COVID-19 updates comments and concerns

[Golden Phoenix]

And today, United Australia Party (Clive Palmer and Craig Kelly) sending out unsolicited texts about vaccine reactions. Having politicians trying to inhibit the vaccine roll-out by spreading misinformation, I wish I could say all I want to say, but suffice to say I really dislike them.

There has been a few articles floating around with Craig's office number and mobile number so you can ask him 'politely' to stop.

[DELTAprime]

I'd love to know who gave UAP my phone number. It's unlisted and up until recently, I've never gotten any spam.

[griffin]

I'd love to know who gave UAP my phone number. It's unlisted and up until recently, I've never gotten any spam.

I got one too, and I think I'm also unlisted.
One news program mentioned that the numbers were likely purchased from a data-collection trader, like when you sign up to retailer programs, your details can often be sold on to marketing companies (often in the fine-print, but sometimes it is done without telling you beforehand).

Or maybe it is automated/random dialling, like the robo-call machines of old, that would call up consecutive numbers and play a recorded message... which I think were banned at some point for tying up everyone's phones all day from the growing number of robo-call machines.

[DELTAprime]

Yeah. Hopefully, they are just dialling sequential numbers. But knowing how things work these days I'm guessing they were given or bought a database of numbers. That's why I'm really wanting to know who gave them my number.

At least Samsung's spam detection is pretty decent in their most recent version of Android. It spam filtered the UAP message almost instantly. But Microsoft's Your Phone app that allows you to see messages on your phone on Windows desktop is not so smart and because of that, I saw the message from UAP.

[1AZRAEL1]

Cool to see our PM get a travel exemption between Sydney and Canberra to see his family for Father's Day... haven't seen my family most of this year. As Mel Brooks says, it's good to be the king...

[GoktimusPrime]

Medical scientist explains how people are far more likely to get blood clots from COVID than from the AZ vaccine

[griffin]

From the American ABC news program from last Monday (I often tape various news programs through the week and catchup on the weekend)... this is how stupid people are getting after politics got involved (getting elected was more important than saving lives, which is what is known as "popularism" - a short term gain that results in long-term problems... but now it is mostly those Republican voters who are dying, in states that ban mask-mandates, and have the lowest vaccine rates).
A "primary" school principal in Arizona had prevented a student from attending a field trip because they had been exposed to covid (which is basic duty of care - if the principal knowingly allowed a potentially infected student to infect others, they and the school would have been sued by every other parent if their children got infected and then infected adult members of the family)... the parent of that affected child, and two male adult friends of the parent, went to the school with zip-ties, to perform a citizens arrest on the principal for interfering with the freedom and liberty of their child.
Really? Treating a health related decision done in good faith, as a major crime.
Fortunately those adults are being investigated for felonies, relating to intimidation and attempted abduction of the principal (even if it was to deliver them to the police, it was still against their will).
And with parents indoctrinating their kids to refuse to wear masks at school, they don't seem to care who dies, just as long as their ego is satisfied, to have the selfish right to do whatever they want at the expense of others.
They want to enjoy the benefits of being in a large organised society, but don't want to contribute themselves to what creates that society and holds it together.
If they want individualism (take all and give nothing) over community (sharing and benefiting from everyone contributing by making small investments or sacrifices), they should move of to the open country somewhere and fend for themselves, without any man-made objects or education or medical science at all.


It is pleasing to note, that despite Australia's slow start to the vaccine rollout (we were one of the worst in the developed world just 2 months ago in July), the rapid acceleration in the last couple of months (thanks to the incentive of proposed freedom targets, border barriers and the ongoing lockdown in our largest city making the rest of us not want that to happen to us), two of our states this week (NSW & TAS) have now overtaken the percentage coverage of the worst states in America (which are all heavily Republican states), who started their rollout 10 months ago. And we haven't seen the big flattening of the curve that America saw when they were struggling to hit 60% single dose... Australia is currently at 67% single dose, and our daily rates are still going strong.
I think 80% double-dose should be easy to get to here, even taking into account a gradual drop-off as we run out of willing participants... but since more contagious viruses like measles and mumps needed 95% coverage to eliminate them from most of the world, I think we really need to push for 90%+ for covid, to be ready for the next more-deadly variant, especially until under 12s can be vaccinated, as they will remain at risk, and the delta variant is already sending thousands of children into hospitals around the world.

Until there is a cure for covid, it won't be eliminated, but the vaccine will significantly reduce the number of people who will die from it, or have long-term effects that reduce a person's lifespan (if they had symptoms, they never fully go away).
The thing that I'd like to know, is if anyone who caught the alpha strain, also caught the delta strain... as there are people who aren't wanting to risk getting the vaccine because they have already caught the virus and believe that they won't catch it again. But if the anti-bodies slowly disappear over time for those who have the vaccine, it is likely that those same anti-bodies in people who have had the virus will also disappear over time... or don't work against the more powerful strains.
Another excuse by anti-vaxxers, is that people who are vaccinated are still getting covid... but the vaccine doesn't prevent you from catching it (there's no magical forcefield around you - and the anti-bodies are in your blood, not on the surface of your skin, so it can only start working when the virus passes through the skin or mucus membranes), it just helps you attack the virus faster when it does enter your system, reducing the amount of virus that can attack you from the inside, which reduces the number of people needing to be in the hospital, or dying (particularly if they have no other medical issues - we had that teenage boy in Sydney die a few weeks back, because he was also fighting off something else that he would have lived from... he was too young at the time to get vaccinated, but if everyone around him was, he probably wouldn't have caught it and died).
Moving forward, we need to be focussing on the hospitalisation numbers and how many are vaccinated/unvaccinated.
From the September 3rd report from NSW (the first one that came up from a search), it notes that of the 160 people in ICU, only 8 were fully vaccinated - 95% of the people in there, didn't need to be. If everyone was fully vaccinated, the hospital system that is struggling to cope, wouldn't have 90-95% of those cases draining resources (people are dying in America from non-covid injuries, because none of the nearest hospitals could see them), over-working and over-stressing the staff who have to deal with preventable pain and suffering, and costing tax-payers a fortune in extra hospital funding.

We think the delta strain is bad, being 4-5 times more contagious and more likely to affect those who are fully vaccinated if they have other health problems (the alpha variant has almost disappeared in America, with 99% of new cases being found to be the delta variant)... the next variant could be even worse (the Australian ABC "vaccine" report on Friday mapped out how it compares to other contagious viruses, with the alpha strain being spread to an average of 1-3 people, and the delta strain being 7-9 people - I can't find that graph online, but here is the American CDC graph, which has similar numbers, and details how if there were no lockdowns or vaccines, a single person would infect about 200 people with delta after about a week, compared to just 20 people with the alpha strain).

[Golden Phoenix]

We think the delta strain is bad, being 4-5 times more contagious and more likely to affect those who are fully vaccinated if they have other health problems (the alpha variant has almost disappeared in America, with 99% of new cases being found to be the delta variant)... the next variant could be even worse (the Australian ABC "vaccine" report on Friday mapped out how it compares to other contagious viruses, with the alpha strain being spread to an average of 1-3 people, and the delta strain being 7-9 people - I can't find that graph online, but here is the American CDC graph, which has similar numbers, and details how if there were no lockdowns or vaccines, a single person would infect about 200 people with delta after about a week, compared to just 20 people with the alpha strain).

I read that there is a new strain already in Africa that has some people worried that it could be worse. They aren't sure just yet but they think it might be best to act as if it will be worse just in case.

[DELTAprime]

I read that there is a new strain already in Africa that has some people worried that it could be worse. They aren't sure just yet but they think it might be best to act as if it will be worse just in case.

I heard Mu completely avoids human immune responses. Hopefully we can get a booster vaccine for that variant super fast.

[griffin]

And that's the concern... we saw how quickly a variant (mutation) showed up that was 3 times as bad as the original, and there was always a fear that there would be a mutation of the spike proteins that the vaccines target, that would then not be recognised by the anti-bodies that are only able to respond to the original variants.
The faster we can get vaccines or cures (if we had one) out to the people, the quicker we can respond to a new challenge or variant... to adjust the "recipe" of the medications to target new versions faster, because we have hundreds of millions of results from the previous medications already out there.

Just looking at the US vaccination stats, sorted by state, and with NSW currently at about 78%, it is now better than ALL 50 US states, as their best state for one dose is 76%.

The surge of 1st doses here, waiting for it being possible to get the 2nd dose, has NSW at about 46% fully vaccinated, which is still behind 37 US states.

As of September 10th (at the two links above)...
America - 63.0% first dose - 53.8% fully vaccinated (note - one vaccine of theirs only requires one dose)
Australia - 66.2% first dose - 41.4% fully vaccinated (we don't have the J&J vaccine that only requires one dose)

The slowdown in America saw them take the last 2 months just to get 5% added to their fully vaccinated total... it took Australia just the last 9 days to add 5% to our fully vaccinated total.

Just to get an idea at how quickly we are going compared to America, on July 13th, just 2 months ago (at the two links above)...
America - 55.8% first dose - 48.3% fully vaccinated
Australia - 33.3% first dose - 11.6% fully vaccinated (30% added to our fully vaccinated total, compared to just 5% in America... and 33% added to our first dose total compared to America adding just 7%)