"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
To be honest given Texas not having lockdowns right now for the most part my perception can be skewed. But back in April/May we were absolutely having people delay medical visits and surgeries. I had to reschedule my dental appointment as well. And visiting the doctor is still a damn pain in the ass. Park. Call in. Go through the dumb covid questionnaire, wait, get told to come in. Get vitals checked and then doc stands at the opposite corner of the room. Its a pain and causes many people just to roll their eyes and not want to come in at all.
Last night as I lay in bed, looking up at the stars, I thought, “Where the hell is my ceiling?"
Twitter Link
We're still on hydroxychloroquine
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
This has nothing to do with lockdowns and everything to do with a private business making their own decisions on how to stay operational during a pandemic. And your claims that "many" people will choose not visit their doctor because the doctor is taking precautions against a pandemic is both false and moronic.
You're seriously bitching that you don't get to use a doctor's waiting room during a pandemic. What the fuck is wrong with you?
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
It seems that the Oxford/AZ vaccine has two delivery vectors. One (two full doses two weeks apart) gave 62% protection the other (a half dose then a fill dose four weeks apart) gave 90% protection. 70.4% was the average since the 62% was the larger trial but I imagine the 90% is what will be given approval. How statistically significant it is I'm not sure.
Interestingly it seems no serious symptoms from either vector.
Oxford have just confirmed the 90% was statistically large enough a sample and that is what they will be taking to the regulators. Fantastic news!
Interestingly it seems the Oxford/AZ trial was potentially even more rigorous than the Pfizer/BioNTech one since the latter tested symptomic incidents during the trial while the Pxford/AZ trial swabbed all participants weekly during the trial so is catching asymptomatic spread too. If this prevents even asymptomatic spread at 90% then that is potentially incredible for herd immunity.
3 vaccines at 90% plus within the year of this outbreak started. Don't think anyone would have foreseen that months ago.
No one makes real money on vaccines. This is good PR for them but was unlikely to shift their bottom line much in any pricing scheme. The likes of Moderna actually would be affected since they're smallish and early stage, but AstraZeneca? Pfizer? JNJ? It's a drop in the ocean.
"When I meet God, I am going to ask him two questions: Why relativity? And why turbulence? I really believe he will have an answer for the first." - Werner Heisenberg (maybe)
Pfizer's stock price has been a little bonkers for a long while now, and the jump is modest in comparison to the overall trend. Notwithstanding any impact of retail investors overreacting, the pandemic itself hit Pfizer's stock price hard, so, if an end to the pandemic is in sight, that should be good for business
I'm honestly nervous about the prospect of the AstraZeneca vaccine seeing a widespread rollout in countries where HIV is endemic or fairly common.
Meanwhile, my parental leave continues, and it's the only thing that's keeping me somewhat sane as our authorities fuck up over and over again. That and the apparent decision by my county and this city to start disregarding the public health agency's antics. Things in Sweden will be about as bad as they were in Spring, possibly worse in some places, probably for the next several months at least. Implementation of testing schemes is a joke in most parts of the country. Almost no coordination between any of the players; the govt. is trying to emphasize the seriousness of the situation and strongly urging or even mandating stricter restrictions, only to be directly contradicted (inaccurately) by the public health agency. Just heard that med-students in Sthlm are being required to take in-person written exams in groups of up to 70 students, shortly before they go on to clinical rotations. Med-school admin & faculty requiring students to travel by public transportation to a likely super-spreader event shortly before working with acutely ill frail elderly patients is just peak Sweden 2020.
Politically and socially, this is a very interesting time. The media discourse is changing, as is the tone & substance of the debate among physicians. But what a shit sandwich this is in every other respect. Several of my colleagues have fallen ill, a couple of whom are in high risk groups. My mother is quarantined at home with us though, and it's a pure joy seeing her and the baby getting up to mischief all day long
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
Why are your scientists so dumb?
Hope is the denial of reality
Deficient risk analysis notwithstanding, the primary issue appears to be groupthink and the entrenchment of a very particular view of public health at the public health agency, but it's turned into a matter of national prestige, and that cultural element has made a lot of people act very foolishly wrt the pandemic. It's become a game, like Brexit. Criticism of our strategy = an attack on the mainstream Swedish identity. I'm fielding asinine arguments all day, about how we have to think about the children, from anti-lockdown dingdongs who don't understand that our authorities haven't managed to implement even the most basic pandemic control measures. Nobody cares that, due to that failure, parents have died, or become severely ill and perhaps doomed to long-term disability, or seen their children suffer rare but severe complications.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
Given the global reputation of Swedish scientists, I hope the people responsible for this are deemed persona non grata in any kind of international public health event/conference.
Hope is the denial of reality
My sister is the chief of staff of a large hospital in the Midwest. She anticipated and handled the first wave reasonably well, and has worked to keep her team and hospital in good shape for this winter. But the current wave is truly disheartening. Every day she is making decisions about delaying or canceling certain types of care in order to free up more resources for handling the massive surge of resource-intensive Covid patients. She's already had cases where poor patient outcomes now have been blamed on insufficient provision of care during the first wave; she is well aware that the knock-on effects of the current wave are going to be far more severe (and we all know that the doctors are going to be blamed for this because it's much less satisfying to blame a more nebulous 'society' for going to bars and not exercising adequate social distancing/PPE). She's making these decisions, and trying to keep up the spirits of her employees, and working to make sure there are adequate resources... but I spoke to her yesterday, and I can tell it's getting to be too much. And, frankly, there is no end in sight. We won't have substantial vaccination coverage until spring at the earliest.
When she drives home each day and sees people out and about ignoring even the most basic of precautions that are currently the recommendations in her state... she finds it quite frustrating, as do her colleagues. An actual attempt by people to observe more distancing, whether in the context of a formal lockdown or not, would dramatically increase her ability to provide potentially lifesaving care to people who do not have Covid.
"When I meet God, I am going to ask him two questions: Why relativity? And why turbulence? I really believe he will have an answer for the first." - Werner Heisenberg (maybe)
Okay hang on "deemed persona non grata" means "promoted to a senior advisory position" yes?
https://www.newsweek.com/sweden-herd...motion-1529111
This is the same man who, in an widely circulated interview with Unherd, blamed illiterate refugees and asylum seekers for the thousands of care home deaths in Sweden. There are some very frustrating and extremely persistent cultural problems in this international dev/aid/ph sector, esp. among a network of old guard European scientists who've grown accustomed to making decisions for brown people in dysfunctional countries. He's just upholding the tenets of their faith.
On the bright side, every county/regional authority in Sweden has just released a coordinated notice that public gatherings including seated indoor events are now limited to 8 attendees. Absent adequate national coordination, they've begun to exercise their own authority in a more proactive manner. Better late than never, I guess.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
If this happens in Sweden, what hope is there for the rest of us?
Hope is the denial of reality
If there's one thing this pandemic has revealed, it's that people everywhere have unrealistic views about everywhere else this is esp. noticeable in the coverage Sweden has received in international media over the past few years, and esp. during the pandemic (for obv reasons).
Sweden is a well-functioning state with a very trusting populace, but it's also a society featuring widespread nepotism, pervasive and quite aggressively enforced groupthink/conformity, as well as a cultural taboo on open professional disagreement—esp. disagreement that runs up against the chain of command. I truly believe that, if our public health agency had been led by another group of scientists—or if another agency like our civil contingencies agency had been in charge of pandemic response—our approach would've been quite different, esp. wrt those decisions that clearly had their basis in deficient risk analysis or an incautious interpretation of evidence. Some of the problems we're seeing now were anticipated by people who were critical of the reorganization that led to the birth of this agency.
Other countries may have advantages in the form of better crisis-oriented leadership, a more robust system for adjudicating policy risks & goals, better structures for accountability, healthy skepticism of authority, a better debate climate, a stronger govt. with a clear majority, different organization of govt authority (eg. greater or lesser autonomy at regional level), etc.
I will say this though—in no other country would I have been able to spend this much time at home not doing official work, during a pandemic. We squandered our social and structural advantages, letting thousands die prematurely or be saddled with preventable disability, just to cater to the egos of some washed-up old sexist dudes who refuse to acknowledge how wholly inadequate they are to the task they've been assigned. Dah well
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
This is amusing. Not quite penicillin but if true a very fortunate mistake given 90% efficacy for this dosage and 62% efficacy for the other.
Twitter Link
I think maybe we can wait to see a proper report on their results
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
Indeed. Though I'm assuming Reuters quoting their head of non-oncology research and development is a legitimate source.
Just remarkable to think a few weeks ago a 62% success rate would have been considered quite good for an initial vaccine, I believe it's better than the flu vaccine typically gets, but after the Pfizer study it would have seemed disappointing. But potentially if this article is right thanks to a "serendipitous" error it's now seemingly become 90%.
I can't stress enough how important it is to know details of the studies rather than press releases. Without confidence intervals and a lot of other information we cannot draw conclusions about relative efficacy. For now, let's be contented with what appears to be more good news and not stretch our analysis further.
"When I meet God, I am going to ask him two questions: Why relativity? And why turbulence? I really believe he will have an answer for the first." - Werner Heisenberg (maybe)