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I lost faith in the Indian government when I listened to an interview where they said there was no shortage of oxygen. He explained it was in the air all around them and they just needed to put it into cylinders :facepalm:
It is weird hating the politicians so far away much more than our own but yeah. This lot in power there now and for last few years are stinkers of the first degree, and full of malice.
 

A video promoting tourism in Turkey amid the pandemic has caused an uproar on social media for showing tourism employees wearing masks that read “Enjoy, I’m vaccinated.”

The video, in English, was published Thursday on the social media accounts of official travel guide Go Turkiye linked to the country’s tourism ministry and was taken down later that day without explanation.

It aimed to promote travel to Turkey as a “safe haven” for foreigners and showed unmasked tourists being served in hotels on the Turkish coast.
 
Was chatting to a friend in Australia other day who was telling me they're not expecting their borders to open to normal traffic until mid-2022. She's feeling very trapped and frustrated, partly the lack of being able to go and see family abroad, but also due to how OK most people in Australia are with that, and also how poor vaccine take-up is (she works on vaccination there). Then this was in The Guardian yesterday covering similar ground

 
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Portugal opens to tourists on Monday ( providing they have a negative PCR test within 72 hours before the flight ) . Lots of friends of mine starting work at the hotels Monday but expect a steady trickle from outside Portugal rather than a flood to begin with .


The transmissibility index (Rt) of covid-19 rose again. It is 0.95, which means that, on average, each infected person does not pass the disease on to another.
The incidence is in 50.3 cases of infection by Sars-Cov 2 per 100 thousand inhabitants. This, after a day when there were no new fatalities associated with the covid, but there were 450 new cases of infection.

In hospitals, the number of people hospitalized with the disease dropped - minus 8 -, but two more people with covid were admitted to intensive care.

There are now 22 municipalities with more than 120 cases per 100 thousand inhabitants. This is the lowest number of municipalities in the red, at least since November when this information began to be disseminated.
 
It's so weird that the UK and EU are now "Us" and "Them"
🙁

Yeah, I am not that keen on it, but when figures are quoted separately for the UK & the EU it's not unreasonable to make comparisons.

Of course, the EU didn't help themselves with throwing their toys out of their pram in their dispute with AZ, making various threats & even imposing a border in Ireland without consulting the British & Irish governments, before doing a massive U-turn the next day. :facepalm:

The other big gap between the UK & EU is going to be vaccine uptake, with vaccine hesitancy running high in much on the EU, thankfully the Irish seem to be the most sensible on this. :thumbs:

People in Ireland are the most willing among European Union member states to take the Covid-19 vaccine, according to a survey released on Thursday.

Asked about their intentions to take the vaccine 86.5 per cent of those surveyed in Ireland said they were “very likely” (76.6 per cent) or “rather likely” (9.9 per cent) to take the vaccine.

According to an online survey from Eurofound (138,629 respondents) taken across the EU in February and March, willingness to take the vaccine was also high in Denmark, Malta and Portugal.

The stated intention to get vaccinated varies considerably across the 27 EU member states, with “an important east-west divide discernible across the union”, the report notes.

With the exception of Austria and France, the intention to get vaccinated is over 60 per cent for all western member states – with Nordic and Mediterranean countries, Denmark and Ireland having even higher rates – while among eastern member states the rate is dramatically lower, ranging from 59 per cent in Romania to 33 per cent in Bulgaria.

There's been other surveys reporting similar numbers too.

 
Yeah, I am not that keen on it, but when figures are quoted separately for the UK & the EU it's not unreasonable to make comparisons.

Of course, the EU didn't help themselves with throwing their toys out of their pram in their dispute with AZ, making various threats & even imposing a border in Ireland without consulting the British & Irish governments, before doing a massive U-turn the next day. :facepalm:

The other big gap between the UK & EU is going to be vaccine uptake, with vaccine hesitancy running high in much on the EU, thankfully the Irish seem to be the most sensible on this. :thumbs:





There's been other surveys reporting similar numbers too.



Pity its taking so long to get us all vaccinated over here.
Huge shortages of vaccine.
 
Be cautious with polled vaccine hesitancy. Asking somebody what they would theoretically do in a hypothetical situation is not the same thing as actually inviting them to be vaccinated, as was proved by the difference between UK polled hesitancy at the end of 2020 and the reality at the start of 2021.
 
Be cautious with polled vaccine hesitancy. Asking somebody what they would theoretically do in a hypothetical situation is not the same thing as actually inviting them to be vaccinated, as was proved by the difference between UK polled hesitancy at the end of 2020 and the reality at the start of 2021.

That's true, but the comparisons of responses from different countries is interesting.

I always assumed the uptake increased here, because we got hit so hard over Xmas & into the New Year, but that doesn't seem to play out in the polls of East European countries, that have been hit even harder over the winter months, about 10 are now above the UK in deaths per million, with Hungary the worst on over 3,000 per 1m, compared to the UK on under 1,900.
 
More reports of massive under reporting of covid death figures in India. :(

The Dainik Bhaskar, a Hindi newspaper popular across India’s crowded heartland, fanned 30 of its reporters along the banks of the river Ganga in Uttar Pradesh state. They found -- and photographed -- more than 2,000 corpses across some 1,140 kilometers (708 miles). That’s when the state government claims only about 300 are dying daily.

Their findings make grim reading: authorities are piling silt over more than 350 bodies lying in shallow graves in Kannauj, the reporters say; they see dogs gnawing at some of the 400 corpses just a short distance from a crematorium in Kanpur; they count 52 corpses floating down the river in Ghazipur, often crossing state borders.

Meanwhile, in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state of Gujarat, the Divya Bhaskar newspaper found that 123,000 death certificates were issued between March 1 and May 10 -- about 65,000 more than the same period last year though the state reported 4,218 Covid deaths.

 
I've seen various reports that Modi had disappeared from the public eye, so this stunt did make me smile.

The missing persons complaint was filed at Parliament Street police station in Delhi as a matter of some urgency: it concerned the “disappearance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi” and 10 of his cabinet ministers during the pandemic.

Nagesh Kariyappa, the general secretary of the Indian national students’ union who filed the report to police on Friday, said he wanted the absence of political leadership when India had been brought to its knees by Covid-19 to be a matter of official record. “Where are the so-called leaders who had promised to make India a global leader but have instead made people suffer like this?” said Kariyappa.
 
In normal times, poor families sometimes have to take out loans at terrible rates of interest, to afford a funeral, not just the ritual but the actual wood for the pyre is really expensive, even in normal times. Can you imagine how that is now, the cost of wood must be through the roof. Very minor sounding but will be long term significantly crippling for poorest families.
this is happening.
 
I've read so many harrowing stories from India recently. It strikes me that the stories that actually reach us are what is happening to the middle classes, no one really ever gave a shit about the poor and I can't imagine what is happening to them now.
 
Many East Asian countries that had successfully kept the virus out by border controls and stringent surveillance are seeing a surge in infections, in most cases due to a single weak point allowing the virus to enter and spread amongst a population and medical establishment that had become complacent. Vaccination uptake has also been low due to a previously perceived lack of need.

Taiwan, Singapore:

"Taiwan relaxed its quarantine requirements for non-vaccinated airline pilots from an initial 14-day period, to five days - and then, just three days.
Shortly afterwards, a cluster broke out connected to a handful of China Airlines pilots who had been staying at a Novotel near Taoyuan Airport. Many of those linked to this cluster were later found to have contracted the UK variant, known as B.1.1.7."

"Singapore's Changi Airport - which also boasts a popular shopping centre - had turned into the country's biggest Covid cluster this year. Authorities later found out that a number of infected airport staff had been working in a zone that received travellers from high-risk countries, including those in South Asia. Some of these workers then went on to have their meals in the airport's food courts - which are open to members of the public - further spreading the virus."



And in Cambodia, Thailand, Indonesia etc

"In Cambodia two prostitutes infected with the more infectious British variant of covid-19, known as B.1.1.7, arrived on a private jet from Dubai in early February and promptly broke quarantine to visit clients, nightclubs and other places. By mid-May the outbreak they seeded had infected thousands of people and killed more than 100."

 
I've read so many harrowing stories from India recently. It strikes me that the stories that actually reach us are what is happening to the middle classes, no one really ever gave a shit about the poor and I can't imagine what is happening to them now.

I don't completely agree, although I do see your point.

Some of Hannah Ellis-Petersen's Guardian reports from India (generally excellent, and very often harrowing) include interviews with poor people having terrible and cash-bereft experiences :( :(
 
Some doctor in the US got so fed up with the anti-vax brigade he put out some total bullshit about vaccinated people shedding proteins and the best way to protect yourself from them is to wear a mask. Now a load of anti-vaxxers are wearing masks. That's dedication to your own narrative, however wrong.

lol

It's been noticed recently that a lot of these types of people have no critical thinking whatsoever, believing anything that supports their view without really fact checking it. Some people have been using this for the lols against the flat earth brigade. If you want to see this in action google "kreptactic flight sequentials" and see if you can figure out where that came from and now who are discussing it.
 
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Kind of heartbreaking to see cases now getting out of control in Taiwan after they did such an incredible job from so early on - if other countries had responded so well, there might not have been a pandemic.

The evil motherfuckers in Beijing, meanwhile, are using the crisis to try to undermine Taiwan's government by spreading misinformation.

 
Yeah, the obvious problem with such approaches is that you need to maintain full vigilance for a very long time, and it only takes a few mistakes and some bad luck to see many gains lost. I still applaud such attempts, and the time they bought, but they can lead to temptation to relax prematurely, with disastrous results.
 
Poor India, if they haven't suffered enough from covid, they now have a “black fungus” epidemic within the pandemic, cases are mainly linked to patients who had severe cases of Covid-19, because the steroids treatment compromises the immune system.

Some hospitals in Delhi are reporting as many as 15 to 20 new cases a day, compared to 1 or 2 a month normally, more than 7,200 people infected & 219 have died so far, and this has resulted in a lack of the drugs needed to treat it. :(

States across India have begun declaring a “black fungus” epidemic as cases of the fatal rare infection shoot up in patients recovering from Covid-19.

The fungal disease, called mucormycosis, has a 50% mortality rate. It affects patients initially in the nose but the fungus can then spread into the brain, and can often only be treated by major surgery removing the eye or part of skull and jaw.
The disease is caused by fungal spores found in soil and organic matter, usually inhaled by humans from the air. The mould enters the body and then manifests around the nose and eye sockets, causing the nose to blacken, and if not stopped will move fatally into the brain. Healthy individuals will usually fight off the fungus but it can spread fast in those with compromised immunity.


And, if that's not enough, there's been a few cases of 'white fungus', which could be even worst. :(

After a spike in cases of deadly black fungus among Covid-19 patients in India, concerns are now growing for the potentially more lethal white fungus infection.

Four cases of “white fungus”, also called “candidiasis”, were detected on Wednesday at a government-run medical college in Patna, the capital city of the eastern state of Bihar, which is seeing a particular spike in Covid cases.

 
Dr John Campbell said it’s 20 cases detected a year in India normally. It’s arisen due to a combination of steroids and diabetes. Black fungus has a 50% mortality rate and requires very expensive drug treatment and disfiguring surgery.
when I say expensive, expensive for me @ $50 a dose every day for 8 weeks.

if that report on excess deaths is correct then all the deaths should be x 15! No wonder Modi has disappeared.
 
If anyone was of the view that it was appropriate to exclude the possibility that the pandemic origins involved a lab accident, it might be time to reevaluate your stance:

 
If anyone was of the view that it was appropriate to exclude the possibility that the pandemic origins involved a lab accident, it might be time to reevaluate your stance:


Three people were ill with something that could have been covid or “another common seasonal illness” isn’t exactly rock solid evidence of lab escape.
 
Three people were ill with something that could have been covid or “another common seasonal illness” isn’t exactly rock solid evidence of lab escape.

Hence my use of language. There is no conclusive proof available. There are just reasons to explore that possibility further and retain an open mind.
 
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