OT: Coronavirus XXXV: Y'all Got Any More of Them Vaccines?

[CycloneSweep]

and I've been saying all alone there's need to be clear evidence of transmission before we shut these places down and killing people's livelihoods...also, there's no consistency

malls are open but salons and barbershops are closed why?
large indoor gatherings should absolutely be banned but other closure make little sense

Salons and barbershops make sense though. It's close contact for longer than 15 minutes.

The danger with them is, if your barber catches Covid, every single one of their clients within a certain window would have to quarantine. Barbershops and salons are some of the only businesses that make sense to be closed.

Other closures make sense but there isn't a ton of consistency in it. Especially basing capacity based on fire code. Far too many people are in malls, that I agree and there is literally no one counting people as they come in and out.

 

[Drivesaitl]

I didn’t claim those were solely due to lockdowns. Just stating that lockdowns make those issues worse. Sorry if you misinterpreted what I was saying. I agree the pandemic itself and the panic surrounding it have caused those issues for many.

“We all know by now that harsh restriction have a lot of “collateral damage” effects on the rest of society ranging from suicide increases, drug over dose increases, poverty, families breaking up, and loads of mental health problems.”

This was my statement and I think it’s a very fair one. No where do I say lockdowns are the only cause of these problems. No where do I say that if there were no lockdowns we wouldn’t have some of these issues still. I think you took my post out of context due to your own feelings on the issues. Sorry if I offended you, and I’m sorry to hear how hard the pandemic has been on your mental health. Hope that with vaccines and falling cases in general it can improve and we can put the worst of COVID-19 behind us and move forward.

Ireland is a case example of lockdowns potentially making things worse. Even severe lockdowns only work as long as they remain in place. In effect what the lockdowns accomplished in Ireland is reducing the main strain Covid, in the population, and having little of that circulating, then opening things up two weeks before Xmas and new variant covid quickly takes over, and becomes the new covid circulating there in an instant and with people then sitting there in a false sense that they have licked covid.

Time and time again its seen that intelligent targetted measures, ongoing, are more effective than shorter term highly restrictive lockdowns which just cause fluctuations and potentially worse curves.

Ireland is a classic example of good intentions going horribly wrong. I'd take what we have been doing here in AB, and the direction this Govt has had anytime. Lets be clear here too. Many of us here were correct in that the earlier restrictions had already made a significant change. Targeted measures work to contain the pandemic.

 

[CycloneSweep]

Ireland is a case example of lockdowns potentially making things worse. Even severe lockdowns only work as long as they remain in place. In effect what the lockdowns accomplished in Ireland is reducing the main strain Covid, in the population, and having little of that circulating, then opening things up two weeks before Xmas and new variant covid quickly takes over, and becomes the new covid circulating there in an instant and with people then sitting there in a false sense that they have licked covid.

Time and time again its seen that intelligent targetted measures, ongoing, are more effective than shorter term highly restrictive lockdowns which just cause fluctuations and potentially worse curves.

Ireland is a classic example of good intentions going horribly wrong. I'd take what we have been doing here in AB, and the direction this Govt has had anytime. Lets be clear here too. Many of us here were correct in that the earlier restrictions had already made a significant change. Targeted measures work to contain the pandemic.

People try and tell me Alberta has extremely strict restrictions but that's simply not true.

Ireland though was extremely bad luck with that new strain locking up too. Without that they would be in much much better shape.

 

[Drivesaitl]

and I've been saying all alone there's need to be clear evidence of transmission before we shut these places down and killing people's livelihoods...also, there's no consistency

malls are open but salons and barbershops are closed why?
large indoor gatherings should absolutely be banned but other closure make little sense

This is a bit disconnected but theres so much that doesn't make sense. Even the NHL response of allowing some fans in the indoor games down south in the warmer states where cases are subsidizing but the same NHL stating "there is no way" fans will be allowed to the outdoor games. lol. Thats where the games SHOULD BE. I would feel far safer being outdoors watching a game in a 70K bowl wrap and mega distanced seating than I would be going into an indoor arena with a distanced 3-4K people indoors.

How the NHL comes to this conclusion is anybodies guess, but they figure the outdoor events would be more dangerous, and are preemptly refusing to have attendance at those is unfathomable.

There's no basis for these decisions, they just occur.

Its as if people making these decisions still believe in Miasma theory of infection and that somehow a newer shiny "clean" arena is a safer place than the great outdoors. Makes no sense.

We require people to be 2m apart from anybody in a field, park, skating rink, pathway, etc, but we let people crowd into malls. It defies rationale.

 

[nabob]

Ireland is a case example of lockdowns potentially making things worse. Even severe lockdowns only work as long as they remain in place. In effect what the lockdowns accomplished in Ireland is reducing the main strain Covid, in the population, and having little of that circulating, then opening things up two weeks before Xmas and new variant covid quickly takes over, and becomes the new covid circulating there in an instant and with people then sitting there in a false sense that they have licked covid.

Time and time again its seen that intelligent targetted measures, ongoing, are more effective than shorter term highly restrictive lockdowns which just cause fluctuations and potentially worse curves.

Ireland is a classic example of good intentions going horribly wrong. I'd take what we have been doing here in AB, and the direction this Govt has had anytime. Lets be clear here too. Many of us here were correct in that the earlier restrictions had already made a significant change. Targeted measures work to contain the pandemic.

I guess that’s kind of where my head was partially at with my earlier post. In the presser where the earlier restrictions were announced Kenney was very proud to announce that hair salons and other similar industries hadn’t contributed a single traced case of Covid...then shorty after all those industries are shut right down even thought the science and stats don’t support it. Could we not go back to the lesser restrictions as they were working and there’s no way of proving that the strict Lee restrictions are actually helping our healthcare system any more than the previous ones would have.

 

[Drivesaitl]

People try and tell me Alberta has extremely strict restrictions but that's simply not true.

Ireland though was extremely bad luck with that new strain locking up too. Without that they would be in much much better shape.

No, they'd be almost exactly like Czech republic right now. look it up. The most obvious thing is that all the countries doing worse right now relaxed restrictions prior to, or even during the holiday season. The dumbest thing that could be done during a pandemic. The patterns are very similar to Ireland. But big MSM want you to believe the situation in Ireland is due to the big massive more infective variant covid monster. The MSM spreading fear for hits as its done throughout the pandemic.

Those closely analyzing the situation in Ireland are deducing that its not just the mutated variant, its multifactor involved, and with opening things up for holidsy season being a huge factor. They flunked big time, now paying for it.

 

[Drivesaitl]

I guess that’s kind of where my head was partially at with my earlier post. In the presser where the earlier restrictions were announced Kenney was very proud to announce that hair salons and other similar industries hadn’t contributed a single traced case of Covid...then shorty after all those industries are shut right down even thought the science and stats don’t support it. Could we not go back to the lesser restrictions as they were working and there’s no way of proving that the strict Lee restrictions are actually helping our healthcare system any more than the previous ones would have.

What occurred here that we talked about is that the first targeted measures were probably sufficient, they were going to make a difference. But there was immense pressure, there was national interfereence on our measures, there was CBC violation of our Covid committee meetings, I mean sabotage of our proceedings and the Govt took on harsher guidelines due to the harsher exposure, pressure, and opponents. I mean really with the whole nation unintelligibly harping on about Alberta, "Alberta blew it" propaganda.

We knew at the time it was nonsense, the criticism was specious, and that it was obvious the 2nd wave of the pandemic was going to hit the first very populated prairie province it hit, because winter hits EARLIER here. Soon as winter hit Ontario, Quebec, they had huge problems. Myself and others predicted all this. It wasn't that Alberta was blowing anything, Alberta was just having winter during a pandemic, when numbers will fly high.

 

[harpoon]

Probably somewhere doing something like this

Season is about to start. He’s probably over on the Buffalo board talking about his second favourite topic.

 

[Tobias Kahun]

What's the point of having outdoor games with no fans, the reason they're there is to increase revenue.

 

[BoldNewLettuce]

If the Trudeau government would have spent less time chasing after Chinese vaccines initially, instead of going full bore after the Pfizer and Moderna ones like so many other countries, we might not be in this situation.

You're suggesting they invent a vaccine and large scale production facility, staffed and trained, and pass it through qa and public safety testing in a few months.

The reason Pfizer and the others could do it in a year was because everything was basically there.

Why isn't Alberta making vaccines instead of oil?

 

[Drivesaitl]

What's the point of having outdoor games with no fans, the reason they're there is to increase revenue.

I can't figure it out either, but thats what they are doing, and they are talkling no fans in attendance. Bettman just reiterated it the other day. Didn't really give a reason for no fans in attendance.

 

[Tobias Kahun]

I can't figure it out either, but thats what they are doing, and they are talkling no fans in attendance. Bettman just reiterated it the other day. Didn't really give a reason for no fans in attendance.

I wonder if part of the TV deal is X amount of outdoor games? That's the only logical reason to even putting one on, so they wouldnt have to pay that back.

 

[oilers'72]

For the record, the second wave of cases peaked on December 4th, give or take a day. Other than December 10th, the cases have been dropping. The holiday season may've had some minor peaks, and stalled the decline, but has since passed. I can see the various lockdowns being reduced unless they're only going on hospitalizations and deaths.

Infographics: COVID-19 in Alberta by the numbers

 

[nabob]

I wonder if part of the TV deal is X amount of outdoor games? That's the only logical reason to even putting one on, so they wouldnt have to pay that back.

You could very likely be right. Because when it comes down to it, money is what drives most decisions.

 

[syz]

Adjacent but the same mRNA vaccine tech may have made progress on MS.

 

[ThePhoenixx]

FUREY: Ford ignores harms of lockdown while imposing severe COVID measures | Toronto Sun

 

[Fourier]

Please feel free to tell me if what I’m saying make no sense. Just a thought I had and lots of them make more sense in my head than they do on paper.

so even though positive case numbers are significantly reduced the last 3 weeks or so compared to the three weeks before them we are still seeing the same (relatively) number of people in the hospital and ICU with Covid. This tells me that the very strict restrictions put in place are doing nothing to take the strain off of the healthcare system or preventing any deaths from Covid. We all know by now that harsh restriction have a lot of “collateral damage” effects on the rest of society ranging from suicide increases, drug over dose increases, poverty, families breaking up, and loads of mental health problems. If the restrictions that are in place aren’t doing anything to take the stress off the healthcare system and aren’t preventing Covid deaths...are they worth it? Are they working? Or are they actually causing more problems than they are solving? Are the decisions being made actually weighing the positives vs the negatives and striving for the best possible outcomes for Albertans? Would the previous restrictions that were put in place and only given 10 days have sufficed to allow us to be at the same place we’re at right now with regards to hospital and ICU numbers?

The lag time between drops in cases and drops in hospitalizations can be weeks. There are several reason for this. The most obvious is that the progression of the disease is such that hospitalizations tend naturally to lag infection by two weeks or more. But I also wonder if it is also impacted by who gets infected when. If you look at here in Ontario you see a pattern where there is a large spike in infections in people in the 20-30 age group (or younger). A few weeks later the numbers started to increase in the 39-59 group. And then a few weeks later the numbers went up in the older age group and the issues in LTC started to spike. That's when hospitalizations really took off. The lag time between the start of the spike in the younger group and in the most vulneraable group was almost 2 moths. Is it possible that the reverse happens on the way down. Infections slow significantly in the younger group but it takes longer to get rid of it in the LTC system where many of the hospitaizations come from.

 

[HumbleEgomaniac]

I guess that’s kind of where my head was partially at with my earlier post. In the presser where the earlier restrictions were announced Kenney was very proud to announce that hair salons and other similar industries hadn’t contributed a single traced case of Covid...then shorty after all those industries are shut right down even thought the science and stats don’t support it. Could we not go back to the lesser restrictions as they were working and there’s no way of proving that the strict Lee restrictions are actually helping our healthcare system any more than the previous ones would have.

That might be the case, but when their contact tracing fell apart and they basically ignored cases from November to the first week of December, I am not sure from what data they drew their conclusions from? They simply don't have the data for much of the increase in spread and they seemed to draw conclusions about AB's spread by extrapolating from data drawn from other jurisdictions and countries. Their contact tracing is still a mess. They also decided to wipe the slate clean when it came to schools with covid outbreaks starting in Jan. 2021. I am not sure that is a smart idea at all. There were over 400 schools with active outbreaks before the holidays. I think that is an attempt to control the optics with how badly the current government is doing in the polls.

 

[nabob]

That might be the case, but when their contact tracing fell apart and they basically ignored cases from November to the first week of December, I am not sure from what data they drew their conclusions from? They simply don't have the data for much of the increase in spread and they seemed to draw conclusions about AB's spread by extrapolating from data drawn from other jurisdictions and countries. Their contact tracing is still a mess. They also decided to wipe the slate clean when it came to schools with covid outbreaks starting in Jan. 2021. I am not sure that is a smart idea at all. There were over 400 schools with active outbreaks before the holidays. I think that is an attempt to control the optics with how badly the current government is doing in the polls.

That’s an interesting take...No bias there.

If the outbreaks at schools were causing spread then it would have been easy to track since they know exactly where those people are during the day.

Contact tracing can only be as effective if the population allows it to be.

 

[nabob]

The lag time between drops in cases and drops in hospitalizations can be weeks. There are several reason for this. The most obvious is that the progression of the disease is such that hospitalizations tend naturally to lag infection by two weeks or more. But I also wonder if it is also impacted by who gets infected when. If you look at here in Ontario you see a pattern where there is a large spike in infections in people in the 20-30 age group (or younger). A few weeks later the numbers started to increase in the 39-59 group. And then a few weeks later the numbers went up in the older age group and the issues in LTC started to spike. That's when hospitalizations really took off. The lag time between the start of the spike in the younger group and in the most vulneraable group was almost 2 moths. Is it possible that the reverse happens on the way down. Infections slow significantly in the younger group but it takes longer to get rid of it in the LTC system where many of the hospitaizations come from.

All very good points. Makes a lot of sense.

 

[HumbleEgomaniac]

That’s an interesting take...No bias there.

If the outbreaks at schools were causing spread then it would have been easy to track since they know exactly where those people are during the day.

Contact tracing can only be as effective if the population allows it to be.

There is no bias. Hinshaw stated they couldn't keep up with the cases and were only going to focus on cases after a certain date. One of the reasons broader restrictions were necessary is because they didn't have data showing specifically where the spread was happening. That is why they sent school children in grades 7-12 home as part of restrictions that got gradually more severe.

 

[Ritchie Valens]

Meanwhile in Quebec:

Couple fine after wife walked husband on leash to bypass COVID curfew

If this is going in front of closed doors, what goes on in this household behind them?

 

[Drivesaitl]

That might be the case, but when their contact tracing fell apart and they basically ignored cases from November to the first week of December, I am not sure from what data they drew their conclusions from? They simply don't have the data for much of the increase in spread and they seemed to draw conclusions about AB's spread by extrapolating from data drawn from other jurisdictions and countries. Their contact tracing is still a mess. They also decided to wipe the slate clean when it came to schools with covid outbreaks starting in Jan. 2021. I am not sure that is a smart idea at all. There were over 400 schools with active outbreaks before the holidays. I think that is an attempt to control the optics with how badly the current government is doing in the polls.

They specifically state in statistics all the schools that have outbreaks, which they are not required to do, and yet you suggest its cover up of some sort. I'm not understanding your reply.

Refreshing outbreak alerts is perfectly reasonable, due to an sensible acknowledgement that after a very lengthy break, and much longer than incubation periods, that there are no current outbreaks at schools. I mean anybody can go back to past public record, or information even contained in upbreaks. I think they are wiping the slate clean as it is a restart after a prolonged period off. Not for the reason you suggest.

Case notes and other corroborating data also give further information and there might even be subsequent addendum information. It just becomes very messy, in columns and several pages to list that all that have occurred in data in spreadsheets that are meant to convey current outbreaks. The outbreaks that occurred in schools in December or earlier are not current. Its more helfpul for people (parents) to be able to scan what current school infections are arising and make decisions about their own children attending on that behalf. I like that is available to children and parents.

 

[CupofOil]

Well, vaccine stations are being set up in New York and all of those 65 and up in addition to essential workers are eligible in two weeks so I can get my poor beyond stressed out mother (a woman who has anxiety issues even in the best of times) the vaccine in a couple of weeks and hopefully at least a little peace of mind to go along with it.

The light at the end of the tunnel is finally in sight. Chin up everybody.

 

[AM]

Hospitalizations were climbing at a near exponential rate until late December. They have since peaked and are slowly beginning to decline. The restrictions saved our healthcare system from collapse.

I also take massive issue with your assertion that "collateral damage" is solely due to lockdowns, and not largely due to the fact that we've got a once in century pandemic ravaging the planet killing millions of people around the globe.

My own personal experience during this pandemic: My mental health has been a disaster the past ~year since this began. It has been very severe and very frightening for me at times. It is not due to lockdowns. It is due to the pandemic. Pretending like none of these issues would exist without lockdowns is ignorant and offensive. I can tell you unequivocally that my mental health would have been significantly worse than it already has been without restrictions being put in place.

Sometimes we meet our fate on the paths we try to avoid it on.