibility has been lowered in our province and now i can go book a shot tomorrow!

I CAN FINALLY JOIN THE MOTHERSHIP IN ALL ITS BORG GLORY!!!

Yeah? Meanwhile in America the FDA is about to authorize the Pfizer shot to go into 12 year olds.

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/05/03/health/pfizer-covid-vaccine-teens-fda/index.html