COVID-19 in America

[petee]

NYC Will Begin Phased Reopening Of Public Schools On December 7th

NYC public schools will begin to reopen in phases starting on Monday December 7th, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced on Sunday.

gothamist.com

private schools are overseen by a board of the state government and aren't under NYC BOE. they've been open since September.

 

[petee]

also, the loons aren't even waiting for it to be released

 

[Cid]

Now more than 100,000 in hospital... On death rates/tests I'm guessing there is still some correction from thanksgiving weekend, so probably best not to speculate too much on latest figures.

e2a: graun says 20,000 of those in ICU, at least 6855 on ventilators.

 

[elbows]

Yes the BBC has a story including various graphs of that same data.

Coronavirus: US hits record Covid cases and hospitalisations

Two records are reached on Wednesday, amid fears the pace will not slow leading up to Christmas.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[cupid_stunt]

Two days with the highest reported new cases, over 206k on Wed. and over 218.5k yesterday, I guess this could be the start of Thanksgiving feeding into new cases.

Too early for that to explain the number of deaths, which has also seen two new daily records, 2,873 on Wed. and 2,918 yesterday. The 7-day rolling average is still 376 a day less than the peak, but I suspect that will change over the next few weeks.

 

[Dogsauce]

Standing up for those ‘left behind’ again:

 

[cupid_stunt]

Their 7-day rolling average of deaths has hit 2,300 a day, higher than the pervious record of 2,259 back in April,

And, new daily cases are averaging over 206k a day, nearly 1.5 million in the last 7 days.

 

[petee]

 

[frogwoman]

Covid-19 Live Updates: Canada Approves Vaccine Made by Pfizer and BioNTech fucking vultures (the protest linked in that article)

,,

The Central District Health board in Boise, Idaho, tried to meet Tuesday evening to consider imposing a mask mandate and other measures. But the meeting was beset from the very beginning.

Before the board had even completed roll call, one commissioner, Diana Lachiondo, interrupted to say she was stepping out to phone the police, because protesters had gathered outside her home. Four minutes later, she tearfully interrupted again, saying she had to leave the meeting because the protesters had begun banging on the door, where her 12-year-old son was home alone.

 

[two sheds]

From Reddit on being told to go live in Europe for criticizing USA

https://i.redd.it/i7da7iue3o361.jpg

 

[StoneRoad]

The FDA have been advised to accept the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine.
Voting was 17 in favour, 4 against and 1 abstention.

what's with those 5 people, then ?

 

[Yossarian]

The FDA have been advised to accept the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine.
Voting was 17 in favour, 4 against and 1 abstention.

what's with those 5 people, then ?

One of them says she was in favour of approving for people 18 and older, but said she'd like to see more data on younger patients before approving it and thought the FDA should wait for the data because children aren't high priority for vaccination anyway.

FDA panel member says she voted against vaccine authorization because of limited data on ‘younger participants’

A member of a federal panel that voted Thursday to move forward with an emergency use authorization for Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine said that she voted against the candidate citing a lack of…

thehill.com

 

[StoneRoad]

duh, wot ?
Then authorize for adults only, that's been done with other treatments.

 

[two sheds]

About as sensible as being against it because it's not been tried on cats that won't be getting it either.

 

[Yossarian]

duh, wot ?
Then authorize for adults only, that's been done with other treatments.

I think that's what would have happened if the panel had been split on recommending the vaccine - turns out the recommendation was for people 16 and up so it was only 16 and 17-year-olds they were talking about.

Seems like the ones who voted to approve made the right call but I can see why the dissenters wanted to wait for more data - if there did turn out to be some kind of issue that might affect a few adolescents, it would risk undermining public confidence in the whole program.

 

[two sheds]

Ah ok that makes sense, ta. Do we know why the others voted against/abstained?

 

[two sheds]

Multiple concerns were expressed about the relatively small representation of specific groups in the trials. For example, American Indians were poorly represented in Pfizer’s trial, and while Black seniors were at a level that approximated their percentage in the nation, that still left them a relatively small pool within both safety and efficacy trials. Finally, the trial specifically left out some groups in early phases, including people under 18 or over 85, and people with HIV or other immune related illness. Though the trial was later expanded, there were concerns about whether these groups were in the study for an adequate period of time to make any statement about efficacy or safety for these groups.


Pregnant women were excluded from the trial. It was brought up repeatedly that if healthcare workers are among those first to receive the vaccine, that includes a lot of women of childbearing age, including some who may—knowingly or unknowingly—be pregnant. A trial is planned that includes pregnant women, but this trial is several stages behind.

FDA Vaccine committee votes to approve use of Pfizer vaccine in United States for patients 16 and up

On Thursday, the FDA advisory committee on Vaccines and Related Biological Products conducted a day long meeting that touched on several topics, but was focused primarily on a review of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. Appropriately enough, the meeting was...

www.dailykos.com

 

[Yossarian]

Ah ok that makes sense, ta. Do we know why the others voted against/abstained?

I think it was the same issue for most or all of the dissenters - not sure how the FDA selects the experts on its vaccine advisory committee, but they're not presidential appointees so there wouldn't have been any raging QAnon anti-vaxxers in there.

I would have voted ‘yes’ most enthusiastically had the language been ‘…18 years of age and older,’ ” said David Kim, director of the division of Vaccines in the Office of Infectious Disease and HIV/AIDS Policy in the Department of Health and Human Services.

 

[Yossarian]

It was around five weeks ago that the US reported more than 100,000 new COVID cases in a day for the first time. On Friday, it was 280,000, according to the New York Times - with hospitals and morgues already running out of room, seems like it will be an incredibly grim couple of months ahead. In a few more weeks, Trump might be secretly glad that he lost the election.

 

[cupid_stunt]

It's certainly grim, with over 300k covid deaths officially recorded now, although the real figure is likely to be around 400k.

The 7-day average death figure is running at almost 2,500 per day, around 10% higher than the peak in April, and that doesn't yet fully reflect the recent increase in new cases probably caused by the 'thanksgiving effect', and with Christmas & New Year upcoming, it's going to be even more horrific come January and February.

I've seen reports estimating another 200k deaths by the end of March.

By early Friday, at least 292,382 people had died of the virus in the U.S., and the numbers have been rising at a record 2,272-a-day average in the past week, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

The actual death toll may take much longer to tally, due in part to extensive lags in reporting and the possibility that virus fatalities have been missed along the way.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates there have been as many as 381,896 so-called excess deaths identified since Feb. 1, a number that represents mortality above normal statistical expectations. That’s significantly more than the number of confirmed Covid deaths, and may point to fatalities missed due to limited initial Covid testing and other factors.

Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

 

[Cloo]

Interesting article here, coming from a real estate industry angle (may need registering) - it suggests the US is more likely to go for an occupation-based rollout (eg of people who have to be in contact with others for work) of vaccine rather than by age. As it says, there's not really a right or wrong and either an age or occupation approach will probably save the same numbers of people. Wait In Line: How The Vaccine Rollout Strategy Impacts Real Estate's Recovery

 

[Cloo]

Listening into a seminar with American corporates it looks like most are now considering July 2021 as their earliest return to office dates.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

Listening into a seminar with American corporates it looks like most are now considering July 2021 as their earliest return to office dates.

That's the estimate of a lot of UK corporations (including the one I work for) and I think that's probably the earliest sensible date to plan for even here, so it seems a bit optimistic for the US.

 

[Cloo]

That's the estimate of a lot of UK corporations (including the one I work for) and I think that's probably the earliest sensible date to plan for even here, so it seems a bit optimistic for the US.

Well I wonder if some places might do 'come in if you've been vaccinated', but I think that's still quite a long way off for the working-age population.

 

[petee]

 

[petee]

...

 

[petee]

'scuse, I've been having alot of problems manipulating urban on my phone tonite ...

 

[frogwoman]

In new jersey, 0.21% of the population (over 1 in 500) have died of Covid.
18,747 dead out of a population of 8,882,190

 

[Yossarian]

A record 3,744 US deaths reported Wednesday - that's the second day in a row the US has reported a single-day toll higher than Japan has had in the entire pandemic.

 

[frogwoman]

NPR Cookie Consent and Choices

500 vaccines intentionally removed from refrigerator, causing them to be destroyed