Muh Muh Muh My Corona (virus)

This is great news. Still a long way to go.
US coronavirus: US passes 1 million people vaccinated for Covid-19 - CNN
So a little ciphering tells me that with about 20 million cases total already, 2M new cases a week and likely 2M vaccinations a week soon, we'll be at 70% inoculation in exactly a year. Probably much sooner, as the vaccination rate picks up pace.

 

Man - they're running out the sequels so quickly after the first one these days.....

Why is South Africa's new variant so scary? UK bans travel to SA | Daily Mail Online

 

don’t forget true infections are higher than detected cases. Not everyone who gets infected goes in and gets a positive test, in fact most don’t.

covid19-projections.com does a good job of analyzing it

 

Interesting site. According to estimates of the currently infected, Tennessee has more currently infected people (373,000) than New York (370,000). Remember when the SECessionist states had to be protected from having to live by New York City Values?

 

Do we know how long previous infections protect you for? It may not be as simple as vaccinations plus previous infections to end this. Plus we really need to slow down infections or 300,000 is going to seem as quaint as 100,000 does now.

 

Short answer: Long enough

Long answer: The immune system is complicated, but so far we have every reason to believe everything with this virus is falling into more or less normal parameters. After a year or two, your body will likely stand down the active defenses that immediately attack the virus upon entering the body, but it still remembers how to make those defenses (unlike the first time you got infected, where it had to figure that out by trial and error) and it will likely remember for decades. So subsequent infections are likely to be much less serious, because your immune system has a head start. It's theorized that the coronaviruses that already circulate as a subset of what we call the common cold all got their start this way. This one could join them and become endemic, and most people will get it as children and never think anything of it beyond it just being yet another childhood cold. It's very plausible that we never fully eradicate SARS-COV-2, but there's no reason to think it would ever be a global crisis like this again. It'll just join the big list of bugs that we don't see often enough to give their own name so we just file them all under "cold."

It is possible that it does evolve to at least partially evade the vaccine and our existing immune responses once everyone is vaccinated, but the evolution will likely still be partially resisted by the immune response and we could quickly adapt the vaccine technology (especially mRNA, that shit's an unbelievable breakthrough and people don't appreciate how much this changes the game for fighting viruses). It would be a nuisance like a bad flu season, not a global pandemic.

We are definitely going to blow past 300k deaths. 400k is pretty much inevitable at this point. This wave right now is huge and a *ton* of deaths have already been locked in, even if the virus stopped infecting new people tomorrow.

But this last, awful wave is also definitely the last one. Once the vaccinations kick in, the deaths will start to drop dramatically. Vaccinating the 2% of Americans who are 85 or older will reduce deaths by 33%. So now instead of 3000 per day, it's 2000 per day. Then vaccinating the 14% that are 65-84 will reduce it b another 33% from where it is now, so now it's under 1000, even if we have the same level of infections. At that point, you've vaccinated less than 20% of the population but it's already become less deadly than the flu (for real now, not just in fascist imaginations). And the vaccinations will keep marching on from there.

And infections do appear to be peaking and then dropping. The 7-day rolling average on worldometers for new US cases daily peaked on Dec. 17 and has been dropping slowly for the last week or so. Between people getting scared and population immunity building up, it can't go up forever.

 

Revealed: Guardian/KHN find nearly 3,000 US health workers died of Covid

 

I know where I work, the daily notifications of co-worker infections (yes, it has been daily and the notification usually includes the word "employees" - plural) - make me guess we have had between 30-50 confirmed cases in December alone. It's pretty shocking considering the stringent measures in place. I'm guessing most of the infections happen off-site in homes.

 

As Rick points out, plenty of cause for optimism.

But we're not out of the woods yet. And lots of local restrictions are behind the curve, rather than in front of it.

Hunker down.

Tennessee Hospitals Are Disturbingly Close To Their Breaking Point

Tennessee declared 'ground zero' for a US surge in COVID-19 cases, after it recorded the nation's highest rate of new coronavirus infections

New Stay-At-Home Order Lasts a Month After Christmas, Restricts Retail, Restaurants, Gyms

 

My brother is a retired minister. He and his wife, who does volunteer work in their community, quarantined for 14 days recently because she came in contact with someone who tested positive. They got through that fine. He has become the interim minister at a church near their town while that church searches for a permanent pastor. I talked to him yesterday as he was leaving his office to deliver poinsettias to a handful of church members. A few hours later I read on FB that he and his wife are in quarantine again. He tells me he took a plant to one couple and about 10 minutes into their conversation, they happened to mention that they tested positive for COVID a week ago. Now he is back in quarantine and doing the church's Christmas Eve service via Zoom from his living room.

 

A senior Trump administration source says that's when you inject the bleach.

 

At least one could still see the Queen on Christmas Day.

Queen Elizabeth Just Broke a 33-Year Royal Christmas Tradition