Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

Everything is totally normal and fine!!!

Second rate reporter says what?

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

Everyone is in a bubble, but some bubbles model reality far better than others!

The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

Bark louder, little dog.

FFS people, this was a good thing. take the win.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

Let there be snark.

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

Republicans would impeach Biden if he bit into a whole Kit Kat rather than breaking the sections apart.

The choice is between normal and crazy.

If marriage is the equivalent of selling yourself into slavery, women with self respect should reject the offer.

You are here: Home / Healthcare / COVID-19 / COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: Sunday / Monday, April 18-19

COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: Sunday / Monday, April 18-19

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… India’s second wave was fuelled by people letting their guard down, attending weddings and social gatherings, and by mixed messaging from the government, allowing political rallies and religious gatherings. With infections declining, fewer people were taking the jabs, slowing down the vaccination drive, which had aimed to inoculate 250 million people by the end of July. In mid-February, Bhramar Mukherjee, a biostatistician at the University of Michigan, tweeted that India needed to “accelerate the vaccination drive while the case counts are low”. Nobody quite took notice.

“There was a feeling of triumphalism,” said P Srinath Reddy, the president of the Public Health Foundation of India. “Some felt we had achieved herd immunity. Everyone wanted to get back to work. This narrative fell on many receptive ears, and the few voices of caution were not heeded to,” he said…

What are the lessons of this public health crisis? For one, India should learn not to declare victory over the virus prematurely, and it should put a lid on triumphalism. People should also learn to adapt to short, local lockdowns in the event of the inevitable future spikes of infection. Most epidemiologists predict more waves, given that India is evidently still far away from reaching herd immunity and its vaccination rate remains slow.

“We cant freeze human life,” Professor Reddy said. “If we can’t physically distance in the crowded cities, we can at least make sure everyone wears a proper mask. And wear it properly. That’s not a big ask.”

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Their argument makes me slightly nervous, but… the libertarians at the Atlantic have found a reason to embrace vaccination:

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Reader Interactions

24Comments

  1. 1.

    NeenerNeener

    Monroe County, NY stats:

    217 new cases

    3929 active cases currently

    3.2% test positivity now.

    Deaths at 1223

    45.3% have had at least 1 vaccination

    32% totally vaccinated

  2. 2.

    Tony Jay

    After yesterday’s AstraZeneca jab I’ve got a bit of a sore upper arm, but no grinding ache. Feel generally just a bit languid and meh. I may even get in the garden and continue the War on Overhanging Branches.

    OTOH that article about the spread of Covid around India thanks to shitty Government messaging and general delusion about where we are with the pandemic could have been filed about Britain. In fact, with Flobalob sooooo eager to ‘Get Back to Normal Pt 3’ and his refusal to upset his fellow autocrat Modi by putting India on the restricted Red List, it will be Britain around mid to late summer.

    And I’ll bet you anything you like that the British News Media unite to memory-hole all the warnings, just like they did during the first three Lockdowns.

    After all, when a Government is in perpetual campaign mode, any genuine journalism is partisan and loudly tut-tutted by the handful of people who own our Press.

  3. 3.

    Mary G

    Only 79 news cases in OC today. We appear to have dodged an Easter/spring break spike. CA 14-day stats: cases down 5%, deaths down 30%. 41.8% have received at least one vaccination shot, 25.5% fully vaccinated.

  4. 4.

    YY_Sima Qian

    On 4/18 China reported 0 new domestic confirmed & 0 new domestic asymptomatic cases. 4 domestic confirmed cases recovered & 1 domestic asymptomatic case was released from isolation, all at Ruili in Dehong Prefecture, Yunnan Province. There are currently 74 domestic confirmed & 15 domestic asymptomatic cases in Yunnan Province. 3 communities remain at High Risk. 3 residential compounds, 1 factory & 2 villages remain at Medium Risk.

    Imported Cases

    On 4/18 China reported 11 new imported confirmed cases, 16 imported asymptomatic cases, 1 imported suspect case:

    • Sanya Port in Hainan Province – 4 confirmed cases, all Chinese crew members off a cargo ship with last port of call in the Sudan
    • Guangzhou in Guangdong Province – 2 confirmed cases, 1 Chinese national each returning from Nepal & Malaysia ; 6 asymptomatic cases, 3 Chinese nationals returning from Senegal (via Paris CdG) & 1 each from the Sudan (via Cairo), South Sudan (via Cairo) & Madagascar (via Paris CdG)
    • Foshan in Guangdong Province – 2 asymptomatic cases, 1 Chinese national each returning from Nigeria & Indonesia, off flights that landed at Guangzhou
    • Yunnan Province (location not specified) – 2 confirmed cases, both Chinese nationals returning from Myanmar, via land border crossing
    • Shanghai Municipality – 1 confirmed case, a Chinese national returning from Russia; 1 suspect case, no information released
    • Tianjin Municipality – 1 confirmed case (previously asymptomatic)
    • Xi’an in Shaanxi Province – 1 confirmed case (previously asymptomatic), a Chinese national returning from the UAE; 2 asymptomatic cases, 1 Chinese national each returning from Pakistan & Belgium; all off flights diverted from the Beijing
    • Nanjing in Jiangsu Province – 2 asymptomatic cases, no information released
    • Taiyuan in Shanxi Province – 2 asymptomatic cases, both coming from Poland
    • Chengdu in Sichuan Province – 1 asymptomatic cases, a Chinese national returning from Algeria
    • Hangzhou in Zhejiang Province – 1 asymptomatic case, coming from Mexico

     

    Overall in China, 10 confirmed cases recovered, 11 asymptomatic cases were released from isolation & 3 were reclassified as confirmed cases, and 333 individuals were released from quarantine. Currently, there are 315 active confirmed cases in the country (241 imported), 6 in critical/serious condition (all imported), 322 asymptomatic cases (307 imported), 4 suspect cases (all imported). 10,533 traced contacts are currently under centralized quarantine.

    As of 4/18, 192.127M vaccine doses have been injected in Mainland China, an increase of 2.318M doses in the past 24 hrs.

    On 4/19, Hong Kong reported 13 new cases, 12 imported & 1 domestic (source of infection identified).

  5. 5.

    Cermet

    One issue a lot of people in media overlook when they say that rich countries are hording vaccines (true) is that the US provided many billions of dollars to many companies (not just the mRNA ones) to both develop and to up-build more production plants – which has helped everyone. Further, unlike most countries in the world, the US maintains a robust infrastructure of virus production facilities around our country for this exact propose (surge production of vaccines) funded by the Gov.  Finally, we have donated a few million extra doses to our two neighbor’s (yes, self interest.)

    However, that all said, even just our self interest, we should be further pushing production and seeing to it the hardest hit countries get both more vaccines and other critical med supplies to curb their outbreaks.

    But like masking in a plane emergency, we have to get herd immunity here asap; then far more vaccines (our production) will be far freer to supply other countries.

  6. 6.

    Amir Khalid

    Malaysia’s Director-General of Heath Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah reports 2,078 new Covid-19 cases today in his media statement, for a cumulative reported total of 377,132 cases. He also reports eight new deaths today, for a cumulative total of 1,386 deaths — 0.37% of the cumulative reported total, 0.39% of resolved cases.

    There are currently 20,522 active and contagious cases; 238 are in ICU, 93 of them intubated. Meanwhile, 1,402 patients recovered and were discharged, for a cumulative total of 354,224 patients recovered – 94.19% of the cumulative reported total.

    14 new clusters were reported today: Tangok, Pulau Chondong, and Jalan Hospital in Kelantan; Jalan Tagasan in Sabah; Jalan Medan Aliff, Jalan Cahaya Baru, and Cyber Park in Johor; Jalan Weng and Bayan Cenderawasih in Kedah; Sungai Duan, Sungai Passin, and Sungai Selitut in Sarawak; Jalan Bandar Universiti in Perak; and Jalan Sulah 16 in Selangor.

    Tangok, Pulau Chondong, Jalan Tagasan, Jalan Medan Aliff, Jalan Weng and Jalan Hospital are education clusters, and Jalan Hospital is at a Ministry of Education school. Sungai Duan, Sungai Passin, Sungai Selitut, and Jalan Bandar Universiti are community clusters. Jalan Cahaya Baru, Cyber Park, and Jalan Sulah 16 are workplace clusters. Bayan Cenderawasih is a religious cluster.

    2,065 new cases today are local infections. Sarawak reports 589 cases: 67 in older clusters; 85 in Sungai Duan, Sungai Passin, and Sungai Selitut clusters; 298 close-contact screenings; and 139 other screenings. Selangor reports 454 local cases: 32 in older clusters, 42 in Jalan Sulah 16 cluster, 295 close-contact screenings, and 85 other screenings. Kelantan reports 290 cases: 93 in older clusters; 85 in Jalan Hospital, Tangok, and Pulau Chondong clusters; 135 close-contact screenings; and 33 other screenings.

    Kuala Lumpur reports 147 local cases: four in existing clusters, 82 close-contact screenings, and 61 other screenings. Sabah reports 125 cases: 44 in older clusters, one in Jalan Tagasan cluster, 62 close-contact screenings, and 18 other screenings. Johor reports 111 local cases: 18 in older clusters; 23 in Jalan Medan Aliff, Cyber Park, and Jalan Cahaya Baru clusters; 41 close-contact screenings; and 29 other screenings.

    Penang reports 91 cases: four in existing clusters, 57 close-contact screenings, and 30 other screenings. Negeri Sembilan also reports 91 cases: 32 in existing clusters, 17 close-contact screenings, and 42 other screenings. Kedah reports 48 cases: two in older clusters, 18 in Bayan Cenderawasih and Jalan Weng clusters, 20 close-contact screenings, and eight other screenings. Perak reports 43 cases: 21 in older clusters, three in Jalan Bandar Universiti cluster, 13 close-contact screenings, and six other screenings.

    Pahang reports 32 cases: 23 in existing clusters, six close-contact screenings, and three other screenings. Melaka reports 27 cases: 12 in existing clusters, nine close-contact screenings, and six other screenings.

    Terengganu reports eight cases: five in existing clusters, two close-contact screenings, and one other screening. Labuan reports six cases, all close-contact screenings. Putrajaya reports two cases, b0th close-contact screenings. And Perlis reports one case, also a close-contact screening.

    13 new cases today are imported: six in Kuala Lumpur, four in Johor, and three in Selangor.

    The deaths reported today are a 78-year-old man in Sarawak with diabetes and hypertension; an 89-year-old woman in Sabah with diabetes, hypertension, dyslipidaemia, and osteoarthritis; a 72-year-old woman in Sarawak with Parkinson’s disease; an 81-year-old man in Selangor with no co-morbidities listed; a 35-year-old man in Sarawak with gout and obesity; a 66-year-old man in Sabah with hypertension; a 57-year-old woman in Selangor with obesity; and a 55-year-old woman in Kuala Lumpur with diabetes and hypertension.

  8. 8.

    NeenerNeener

    @Mary G: I’m always amazed at how low the new cases number is when you post your report for OC. You have more than 3 times as many people in OC as we have here at the south side of Lake Ontario, yet your case count is a third of ours. Maybe it’s got something to do with your weather? It’s still somewhat cold around here and will be until sometime next month.

  10. 10.

    raven

    @Amir Khalid:
    Newspapers across Europe have widely condemned the proposed Super League, waging “war” against those who have backed the move.
    Premier League teams Manchester United, Manchester City, Chelsea, Tottenham, Arsenal and Liverpool have been labeled the “shameless six” by British newspapers, with the Metro calling it a “Civil War”.
    The Mirror called the new league a “criminal act against fans,” while The Telegraph suggested those teams backing a breakaway will face expulsion from domestic competitions.
    In France, L’Equipe called it a “war of the rich” and criticized the clubs’ owners for their greed, while Spanish paper AS labeled the news a “bombshell.”
    Italian newspapers were a little more subdued, focusing on the “birth” of the Super League with Corriere dello Sport calling it a “football revolution.”

  11. 11.

    Robert Sneddon

    @Amir Khalid: Twelve  of the top footie teams in Europe have announced a non-UEFA scheme for a Super League, including six teams from England. Some guys in red shirts you might know are apparently part of the deal. Supporters are generally not happy, the team owners are looking at billions in TV rights and franchise deals so fuck’em.

  12. 12.

    Mary G

    @NeenerNeener: I don’t think we have a lot of the UK and Brazilian variants that have taken hold on the East Coast out here yet. And people are getting vaccinated ASAP. Plus indoor masking isn’t as fought over as much.

  13. 13.

    VOR

    @Cermet:  My understanding was some of the contracts the TFG administration signed do not allow the US to redistribute doses internationally. I don’t know whose idea that was, the companies or the TFG people. America First, right?

    The US is actually making headway on vaccination. I shudder thinking of where we would be if TFG was still President.

  14. 14.

    Sayne

    Regarding the Delthia Ricks post about this article: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-04-masking-covid-.html

    So… they hooked people up to a PortaCount, ran the PortaCount’s salt water particle generator machine, and performed a quantitative fit test applying the protocol from the 29CFR1910.134…

    This is literally what people have to do on a yearly basis to be allowed to wear respirators on the job site in the US.  It’s not like they came up with some novel approach to testing masks, they used established equipment and a well-known and accepted protocol in order to determine efficacy.

    However, since they did use a well-known protocol, we can also know that the results are meaningful and can be trusted!

  15. 15.

    gvg

    I wonder if after demand slacks, if Biden redirects some of ours overseas and there is less of a glut..if some of the vaccine hesitant will suddenly decide they want to be vaccinated after all. there is a certain mule headed stubbornness to many I have listened to, and I can see how being told they can’t have it or seeing foreigners get it, might motivate a few more.

  16. 16.

    Robert Sneddon

    @Sayne: It’s been clear pretty much since the COVID-19 outbreak started being taken seriously over a year ago that Joe and Jane Public generally don’t wear masks “properly” even if they had access to real masks (N95 or better) and not brightly-coloured Etsy products.

     

    Wearing any kind of mas is still better than nothing but they’re not MUCH better than nothing. The tendency to treat masks as a silver bullet solution to totally prevent the spread of COVID-19 or indeed any respiratory disease has depressed me at times though.

  17. 17.

    mrmoshpotato

    @VOR:

    I shudder thinking of where we would be if TFG was still President. 

    “Fucked.” doesn’t even begin to come close.

  18. 18.

    mrmoshpotato

    @gvg: I could see Dump-humping assholes bitching about “ferrnerrs” getting “our” vaccines, but they’d still refuse to get the shot(s).

  19. 19.

    Sloane Ranger

    Sunday in the UK we had 1882 new cases. This is a 2.8% decrease in the rolling 7-day average. Usual weekend warning applies. New cases by nation,

    England -1495 (down 402)

    Northern Ireland – 82 (down 17)

    Scotland – 211 (up 1)

    Wales – 94 (up 94 (did not report on Saturday)).

    Deaths – There were 10 deaths within 28 days of a positive test yesterday. This is a decrease in the rolling 7-day average of 27.1%. Deaths by nation, England – 7, Wales – 3. None in Northern Ireland and Scotland.

    Testing – Not updated at weekends.

    Hospitalisations – Not updated at weekends.

    Vaccinations – As of 17 April, a total of 32,849,223 people had received the first jab of a vaccine (congratulations Tony Jay!) and 9,930,846 had received both. This means that 62.4% of all adults in the UK had received 1 shot as of that date and 18.9% were fully vaccinated.

    General – BoJo has cancelled his trip to India next week due to the rising number of COVID cases there and, in completely unrelated news, apparently a lot of people who booked tables in pub gardens failed to turn up, leaving the pubs with empty tables. The weather over the weekend wasn’t great but, even so, the lack of basic courtesy is amazing. If they’d been told, the pubs could have booked in other people.

  21. 21.

    Bill Arnold

    The BBC piece on India’s second COVID-19 wave led indirectly to this:
    India’s Covid Crisis Has a Familiar Culprit (Mihir Sharma[1] Apr 13 2021, bloombergquint)
    Compact, sharply critical piece. In a nutshell (quoted in part by the BBC:

    What went wrong? As is typical in India, official arrogance, hyper-nationalism, populism and an ample dose of bureaucratic incompetence have combined to create a crisis. The state has left India vulnerable to a second Covid-19 wave, multiple new mutations and the threat of repeated, livelihood-destroying lockdowns.

    [1] Mihir Swarup Sharma is … a senior fellow at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi and head of its Economy and Growth Programme.

  22. 22.

    Bill Arnold

    @VOR:

    I shudder thinking of where we would be if TFG was still President.

    It’s painful to think about the counterfactual, but I suspect that if TFG had retained control of the presidency, that vaccine partisanship skepticism among Republicans would be about 1/2 what it is now, with only a slight (few percent at most, and perhaps zero or less than zero) uptick among non-Republicans.
    Republicans are a death cult, quite literally, re SARS-CoV-2 vaccinations and non-pharmaceutical public health measures.
    This is only partly about non-working attempts to trade lives for money (like prematurely allowing unmasked indoor concentrations of exhalation-sharers); vaccines and masks indoors have net-positive economic benefits.
    It would be fun for an enterprising reporter to ask some Republican vaccine-refuser about that counterfactual, though.

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