COVID 19 GLOBAL

[roomark]

2 hours ago, Painter said:

@roobob

I am trying (long, boring story) to fly two thai nationals domestically to BKK. One is vaccinated, one isn't.  I've had a conversation online with an air Asia advisor. The unvaccinated person is unable to fly with Air Asia.

You might like to check you are able to fly. 

Seems to be backed up by this article

https://newsroom.airasia.com/news/irasia-thailand-returning-with-11-domestic-routes-from-this-3-september

 

I can only go off my Mrs ( we all flew Air Asia upcountry and she also followed me with my lads down to Phuket later in time too) they asked her for proof of vax (and us ) she had the British NHS one so all was fine.

I'm sure back in December and Jan  you could show a neg lateral flow test too though if not.

[roobob]

2 hours ago, Painter said:

@roobob

I am trying (long, boring story) to fly two thai nationals domestically to BKK. One is vaccinated, one isn't.  I've had a conversation online with an air Asia advisor. The unvaccinated person is unable to fly with Air Asia.

You might like to check you are able to fly. 

Seems to be backed up by this article

https://newsroom.airasia.com/news/irasia-thailand-returning-with-11-domestic-routes-from-this-3-september

 

I see your article is from August last year but if you read it it also states that if you are unvaccinated you can fly with them.

As said from my post...I have indeed checked with Air Asia.....I did so before I booked the ticket...and was told that you can fly unvaccinated.

As said...I fly tomorrow.....I will let you know how I go.

cheers

[lazarus]

hmmm...

Travel Advisory: AirAsia will only accept fully-vaccinated guests on its flights

https://newsroom.airasia.com/news/airasia-will-only-accept-fully-vaccinated-guests-on-its-flights

. . .

https://support.airasia.com/s/article/Travel-Requirements-Thailand?language=en_GB

[KhunDon]

The in-laws both had double jabs, wanted to book AirAsia yesterday, but didn’t because our niece (no jab) was traveling with them and wasn’t allowed to travel without having a jab. 

 

[roobob]

Just checked in at the Airport. Very easy. Was not asked if vaccinated or not.....nothing.

cheers

[roobob]

[roobob]

Next stop Bangkok.

cheers

 

 

 

[roomark]

Oooft

That's Bob having a few digs for the next few weeks 🤣🤣🤣🤣

Safe journey 

Cheers lol

[roomark]

9 hours ago, KhunDon said:

The in-laws both had double jabs, wanted to book AirAsia yesterday, but didn’t because our niece (no jab) was traveling with them and wasn’t allowed to travel without having a jab. 

 

My kids travelled with me (both under 18 ) don't know how old your niece is mate , but they deffo can under 18 

[lazarus]

56 minutes ago, roomark said:

Oooft

That's Bob having a few digs for the next few weeks 🤣🤣🤣🤣

Safe journey 

Cheers lol

TiT

[andyajn]

Endemic not Pandemic, lets get on with life.

[lazarus]

Not quite yet...

This region has some of the highest vaccination rates in the world.

. . ,.

‘Epidemic among the unvaccinated’ in a California COVID ICU

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Epidemic-among-the-unvaccinated-in-a-16820570.php

... On the third floor of Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital, these patients are among more than 2,500 people gravely ill with COVID-19 in California’s intensive-care beds. It’s Thursday morning, and 46 patients are fighting the coronavirus, some battling hard to stay off the third floor.

In the era of vaccinations and antiviral treatments — and even the coronavirus’ famously less severe variant, omicron — people aren’t supposed to get so sick from COVID.

But they do. The heartbreaking evidence is that such patients are on the rise, with the average number of Californians in COVID intensive care more than doubling between December and January, from 940 to 2,084.

“This is completely preventable,” said Dr. Thomas Dailey, a pulmonary and critical care specialist with Kaiser Permanente Santa Clara who sees it all up close. “This is an epidemic among the unvaccinated.” ...

[andyajn]

The last line you quote says it all. "This is an epidemic among the unvaccinated" I know there will be some that cannot be vaccinated for whatever reason, but the rest have nobody to blame but themselves. 

[lazarus]

2 hours ago, andyajn said:

The last line you quote says it all. "This is an epidemic among the unvaccinated" I know there will be some that cannot be vaccinated for whatever reason, but the rest have nobody to blame but themselves. 

Yeah...the "cannot be vaccinated" is very low percentage of the global unvaccinated population. Anti-vaxxers with no legitimate excuse need to step up to the plate for the good of society. Enough pussy footing around.

I also want to see this become an endemic disease. This will not happen until 80% of the global population is vaccinated and boosted (as periodically needed). It'll just be an inconvenience at that point.

There's enough data about Covid vaccine efficacy to support this.

. . .

COVID-19 vaccine efficacy summary

https://www.healthdata.org/covid/covid-19-vaccine-efficacy-summary

 

Safety and Efficacy of the BNT162b2 mRNA Covid-19 Vaccine through 6 Months

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2110345

. . .

Coronavirus (COVID-19) Vaccinations

https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations

• 61.1% of the world population has received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.
• 10.1 billion doses have been administered globally, and 22.77 million are now administered each day.
• Only 10% of people in low-income countries have received at least one dose.

[Kathmandu]

Slowly getting there up North here in Sonoma County.

https://sonomacounty.ca.gov/CAO/Press-Releases/Eighty-percent-of-eligible-Sonoma-County-residents-are-now-at-least-partially-vaccinated-against-COVID-19/#:~:text=Urmila Shende%2C the county's vaccine,residents age 12 and older.

According to Dr. Sundari Mase, the county’s health officer, and Dr. Urmila Shende, the county’s vaccine chief, 347,386 county residents have now been at least partially vaccinated against COVID-19, which equals 80 percent of the county’s 434,000 residents age 12 and older. Seventy-two percent have been fully vaccinated while 8 percent have received just one dose of the two-dose Pfizer or Moderna series. 

[lazarus]

3 hours ago, Kathmandu said:

Slowly getting there up North here in Sonoma County.

https://sonomacounty.ca.gov/CAO/Press-Releases/Eighty-percent-of-eligible-Sonoma-County-residents-are-now-at-least-partially-vaccinated-against-COVID-19/#:~:text=Urmila Shende%2C the county's vaccine,residents age 12 and older.

According to Dr. Sundari Mase, the county’s health officer, and Dr. Urmila Shende, the county’s vaccine chief, 347,386 county residents have now been at least partially vaccinated against COVID-19, which equals 80 percent of the county’s 434,000 residents age 12 and older. Seventy-two percent have been fully vaccinated while 8 percent have received just one dose of the two-dose Pfizer or Moderna series. 

"...getting there..."

yessir..!!!

"...UCSF's Dr. Bob Wachter is predicting that we will reach the stage of "regionally endemic" COVID in about four weeks, so by the end of February.

As he tells ABC 7, "I'm pretty comfortable predicting that that will be where we go. That puts us at least in a regional endemic state meaning that is not dominating people's lives. People can begin letting down their guard and doing some things they haven't done before."

Wachter this week noted that SF had "turned a corner" with Omicron, and that hospitalizations were already down 10% as of Sunday. He added that case-positivity among the asymptomatic arriving in hospitals was around 16% 10 days ago, but by the end of last week it was down to about 4%..."

https://sfist.com/2022/02/01/masks-come-off-at-sf-gyms-again-as-covid-cases-decline/

[forcebwithu]

Not surprised to read this study's conclusion. Once the China virus was let loose on the world there really wasn't going to be an effective way to stop it, short of a global vaccination program.

Lockdowns had little or no impact on COVID-19 deaths, new study shows

Lockdowns in the U.S. and Europe had little or no impact in reducing deaths from COVID-19, according to a new analysis by researchers at Johns Hopkins University.

The lockdowns during the early phase of the pandemic in 2020 reduced COVID-19 mortality by about 0.2%, said the broad review of multiple scientific studies.

“We find no evidence that lockdowns, school closures, border closures, and limiting gatherings have had a noticeable effect on COVID-19 mortality,” the researchers wrote.

But the research paper said lockdowns did have “devastating effects” on the economy and contributed to numerous social ills.

“They have contributed to reducing economic activity, raising unemployment, reducing schooling, causing political unrest, contributing to domestic violence, and undermining liberal democracy,” the report said.

“Such a standard benefit-cost calculation leads to a strong conclusion: lockdowns should be rejected out of hand as a pandemic policy instrument,” the paper concluded.
...

[fforest]

10 hours ago, forcebwithu said:

Not surprised to read this study's conclusion. Once the China virus was let loose on the world there really wasn't going to be an effective way to stop it, short of a global vaccination program.

Lockdowns had little or no impact on COVID-19 deaths, new study shows

Lockdowns in the U.S. and Europe had little or no impact in reducing deaths from COVID-19, according to a new analysis by researchers at Johns Hopkins University.

The lockdowns during the early phase of the pandemic in 2020 reduced COVID-19 mortality by about 0.2%, said the broad review of multiple scientific studies.

“We find no evidence that lockdowns, school closures, border closures, and limiting gatherings have had a noticeable effect on COVID-19 mortality,” the researchers wrote.

But the research paper said lockdowns did have “devastating effects” on the economy and contributed to numerous social ills.

“They have contributed to reducing economic activity, raising unemployment, reducing schooling, causing political unrest, contributing to domestic violence, and undermining liberal democracy,” the report said.

“Such a standard benefit-cost calculation leads to a strong conclusion: lockdowns should be rejected out of hand as a pandemic policy instrument,” the paper concluded.
...

“The lockdowns have contributed to reducing economic activity, raising unemployment, reducing schooling, causing political unrest, contributing to domestic violence, and undermining liberal democracy,” the report said.

 

Well there you go......The lockdowns I would say are/were very very successful in accomplishing all the elites goals....

[Mr. Smooth]

23 hours ago, forcebwithu said:

Not surprised to read this study's conclusion. Once the China virus was let loose on the world there really wasn't going to be an effective way to stop it, short of a global vaccination program.

Lockdowns had little or no impact on COVID-19 deaths, new study shows

Lockdowns in the U.S. and Europe had little or no impact in reducing deaths from COVID-19, according to a new analysis by researchers at Johns Hopkins University.

The lockdowns during the early phase of the pandemic in 2020 reduced COVID-19 mortality by about 0.2%, said the broad review of multiple scientific studies.

“We find no evidence that lockdowns, school closures, border closures, and limiting gatherings have had a noticeable effect on COVID-19 mortality,” the researchers wrote.

But the research paper said lockdowns did have “devastating effects” on the economy and contributed to numerous social ills.

“They have contributed to reducing economic activity, raising unemployment, reducing schooling, causing political unrest, contributing to domestic violence, and undermining liberal democracy,” the report said.

“Such a standard benefit-cost calculation leads to a strong conclusion: lockdowns should be rejected out of hand as a pandemic policy instrument,” the paper concluded.
...

There has been so much lying going on by governments to their people for two years, it just turns my gut. We have now had conclusive evidence from the CDC that those cloth masks didn't work to stop the infection, something I had wrote months ago! 

There has been no clear evidence that shows children need to be vaxxed. None! The lockdowns were wrong. The deaths in the USA, when digging into the truth within the numbers is that out of the first 800,000 Americans who died, ostensibly due to Covid, 600,000 were over the age of 65 and had an average of 4 comorbidities. Many of us wondered about the true nature of these deaths, asking why wasn't vital info reported about the numbers, not merely the ethnicity and sex and age, but were they obese, had heart disease or some other comorbidities? Were they admitted into the hospital for something else entirely and once in the hospital were tested and came up positive, therefore their death being due to Covid, and not WITH Covid, a more factual statement.

And yet the very willing media was only too caught up in the hysteria of the numbers themselves and reluctant to look behind the numbers for the real story.

Americans have been force fed the continuous clap trap from Dr. Fauci, a guy who should have been let go months ago and is clearly addicted to his news media created celebrity, who has been caught dead to rights on his flip flopping and goal post moving, regarding the virus. If he had his way, 300 million people would still be in lock down and not permitted to go out to any social function, because the venues would all be closed. Not to mention his lying about the gain of function research that was proven in a congressional hearing. That right there should have got him canned at the very least!

In addition there should not be ONE SINGLE CHILD in school being made to wear a mask at any time. What has been done in the name of safety to American school children is nothing less than shameful and abuse. Their educational development has been permanently handicapped and they will never get these 2 years back. An abomination of the first order.

China should be having tariffs placed on every product it exports to every country on the planet. It should be severely punished with economic sanctions by the "community of nations", to use a diplomatic phrase, to teach it a lesson. Of course, that will never happen as too many special interests have financial investments in China.

The citizens of the world all should have declared February 1st as the day Covid ceased to be an impediment to the economic, educational, and leisure activities of their lives.

Enough is enough. The people have spoken.

[lazarus]

[fforest]

6 hours ago, lazarus said:

What you dont get is all that schooling is a massive investment, that cant be put at risk.....So the highly educated are some of the most unthinking people around....

Joe 6 pack may not have a education but many times has common sense...

[lazarus]

21 minutes ago, fforest said:

Joe 6 pack may not have a education but many times has common sense...

Science has nothing to do with "common sense."

Unless "Joe" is a scientist who drinks beer.

[Nightcrawler]

2 hours ago, fforest said:

 

Joe 6 pack may not have a education but many times has common sense...

How much common sense is left after drinking his 6 pack? 

The phrase "common sense" is rather subjective

Most people though have the common sense to try  and avoid danger, and maintain self preservation, whatever and how that may be. Whether it's keeping away from people who are infected with a potentially life threatening virus, avoiding walking late at night in area known for crime and murder, or keeping your credit and bank details away from strangers, looking both ways when crossing the road or not going for an evening stroll during a hurricane............... The list would be pages long. 

When the Covid pandemic hit, it soon became very obvious that it was serious, highly contagious and life threatening for some cases. To have used "common sense" logic would have been disasterous,especially before a vaccine was available as know one had previously experienced a pandemic of this nature during their lifetime. There was little else to do by any responsible government apart from alerting their populations and using the only weapons available at the time against the virus to slow down the spread. Those measures included lockdowns in some cases, mandatory masks/PPE and social distancing measures. 

When the vaccines arrived (using Medical science) , a very large majority used their "common sense" and got vaccinated. 

No one could have 100% predicted what further strains would be like until they were detected. But scientists wee quickly able to analyse them in terms of mutation, infection capability and potency. 

Millions of lives have been saved. 

Left to Mr 6 pack we could have been back into 1918 when over 50 million people died of Spanish Flu, then blame it all on the USA where it started. 

As hopefully the C19 virus mutations are becoming milder like Omicron, we relax a bit and the blame culture starts to kick in. They should have done this, they should have done that, it was all a conspiracy, it was the Chinese etc

The offender is the Virus. You cannot reason or have dialogue with it. What we can do is use SCIENCE to both understand how it works, how combat it and even eradicate it in the future, as many other diseases and viruses have been almost eradicated during the last 100 years. 

Just as, the survival of Cancer patients has massively increased due to medical science and research programmes. Something that Joe 6 pack and his common sense would never have achieved. 

Science has nothing to do with common sense. Without it, we still be living in the 12th Century. Sadly a few still are 

 

[lazarus]

For those who enjoy reading ...

The Coronavirus Will Surprise Us Again
The variant after Omicron could look very different from any yet.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2022/01/coronavirus-variant-after-omicro/621404/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=atlantic-daily-newsletter&utm_content=20220202&utm_term=The Atlantic Daily

...“With Omicron, I think we got lucky,” says Sergei Pond, an evolutionary biologist at Temple University. The set of mutations that makes the variant so good at infecting even vaccinated people just happens to also make it a little less inherently virulent. There’s no reason this will always be the case. The coronavirus’s virulence is a by-product of two other factors under more direct evolutionary pressure: how inherently transmissible it is and how good it is at evading previous immunity. How deadly it is doesn’t matter so much, because the coronavirus is usually transmitted early on in an infection, long before it ever kills its host...

... There are limits to how inherently transmissible the virus can get. Measles, the most transmissible known virus, has an R0 of 12 to 18, compared with Delta’s R0 of 5. Omicron’s R0 is still unclear, because a lot of its advantage over Delta seems to come from evading existing antibodies rather than inherent transmissibility. As the coronavirus has fewer and fewer nonimmune people to infect, though, immune evasion will become a more and more important constraint on its evolution. And here, the virus will never run out of new strategies, because what is optimal is always shifting. This Omicron wave, for example, is generating a lot of Omicron immunity as it moves through the population, which has in effect made Omicron less fit than when it emerged. “The next variant is more likely to be not Omicron, or something as antigenically distinct from Omicron as possible,” says Aris Katzourakis, a virologist at the University of Oxford. But exactly what that looks like? Perhaps we know enough now to know we shouldn’t try to predict that.

. . .

Endemicity Is Meaningless
The coronavirus will be with us forever. But we still have no idea what happens next.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2022/02/endemicity-means-nothing/621423/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=atlantic-daily-newsletter&utm_content=20220202&utm_term=The Atlantic Daily

...Endemicity promises exactly none of this. Really, the term to which we’ve pinned our post-pandemic hopes has so many definitions that it means almost nothing at all. What lies ahead is, still, a big uncertain mess, which the word endemic does far more to obscure than to clarify. “This distinction between pandemic and endemic has been put forward as the checkered flag,” a clear line where restrictions disappear overnight, COVID-related anxieties are put to rest, and we are “done” with this crisis, Yonatan Grad, an infectious-disease expert at Harvard, told us. That’s not the case. And there are zero guarantees on how or when we’ll reach endemicity, or whether we’ll reach it at all.

[lazarus]

On 2/1/2022 at 5:42 PM, forcebwithu said:

Not surprised to read this study's conclusion. Once the China virus was let loose on the world there really wasn't going to be an effective way to stop it, short of a global vaccination program.

Lockdowns had little or no impact on COVID-19 deaths, new study shows

Lockdowns in the U.S. and Europe had little or no impact in reducing deaths from COVID-19, according to a new analysis by researchers at Johns Hopkins University.

The lockdowns during the early phase of the pandemic in 2020 reduced COVID-19 mortality by about 0.2%, said the broad review of multiple scientific studies.

“We find no evidence that lockdowns, school closures, border closures, and limiting gatherings have had a noticeable effect on COVID-19 mortality,” the researchers wrote.

But the research paper said lockdowns did have “devastating effects” on the economy and contributed to numerous social ills.

“They have contributed to reducing economic activity, raising unemployment, reducing schooling, causing political unrest, contributing to domestic violence, and undermining liberal democracy,” the report said.

“Such a standard benefit-cost calculation leads to a strong conclusion: lockdowns should be rejected out of hand as a pandemic policy instrument,” the paper concluded.
...

I looked at that John Hopkins study. It's a literature meta-analysis review from three economists and has yet to be peer reviewed. Lots of statistics. I suggest that anyone on this forum who has a graduate level knowledge of statistics to please read it and comment:

https://sites.krieger.jhu.edu/iae/files/2022/01/A-Literature-Review-and-Meta-Analysis-of-the-Effects-of-Lockdowns-on-COVID-19-Mortality.pdf

Certain elements of the media have jumped all over this paper as it affirms frustration with the Covid epidemic response.

There definitely will be more to come from both camps.

. . .

If anyone wants to look at the academic response thus far to the paper:

Expert reaction to a preprint looking at the impact of lockdowns, as posted on the John Hopkins Krieger School of Arts and Sciences website

https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-a-preprint-looking-at-the-impact-of-lockdowns-as-posted-on-the-john-hopkins-krieger-school-of-arts-and-sciences-website/

Dr Seth Flaxman, Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford, said:

“It’s as if we wanted to know whether smoking causes cancer and so we asked a bunch of new smokers: did you have cancer the day before you started smoking? And what about the day after? If we did this, obviously we’d incorrectly conclude smoking is unrelated to cancer, but we’d be ignoring basic science. The science of diseases and their causes is complex, and it has a lot of surprises for us, but there are appropriate methods to study it, and inappropriate methods. This study intentionally excludes all studies rooted in epidemiology–the science of disease.”

.................................................................................................................

What is a meta-analysis literature review?

Meta-analysis is the use of statistical methods to summarize the results of independent studies. By combining information from all relevant studies, meta-analysis can provide more precise estimates of the effects of health care than those derived from the individual studies included within a review

https://guides.lib.odu.edu/c.php?g=966167&p=7021863

Edited February 3, 2022 by lazarus