Austria is now also heading towards another lockdown. New infections have doubled within a few days and numbers in ICU have gone up quickly as well. Detailed information will be given on Saturday, but a lockdown is almost certain with just a few exceptions. Even a curfew doesn’t seem impossible anymore.

https://orf.at/stories/3187195/

As an aside yesterday it wasn't clear in France if we still had the curfew on top of the lockdown. I went to my usual restaurant for a last hurrah and it closed at 9PM to be on the safe side.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-54745196

If you scroll down to 11:06, this is an area which is about to go into Tier 3 Restrictions.

Morons.

Are they trying for herd immunity.

Czech republic and eastern Europe is bad hit;

In media it is mostly talked about France and Spain but the epicenter in this second European wave seems to be eastern Europe. Czech republic suceded with early border restrictions in the first wave to avoid the whole things then they did party for end of Corona;

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53244688

Now they are worse then france and UK in the spring and will soon pass the worse days in Spain.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

101,000+ new cases today in the US.

Ouch

Victoria Australia (pop. 6.5 million) has reduced its rolling 7 day average new infection rate from 575 at the beginning of August to 2 today. It has carried out 3.1 million tests overall.

The state (Australia's worst impacted) has been under quite a strict lockdown since July, with restrictions now easing over the next week. The current cases are locally acquired only, as Vic has not been accepting international returnees.

My own state of New South Wales (8 nmillion pop) has a rolling 7 day average of locally aquired cases around 1 per day, with returness from overseas in compulsory hotel quarantine lifting this over 7. We have noted that, as the situation in much of the northern hemisphere deteriorates, quite logically he likelihood of returnees testing positive also increases.

New Zealand (pop. 5 million) has a rolling 7 day average of locally aquired cases of 0 per day.

Stay safe Northern Hemisphere!

Well, it seems the UK is about to go into a full lockdown starting next Wednesday and possibly lasting for a month.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-54756950

It's worth noting that this follows the pattern we've seen through the pandemic where government decisions are leaked ahead of being announced.

We have national testing of everyone taking place in Slovakia .. Whole family had the antigen test this morning and all clear.. Another round of teating next week. Curfew all of next week except between 1am and 5am. No idea what people are planning to do between those times.. If you go to shops or work you need to take your negative test result with you. Teating is 'voluntary' but companies will treat you as positive result unless you can prove otherwise.

We probably should bring back the term, Plague, along with all of its luggage: black humor, death, suffering, fatalism but in our more enlightened times no one need starve, medical care is being given to almost all, and it does not have to run its course - vaccines will provide at least most of a solution. Normal is gone, if we are lucky this will last only a couple years. But normal died in March.

I am the master of my fate,. I am the captain of my soul. Henley. Certainly not except in the Stoic sense. We occupy a small branch in the tangled tree of life, at the sufferance of senescence, death, bacteria, fungi, and viruses. Denial should have been stamped out by the end of April. No one should have the political authority to preach and demonstrate that we can and should live as though the virus was not here. But the US is filled with such.

scbriml wrote:

Well, it seems the UK is about to go into a full lockdown starting next Wednesday and possibly lasting for a month.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-54756950

It's worth noting that this follows the pattern we've seen through the pandemic where government decisions are leaked ahead of being announced.

Expect Piers Corbyn and David 'Lizard People' Icke to start marshaling their nutty followers to start demonstrating.. They government seems to leak things to try and gauge public and their own back benchers opinions before coming up with something more palatable.. Leak: The entire North will be nuked.. Reality: oh noes my hair is ruffled and I can't put a PowerPoint presentation together.. And oh yeah some sort of partial lockdown..

Okie wrote:

Thanks Doc, unfortunate about the placebo case but from an article I read one of the reasons for delays were that they were waiting for enough of the placebo recipients to test positive in order to have a valid test.

Okie

That's different. In the Pfizer/BNT trial they are waiting for 32 overall infections to occur. Oddly, this has not yet happened.

flyguy89 wrote:

scbriml wrote:

Well, it seems the UK is about to go into a full lockdown starting next Wednesday and possibly lasting for a month.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-54756950

It's worth noting that this follows the pattern we've seen through the pandemic where government decisions are leaked ahead of being announced.

It'll be longer than a month. Same for France. The one-month nonsense is just to quell the anxiety of the people but will surely be extended unless social unrest or mass civil disobedience undercut the potency of such measures.

Macron was honest about it and said the length was preliminary, but longer than last time (it was two weeks, then two more, etc.). Also after two weeks we shall see how it goes, and if some restrictions can be lifted. I'm pretty sure the conclusion will be that things haven't improved enough (or at all).

If the hospitals starts to fill up the cases will take weeks if not a month to get well enough to get out of the hospital. So until Christmas I would say we will get more and more restrictions.

It more and more looks like the second wave becomes worse in Europe then the first wave. Special eastern Europe.

olle wrote:

It more and more looks like the second wave becomes worse in Europe then the first wave. Special eastern Europe.

In Eastern Europe, maybe, as the first wave was somewhat subdued there.
In Western Europe were the first wave was quite deadly, it is, so far, not as bad.

Time will tell of course.

Aaron747 wrote:

Vladex wrote:

Is it ok to be covid 19 skeptic or is that for later when it doesn't count?

Can barely make sense of this. Exactly what are you skeptical of?

I am skeptical that this virus exists and is aggressive and can be passed to healthy people. On the other hand, fear and uncertainty over long term is sure enough to make a lot of people sick to the point that they just may become permanently sick and die.

vrbarreto wrote:

We have national testing of everyone taking place in Slovakia .. Whole family had the antigen test this morning and all clear.. Another round of teating next week. Curfew all of next week except between 1am and 5am. No idea what people are planning to do between those times.. If you go to shops or work you need to take your negative test result with you. Teating is 'voluntary' but companies will treat you as positive result unless you can prove otherwise.

I think Slovakia is on the correct track...

More countries should follow with mass testing.

Covid is reaching it's most deadly status so far., while cases accelerate in the US.

https://www.npr.org/sections/coronaviru ... paign=news

The U.S. has reached another grim coronavirus milestone, surpassing 100,000 new confirmed cases in a single day for the first time since the pandemic reached the country more than nine months ago.

The record 102,831 cases reported on Thursday by Johns Hopkins University tops the more than 99,321 cases set just days ago, on Oct. 30. The university reported 1,097 additional COVID-19 deaths for the same day.

https://www.livemint.com/news/world/dai ... 01871.html

Daily coronavirus deaths worldwide surged by a record 9,763, almost one year after the disease emerged. New infections also set fresh highs.

It seems like Mink farms has created a perfect environment for the virus to change and become immune against future vaccines

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... ovid-scare

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-54818615

There are fears that the lockdown isn't working in France, as it's less strict than last time.

I see that in the UK the PM is promising it won't last more than the announced end date, he's fooling himself...

Bad news in the US

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... ay-be-next

Current hospitalizations rose Thursday to the highest since Aug. 5, Covid Tracking Project data show. That’s about 11% below previous peaks in April and July, although the data didn’t capture all states until shortly before the July peak. Now, the hit to the health-care system is getting worse fast: The number of coronavirus patients is up 16% in the past week.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

casinterest wrote:

Bad news in the US

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... ay-be-next

Current hospitalizations rose Thursday to the highest since Aug. 5, Covid Tracking Project data show. That’s about 11% below previous peaks in April and July, although the data didn’t capture all states until shortly before the July peak. Now, the hit to the health-care system is getting worse fast: The number of coronavirus patients is up 16% in the past week.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

As you'd expect. deaths are also trending upwards. Given the increase in cases, over 2,000 deaths a day seems a "reasonable" projection by late November.

Kent350787 wrote:

casinterest wrote:

Bad news in the US

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... ay-be-next

Current hospitalizations rose Thursday to the highest since Aug. 5, Covid Tracking Project data show. That’s about 11% below previous peaks in April and July, although the data didn’t capture all states until shortly before the July peak. Now, the hit to the health-care system is getting worse fast: The number of coronavirus patients is up 16% in the past week.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

As you'd expect. deaths are also trending upwards. Given the increase in cases, over 2,000 deaths a day seems a "reasonable" projection by late November.

Last nights burst of new cases makes me think we are on the highway to 3000 by Dec 1. Hopefully now that the election is done, sane choices will be made to save people while we wait for the vaccine.

Now that Biden has won the Presidency, I say the US has it's covid problems under control by March or April.

It's looking bad for Europe and North America. In some countries their rates are worse already in early November than Argentina's at the peak of their wave just a few weeks ago. Some other countries are at or near it, and a few only significantly below.

The huge difference being that Argentina's rate is after an entire flu and winter season that started in April peaking in August/September, and now predictably rates are plunging even as the country is re-opening. Many northern countries already are at the peak level of Argentina when their flu season is only barely starting even as they are restricting.

dragon-wings wrote:

Now that Biden has won the Presidency, I say the US has it's covid problems under control by March or April.

Effective, science-based action will hopefully see Trump's corner finally come about under President Biden. Without a widespread and effective vaccine, it's difficult to see the US problems "under control" that early. Over 10,000 people dead since last weekend, and almost 3/4 of a million new infections.

Stay safe as possible northern hemisphere - Australia and New Zealand have had zero new cases outside policed quarantine today, and only a dozen or so in the last week. Texas, with a similar total population, has seen over 50,000 new cases in the last week.

This seems promising. The Pfizer/BioNTech trials shows that so far 90 percent of the vaccinating in the trial is protected again Covid-19 infection.

A vaccine against Covid-19 is in sight, with the announcement of the first interim results in large-scale trials showing the Pfizer/BioNTech candidate is 90% effective,
according to the manufacturers, whose analysis shows a much better performance than most experts had hoped for.

The high percentage of those protected makes the findings compelling. Regulators have said they would approve a vaccine that is just 50% effective – protecting
half those who get it. The company says there have been no serious side-effects.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... r-biontech

The USA's Thanksgiving holiday with its usual family gatherings is a major threat to hold down Covid-19 infections.It may be further made worse by Christmas here and in many other countries as many will take the chance to have family gatherings, thinking that 'one day together won't make a difference' although it will. We also have to fear growing numbers in the USA losing their housing as not paying rent, job losses short and long term continue as business revenues are flat or decline where can't sustain them.

As to hopes of the Biden administration finally causing a turning point to 'normal', I fear that the distributions of vaccines will cause many to back off prematurely restrictions in their daily lives.as think the 'most vulnerable' to death and illness will be vaccinated so 'safe enough'. Most business, churches (and other faith facilities), family gatherings will come back too soon out of financial and personal needs. It will be politically and practically impossible to hold back that.

ltbewr wrote:

The USA's Thanksgiving holiday with its usual family gatherings is a major threat to hold down Covid-19 infections.It may be further made worse by Christmas here and in many other countries as many will take the chance to have family gatherings, thinking that 'one day together won't make a difference' although it will. We also have to fear growing numbers in the USA losing their housing as not paying rent, job losses short and long term continue as business revenues are flat or decline where can't sustain them.

As to hopes of the Biden administration finally causing a turning point to 'normal', I fear that the distributions of vaccines will cause many to back off prematurely restrictions in their daily lives.as think the 'most vulnerable' to death and illness will be vaccinated so 'safe enough'. Most business, churches (and other faith facilities), family gatherings will come back too soon out of financial and personal needs. It will be politically and practically impossible to hold back that.

We have 70 days till Biden takes over.
We need McConnel and Pelosi to push for a stimulus while asking trump to strongly support mask wearing while we await the vaccines. There is no doubt this "return to normal" that has been getting further along for the last 2 months is running out of control.

It should be noted that the 7 day average new cases in the US jumped by over 31 % Between Nov 1 and Nov 8 . This is an acceleration. The 7 day average was approximately a 20% jump from Oct 25-Nov1

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

Looks like the vaccine Trump is touting is still probably a few months away from being ready. (although with the case rate acceleration, it may occur sooner)

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-sho ... -effective

The Pfizer vaccine trial is what's known as an event-driven study. It does not last for a specified period of time. Instead, the study will be considered complete when it has recorded a total of 164 cases of COVID-19 among all the volunteers.

As described in its publicly released protocol, the company had planned to conduct four interim analyses, when a proscribed number of COVID-19 cases had occurred. The results released today are from the second one, the company having agreed with the FDA to forego the first analysis.

CNN did an interview with the Pfizer CEO. If this vaccine continues to show promise, they should have 50 million doses ready this year, and 1.3 billion through 2021. It is a 2 dose vaccine.
Most likely though we still need to manage our way through this virus through the Spring as we are still not going to have enough production to get us all immune, so don't throw away those masks yet
Hopefully they will update the below with the video call.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/09/health/p ... index.html

The news about the vaccine is very promising, 90% is well above what scientists have been speculating. I remember seeing an interview with Dr. Fauci in which he said he thought at least one of the vaccines in stage three trials might reach 70%. As mentioned it might not be until the Summer until it is offered to the general public. I would think those in the highest risk groups such as cancer patients, nursing home residents, healthcare workers and possibly members of the military might get it first.

I believe travel will come roaring back once people can provide proof of vaccination prior to international travel.

Reopen everything. Immediately.

Washington Post today:

A surge of cases revealed a snowball effect: It took only 10 days for the country to move from 9 million cases to what is expected to be its 10 millionth case Monday. By comparison, it took more than three months for the country to go from no cases to 1 million in late April.

And I can hear the booboisie crying for four more years. We are in a crisis. Time to act, and that action based on respected medical persons.

frmrCapCadet wrote:

Washington Post today:

A surge of cases revealed a snowball effect: It took only 10 days for the country to move from 9 million cases to what is expected to be its 10 millionth case Monday. By comparison, it took more than three months for the country to go from no cases to 1 million in late April.

And I can hear the booboisie crying for four more years. We are in a crisis. Time to act, and that action based on respected medical persons.

That’s a very unfair comparison. Obviously the first three months of the pandemic are going to be the slowest spread—the pandemic is still ramping up.

Not to mention, adding one million cases today is nowhere near as bad as it was back in March.

The "Liberal" state of Utah has declared a state of emergency

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/utah-gov- ... d=74105758

Utah now has more than 130,000 positive cases, and a state record 410 people are currently hospitalized with the virus, the data shows. A total of 658 people in the state have died from the contagion, including nine over the weekend.

Herbert said individuals age 15 to 24 "have not been careful in casual social gatherings and that the highest rates of spread are now occurring among this age group." He said testing will be expanded to include all university students, high school students who participate in extracurricular activities, high school teachers and people in workplaces who are 35 or younger.

CBS program '60 Minutes' had a nice segment on distribution of the virus vaccine. The US Army General heading the program and how they were going to get it out, even near real time tracking of how many doses administered, etc.

Look it up if you can. Very, very interesting.

Ignore the lead story on the election.

Interesting news about the Pfizer vaccine. CSL (formerly Commonwealth Serum Laboratories) has already bet on the Oxford vaccine passing phase 3 and started production in Australia.

Speaking of which, Australia has recorded no new locally acquired cases for three days. Victoria, which has recorded 80% of Australia's 27,500 cases and 90% of deaths has recorded zero new cases for 10 days. - admittedly on the back of strict 3 month lockdown.

The US has officially crossed back into the +1000 person per day death count on the 7 day average.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/


Things will get worse this week.

Kent350787 wrote:

Interesting news about the Pfizer vaccine. CSL (formerly Commonwealth Serum Laboratories) has already bet on the Oxford vaccine passing phase 3 and started production in Australia.

Speaking of which, Australia has recorded no new locally acquired cases for three days. Victoria, which has recorded 80% of Australia's 27,500 cases and 90% of deaths has recorded zero new cases for 10 days. - admittedly on the back of strict 3 month lockdown.

I am sure they will all get there. The current rise in cases is what propelled the Pfizer study forward. They needed infections, and thanks to the resent surge they got them.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-sho ... 5001908007

The Pfizer vaccine trial is what's known as an event-driven study. It does not last for a specified period of time. Instead, the study will be considered complete when it has recorded a total of 164 cases of COVID-19 among all the volunteers.

They reported being at a level of 94 evaluable cases, so need 70 more to complete. How long to get to 94? At current infection rates how much longer to get to 164? Will authorities authorise use generally before the 164 number is reached? To me it would be justified by initial results in an emergency situation but would the authorities permit general use until the trial is completed and results published and reviewed. In January/February perhaps?

What are the logistical problems in distributing a vaccine that needs to be stored at -70C? I can see this being impractical in large parts of the world unless such a capability is widespread.

The big issue is Pfizer's vaccine (and also Moderna's vaccine) requires -80 Celsius storage and shipping, because it's extremely perishable. That's a big logistical problem, and for places without the infrastructure to store and ship ultra-cold, such as many areas of South America, Africa, and Asia, this is a total non-starter.

And there's also shortages of the stuff that's needed to ship at -80 Celsius; there's a looming shortage of large, commercial quantities of dry ice, you'll need specialized cold-resistant vials and there's a shortage on that as well, especially for the quantities needed to ship a pandemic vaccine. Logistics hubs, warehouses, and even medical clinics will need to have ultra-cold freezers installed to hold the vaccine until it can be distributed.

We'll need the other vaccine candidates to show a similar level of success before we can truly say we have a good vaccine for everyone; it can't be a vaccine that requires such specialized storage and shipping, such as AstraZeneca's vaccine.

ThePointblank wrote:

it can't be a vaccine that requires such specialized storage and shipping, such as AstraZeneca's vaccine.

Not sure whether you mean AstraZeneca's vaccine does require specialised storage or does not require specialised storage.

Found an answer

Several COVID-19 vaccines under testing do not require deep-freezing. Good examples are the experimental vaccines of Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca (with the University of Oxford) and Sanofi-GSK, expected to be kept and shipped in an unfrozen state.

https://www.euractiv.com/section/corona ... ply-chain/

art wrote:

ThePointblank wrote:

it can't be a vaccine that requires such specialized storage and shipping, such as AstraZeneca's vaccine.

Not sure whether you mean AstraZeneca's vaccine does require specialised storage or does not require specialised storage.

Sorry, wasn't clear. AstraZeneca's vaccine does not require ultra-cold storage, my understanding is that it can safely be shipped on ice packs.

Another big problem may be that one needs to keep a chain of custody for the material to remain GMP (Good Manufacturing Practices), and hence legal to dose humans with. This means shipping every dry ice package of vaccine with a temperature recorder, to show that it remained at the proper temperatures the entire shipping time. Apparently, Pfizer has worked out a solution, as they plan on shipping their vaccine in a GPS tracked box, with a built in temperature recorder.

Well, congratulations to Pfiser on coming up with what looks to be a very effective vaccine. Roll on other vaccines that do not require specialised low temperature storage. I note that AstraZeneca was supposed to have 30 million doses by the end of September but did not reach that target. There is now talk of Britain getting 4 million doses by the end of the year. I hope that is a change of plan rather than big problems with production.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/05/astraze ... liver.html

ThePointblank wrote:

The big issue is Pfizer's vaccine (and also Moderna's vaccine) requires -80 Celsius storage and shipping, because it's extremely perishable. That's a big logistical problem, and for places without the infrastructure to store and ship ultra-cold, such as many areas of South America, Africa, and Asia, this is a total non-starter.

And there's also shortages of the stuff that's needed to ship at -80 Celsius; there's a looming shortage of large, commercial quantities of dry ice, you'll need specialized cold-resistant vials and there's a shortage on that as well, especially for the quantities needed to ship a pandemic vaccine. Logistics hubs, warehouses, and even medical clinics will need to have ultra-cold freezers installed to hold the vaccine until it can be distributed.

We'll need the other vaccine candidates to show a similar level of success before we can truly say we have a good vaccine for everyone; it can't be a vaccine that requires such specialized storage and shipping, such as AstraZeneca's vaccine.

Probably A.Net's favourite you-tuber. Wendover Productions goes into depth on the logistics and distribution of Covid19 vaccines

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byW1GExQB84

ArcticSEA wrote:

Reopen everything. Immediately.

Sure, lets see if we can get the US to 10,000+ deaths per day before the vaccine is available.

The vaccine is TWO shots that have to be take THREE WEEKS apart, and immunity does not start immediately after the second shot.

Say a month between the first shot and effectiveness that a person can catch COVID-19.

If they start distributing the vaccine today, most people in the US will not have vaccine immunity until after New Years.

Anyone have enough of a nattering about physical chemistry to explain why/how a vaccine needs -80 degrees C to be preserved? And how long it lasts after warm enough to inject etc?