??Delta variant dawns, where's the mask you should have on? or could it be the shot for free that you passed by? And did I hear you say, that you're hesitant, here today? preferring that big mansion in the sky.??
— Louis R. Bridgeman (@LouisRBridgema3) July 2, 2021
COVID-19 dropped to the seventh leading cause of death in the U.S. last month — a marked decline from January 2021 when it was no. 1, data show.https://t.co/9F8TYucF3o pic.twitter.com/yv8c6OEg6a
— Axios (@axios) July 5, 2021
“Dr. Rochelle Walensky said at a Thursday White House briefing that preliminary data reviewed by her agency suggests 99.5% of the people who died from #Covid19 over the past six months were unvaccinated…”
— Isaac Bogoch (@BogochIsaac) July 4, 2021
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Countries should be more careful and slow down on easing coronavirus restrictions, a top @WHO official warned pic.twitter.com/EClkqtvwXS
— Reuters (@Reuters) July 6, 2021
India reports 34,703 new COVID-19 cases in last 24 hours https://t.co/B76K9EtegS pic.twitter.com/O2keDo488T
— Reuters (@Reuters) July 6, 2021
India's COVID death rate hit record in June after calls for better data https://t.co/2nP8RG8BAu pic.twitter.com/MSvhGrq61P
— Reuters (@Reuters) July 6, 2021
India's Covid doctors demand action after attacks https://t.co/U5DuGpLXq9
— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) July 5, 2021
Indian police investigate whether scam artists gave thousands of shots of salt water rather than Covid vaccine https://t.co/LefMw2Xq2f
— delthia ricks ? (@DelthiaRicks) July 5, 2021
A white flag campaign is gaining traction to help Malaysians facing economic devastation during the coronavirus pandemic. It encourages people to hoist a white flag to signal they need help “without having to beg or feel embarrassed.” https://t.co/8ppvt6rZjX
— The Associated Press (@AP) July 5, 2021
Overwhelmed Indonesian coffin maker issues COVID-19 warning https://t.co/OYiTZr8iUb pic.twitter.com/yVkvsYN2OK
— Reuters (@Reuters) July 6, 2021
… Indonesia is battling one of Asia’s worst coronavirus outbreaks, fuelled by the rapid spread of the highly contagious Delta variant first identified in India.
Authorities on Monday reported 558 new deaths, a second day of record fatalities, and 29,745 new infections, the 10th day of record high cases in the past 15 days.
Tougher mobility restrictions have been imposed in Java and on the island of Bali, the worst-affected regions, and the government on Monday introduced new measures in a bid to control the spread of COVID-19 in 20 other provinces effective Tuesday.
Hospital bed occupancy was at 75% nationwide as of July 2, the health ministry said, but some hospitals on the most populous island of Java have reported over 90% capacity, including in the capital Jakarta…
Indonesia faces oxygen crisis amid worsening Covid surge https://t.co/MLgXOVWu8h
— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) July 5, 2021
Indonesia turns to telemedicine for COVID-19 as hospitals struggle https://t.co/5ZI29BDqvm pic.twitter.com/Q5rMK56lP5
— Reuters (@Reuters) July 5, 2021
Israel will deliver about 700,000 expiring doses of Pfizer-BioNTech's coronavirus vaccine to South Korea later this month, while South Korea will give Israel back the same number in September and October https://t.co/Gl5Lg4FBrJ pic.twitter.com/NusvBukGr1
— Reuters (@Reuters) July 6, 2021
The premier of Australia's New South Wales said she aims to decide within the next 24 hours whether to extend a COVID-19 lockdown in Sydney that is due to end on Friday as new infections dropped in the country's most populous state https://t.co/tjKIjjJg8j pic.twitter.com/AMJgea1TQ7
— Reuters (@Reuters) July 6, 2021
Fiji's COVID-19 hospital mortuary full, Delta variant fuels record infections https://t.co/KlLZAeOTMk pic.twitter.com/oye5GLmGQG
— Reuters (@Reuters) July 6, 2021
Iran fears a '5th wave' of COVID driven by the #Delta variant could soon devastate the country https://t.co/C1hKnYUVQ5 via @medical_xpress
— delthia ricks ?? (@DelthiaRicks) July 3, 2021
Russia on Tuesday recorded 737 coronavirus deaths, a new pandemic record and a 13% increase from the previous record of 697 set on Saturday as the country continues to battle a surge fueled by the more-contagious Delta varianthttps://t.co/QVJl7SIZ64
— The Moscow Times (@MoscowTimes) July 6, 2021
A majority of Russian (54%) are still not ready to get vaccinated against the coronavirus despite a mounting surge driven by the highly contagious Delta variant, according to an independent poll published Mondayhttps://t.co/GGtkhylCEF
— The Moscow Times (@MoscowTimes) July 6, 2021
Russians who refuse to get vaccinated against the coronavirus are taking a sin upon themselves that they will repent for until the end of their days, a top Russian Orthodox Church official said Mondayhttps://t.co/xHGHYAT4QG
— The Moscow Times (@MoscowTimes) July 6, 2021
Europe's view on Covid vaccine certificates https://t.co/sMo26S3gvJ
— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) July 4, 2021
BREAKING: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that England will lift mask requirements and social distancing rules despite surging coronavirus cases. Johnson plans to move ahead with the reopening July 19, with a final decision to come July 12.https://t.co/5xYbUX3UQk
— The Associated Press (@AP) July 5, 2021
No more dancing until dawn? Spain puts new restrictions on nightclubs in some areas after facing rising infections among unvaccinated young people.https://t.co/ww7pAuQiiF
— AP Europe (@AP_Europe) July 5, 2021
S. Africa's new coronavirus cases are surging, the result of the Delta variant. More than 26k new cases were reported in a single day over the weekend, according to the S. African Nat'l Institute for Communicable Diseases https://t.co/tVimdPwTlD pic.twitter.com/BVDmHRV18x
— delthia ricks ? (@DelthiaRicks) July 5, 2021
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Since this seems to be worrying some commentors:
Israeli data suggests a 'preliminary signal' that Delta variant can bypass vaccine induced immunity https://t.co/ux1Xvv2iIU pic.twitter.com/Mlnx2ZYOyj
— delthia ricks ? (@DelthiaRicks) July 5, 2021
… But Ran Balicer, chairman of Israel’s national expert panel on COVID-19, stressed it was “too early to precisely assess vaccine effectiveness against the variant” first identified in India in April that is surging across the globe.
That is partly due to the overall low number of cases among fully vaccinated Israelis, and because exposure to the virus and the likelihood of being tested are not evenly distributed across the population, further complicating efforts to reach conclusions about the data…
Vaccinations had brought transmission down to about five local new cases per day, but that figure has risen to around 300 in recent days, with the Delta variant raging.
About half of the daily cases are among children, and half are among mostly vaccinated adults.
“To some extent that could be expected since 85 percent of Israeli adults are vaccinated,” Balicer said.
“But the rates in which we see these breakthrough cases make some believe they extend beyond that expected point and suggest some decrease in vaccine effectiveness against mild illness—but not severe illness—is likely.”…
Balicer said it was unlikely Israel could contain rising cases without further restrictions being reimposed, but voiced hope they would be mild and that Israel’s “vaccine wall” of inoculated citizens will help reduce further spread.
“It is encouraging that we still maintain zero deaths for the last twelve days,” he further said.
Germany's vaccine committee is recommending mixing shots for better protection Anyone who received an AstraZeneca 1st dose should switch to Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna for better protection against the coronavirus, including the Delta variant https://t.co/b8YvWYLkSt pic.twitter.com/7udagIk9US
— delthia ricks ? (@DelthiaRicks) July 5, 2021
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Lol literally your first day in the military is just walking through a gauntlet of people giving you shots. They don’t even tell you what’s in them. But okay. https://t.co/DjDp58tDgG
— Lauren Hough (@laurenthehough) July 4, 2021
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the Nat'l Institute of Allergy & Infectious Diseases, said if he were in Biloxi Mississippi., he would consider a mask. The South is the least vaccinated part of the country & the region where the delta variant is surging https://t.co/8l8hE5eEcl
— delthia ricks ? (@DelthiaRicks) July 5, 2021
A temporary morgue established on a pier in Brooklyn during the height of COVID-19 in New York City stands as a reminder of the pain of the pandemic. About 200 bodies remain in the morgue, which the city plans to close by the end of the summer. https://t.co/n4YF6VcvUv
— The Associated Press (@AP) July 5, 2021
Cermet
The good news is the Pfzier and Moderna vaccines are extremely effective against the Delta variant; at worse, you can get it but suffer only mild symptoms (again, assuming one has a normal immune system.)
Again, thanks for these updates. :
Mary G
I’m sorry this is still necessary AL. Glad you had a vacay.
YY_Sima Qian
On 7/5 China reported 3 new domestic confirmed & 2 new domestic asymptomatic cases.
Yunnan Province reported 3 new domestic confirmed cases (2 moderate & 1 mild) & 2 domestic asymptomatic cases, all at Jiegao sub-district in Ruili, Dehong Prefecture, all Burmese nationals. There currently are 6 domestic confirmed & 2 domestic asymptomatic cases there from the latest outbreak . Ruili, as an important land border crossing w/ Myanmar, has been conducting periodic mass screenings of all residents. There has also been a vaccination drive since the previous outbreak associated w/ the jade wholesale/retail exchange but not sure about actual coverage. As of 8 AM one 7/6, 761 F1 & F2 close contacts have been traced and placed under centralized quarantine. The Jiegao sub-district is under lock down & a cordon sanitaire has been setup around the area. Traveling in & out of Ruili is discouraged.
In Wuhan, our community has already informed all residents that anyone w/ travel history to Dehong Prefecture in the past 14 days need to go into centralized quarantine.
Guangdong Province did not report any new domestic confirmed cases.
Imported Cases
On 7/5, China reported 19 new imported confirmed cases, 23 imported asymptomatic cases:
Overall in China, 34 confirmed cases recovered, 22 asymptomatic cases were released from isolation & none were reclassified as confirmed cases, and 806 individuals were released from quarantine. Currently, there are 418 active confirmed cases in the country (396 imported), 5 in serious condition (all imported), 446 asymptomatic cases (438 imported), 3 suspect cases (all imported). 8,099 traced contacts are currently under centralized quarantine.
As of 7/5, 1,318.417M vaccine doses have been injected in Mainland China, an increase of 12.918M doses in the past 24 hrs.
On 7/6, Hong Kong reported 1 new positive case, imported (from Russia).
YY_Sima Qian
With the residential compound at Bao’an District in Shenzhen being re-designated as Low Risk, I was also released from home quarantine this morning. The community workers came to remove the magnetic sensor from my front door. I am free! :-)
?BillinGlendaleCA
Here in LaLaLand, we’ve gone from 0.4% positivity rate to 1.6%. Masking here in Glendale is still not being taken seriously. I had a customer that I had to keep backing away from who was unmasked.
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@YY_Sima Qian: congratulations! And Thks for the updates
WereBear
I am already upset about the impending Red State Mayhem, but THEY ARE NOT. Which is an example of how far things have deteriorated…
Baud
@YY_Sima Qian:
?
tom
@YY_Sima Qian: glad you are out!
Baud
@WereBear:
They would gladly give their lives to see you upset.
NotMax
Total deaths (as reported*) attributable to COVID worldwide crosses past 4,000,000.
*Goes without saying the true total is higher.
Soprano2
@WereBear: They care more about proving everything is OK and you’re not the boss of them than about risking death. You have to understand, they honestly believe 1) they won’t get sick and 2) if they do, it won’t be any worse than a cold. I work with some of them, they believe crazy things about the virus and the vaccines. Google “40 reasons not to get vaccinated” if you want to see what was posted in my workplace by some employee here last week. Oh, and I was told by my mother yesterday that there are a lot of deaths from the vaccines but “they” aren’t reporting it.
Amir Khalid
Malaysia’s Director-General of Heath Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah reports 7,654 new Covid-19 cases today in his media statement, for a cumulative reported total of 792,693 cases. He also reports 103 new deaths today, for a cumulative total of 5,677 deaths — 0.72% of the cumulative reported total, 0.79% of resolved cases.
There are currently 72,201 active and contagious cases; 943 are in ICU, 450 of them intubated. Meanwhile, 4,797 more patients have recovered, for a cumulative total of 714,815 patients recovered – 90.17% of the cumulative reported total.
21 new clusters were reported today. Of the cumulative total of 2,952 clusters, 852 clusters are currently active; 2,100 clusters are now inactive.
7,643 new cases today are local infections. Selangor reports 3,259 local cases: 238 in clusters, 1,981 close-contact screenings, and 1,040 other screenings. Kuala Lumpur reports 1,543 local cases: 770 in clusters, 495 close-contact screenings, and 278 other screenings.
Negeri Sembilan reports 698 cases: 397 in clusters, 202 close-contact screenings, and 99 other screenings.
Kedah reports 337 cases: 110 in clusters, 174 close-contact screenings, and 53 other screenings. Johor reports 310 local cases: 117 in clusters, 132 close-contact screenings, and 61 other screenings.
Sarawak reports 286 cases: 82 in clusters, 153 close-contact screenings, and 51 other screenings. Melaka reports 230 cases: 94 in clusters, 88 close-contact screenings, and 48 other screenings. Sabah reports 225 cases: 21 in clusters, 103 close-contact screenings, and 101 other screenings.
Penang reports 185 local cases: 65 in clusters, 83 close-contact screenings, and 37 other screenings. Pahang reports 180 cases: 130 in clusters, 32 close-contact screenings, and 18 other screenings. Kelantan reports 118 cases: 47 in clusters, 43 close-contact screenings, and 28 other screenings.
Perak reports 94 cases: 51 in clusters, 32 close-contact screenings, and 11 other screenings. Labuan reports 82 cases: one in a cluster, 50 close-contact screenings, and 31 other screenings. Terengganu reports 61 cases: 44 in clusters, nine close-contact screenings, and eight other screenings.
Putrajaya reports 33 cases: 27 close-contact screenings and six other screenings. Perlis reports two cases, both close-contact screenings.
11 new cases today are imported: seven in Kuala Lumpur, three in Johor, and one in Selangor.
rikyrah
@YY_Sima Qian:
Yess????
WereBear
@Baud:
@Soprano2:
All sadly true.
Matt McIrvin
WHAT
That is stunning–I’d been bracing myself for that particular number to be much, much lower, because high vaccination rates in the groups most susceptible to dying of COVID (old people) means it should be heavily suppressed by base-rate effects.
If that number is 99.5%. it means the vaccine is fantastically effective against death from COVID. Almost unbelievably so.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
The human immune system. We can rebuild it. We have the technology.
chrome agnomen
@Baud: and i humbly and gladly accept their gift.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: A bunch of people on Twitter immediately jumped to the conclusion that this is a worldwide number, in which case it’d actually be misleadingly enhanced by base-rate effects, since such a small fraction of people worldwide have been vaccinated. But I think it’s for the US, where seniors were offered vaccination early and by and large went for it.
Baud
@chrome agnomen:
It doesn’t work if your not upset.
Argiope
@Soprano2: apparently my folks and your mom went to the same school with the terrible science curriculum. My condolences. I’ve had to let go of the idea they will luck their way through this, but they still may. We are at the point now where I can hand deliver and administer vaccines to them in the comfort of wherever they might be at the time, but they are still refusing. “Republicans who believe their vitamins will save them” is now a whole demographic category of old, white, mostly obese people with pre existing conditions, but the primary one is motivated reasoning.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
I don’t understand. It’s a percentage. It shouldn’t matter what the base is.
rikyrah
Protect yourself from the lying unvaccinated?
rikyrah
@Soprano2:
Well, protect yourself
WereBear
@Argiope:
And the risk of death is so very high in that group.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: It’s about what it’s a percentage of.
Just as an unrealistically dire toy example, suppose we have a population of 1000 people who have a probability of 10% of dying of COVID if they get the virus (maybe they’re all 90 years old). 90% of them get vaccinated, and say the vaccine is 90% protective against death, so it reduces the probability of death by a factor of 10.
That’s 900 vaccinated people. The vaccine knocks their probability of death down to 1 in 100, so about 9 of them will die.
Among the 100 unvaccinated, about 10 of them die.
Now we compile the death statistics and find that about 9 of 19, or 47%, of the dead were vaccinated. Oh no, looks like the vaccine isn’t doing much! But it is, it’s just that high base vaccination rates pulled that number down.
Brachiator
The UK is looking to remove Covid related restrictions by July 19. From BBC News reports.
American conservatives would recognize this. It is the feverish wet dream that “common sense” and “personal responsibility” is the same thing as science, and that individuals can defeat the virus by an act of will.
This will not end well.
Meanwhile, is Lambda the new variant or a hot Latin dance?
Baud
@Matt McIrvin: Gotcha. Thanks.
Matt McIrvin
@Matt McIrvin: …I should add, it sounds to me like this some of what’s going on in the scary numbers for (mild) breakthrough infections out of Israel, and I’d also been hearing things that sounded like this for deaths in the UK, so I was preparing my friends and family to hear scary high numbers for breakthrough deaths, and here is an amazingly low one.
That may still happen when people start talking about recent numbers for Delta, since the better vaccination coverage gets, the stronger the base-rate illusion will be.
Brachiator
@Matt McIrvin:
Great explanation
The site Your Local Epidemiologist has a good visual example of the base rate fallacy.
Here
https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/israel-50-of-infected-are-vaccinated
New Deal democrat
Roughly half of all US States now have rising case counts compared with 2 weeks ago.
The 5 worst – AR, MO, NV, UT, and WY – are averaging about 12 cases per 100,000 daily, which is only about 1/4 of their peak over 50 in the summer of 2020.
Their death rates have also begun to rise, but as usual are lagging cases.
In the bellwether U.K., cases are now *higher* than at any time except last winter, but deaths, while rising, remain low.
The US is headed for a similar surge in cases like the U.K. The question remains, what will happen with deaths.
mrmoshpotato
@YY_Sima Qian: Good to hear. Hope things remain low risk.
mrmoshpotato
@Brachiator:
Oh BoJo! You bonehead! Is there a vaccine to prevent dying of laughter?
Robert Sneddon
@New Deal democrat:
The current UK COVID-19 situation has two factors that make comparisons with the US difficult.
The first is that almost all new cases in the UK are the Delta variant whereas at the moment the US only about 30-40% of new cases are Delta. It’s clear from the UK’s experience and from elsewhere in the world that Delta is a lot more transmissable than previous variants so the US is likely to see a large increase in cases over the next few weeks as Delta cases increase, especially after the 4th of July national superspreader event takes its toll.
The second is that a significantly larger part of the UK population is vaccinated than in the US and there are fewer clusters of low-takeup areas where vaccination rates are noticeably lower than others. England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland all have about the same level of first-dose (ca. 86%) and fully vaccinated (ca. 62%) adults whereas there are several US states where vaccination rates are as low as 40%.
The UK is seeing a sharp increase in new cases driven by the Delta variant, ten times what it was six weeks ago when Delta was only 30% or so of new cases. However the ICU and hospitalisation rates are about double the rates from that time and the death rate is still very low comparatively speaking. This is attributable to the overall high vaccination rate plus the focus on getting older and more vulnerable people vaccinated early. Right now over 96% of people aged 55 and over have been fully vaccinated which takes a lot of the load off the health services since even if vaccinated people get infected with COVID-19 they suffer less.
Matt McIrvin
@Brachiator: I’ve noticed from the beginning that the people who insisted the hardest that compliance with pandemic restrictions should be down to “personal responsibility” were the same ones who were least likely to make wise personal choices that showed a high degree of responsibility.
There’s this old notion, which I think is even supposedly backed up by psychological research, that conservatives have higher-conscientiousness personalities so they don’t feel they need the state to tell them how to live right. But that doesn’t seem to be what’s going on here.
Suzanne
@YY_Sima Qian: So glad you’re done!!! Your updates about the experience have been fascinating.
Soprano2
@Argiope: Oh, but she’s vaccinated with Moderna. She got vaccinated as soon as it was available! She just believes the crap that the vaccines aren’t as good as liberals think they are. She’s 87 years old, so I think she knew she was really vulnerable, and should protect herself as best as she could. Thank God I didn’t even have to talk her into it.
Matt McIrvin
@Robert Sneddon: I saw a map of local vaccination rates in the UK recently and it looked like the photographic negative of the situation in the US–the lowest British vaccination rates were in cities (still pretty high by US standards), and the highest in rural/exurban areas. My part of northeastern Massachusetts is actually a bit like that but most of the US isn’t.
Soprano2
Meanwhile, here in the epicenter of the worst outbreak of Covid and Delta in the U.S., here’s the latest headline:
But all they need to keep them healthy is Vitamin D, Vitamin C, and Zinc. *rolleyes* It’s maddening, because all of this is completely preventable and unnecessary. From what I’ve seen, NW Arkansas is going to need those ventilators back soon. I can’t wait for Governor Parson to start begging people to get vaccinated. He has treated Covid like it’s optional, no big deal, we don’t need any masks or distancing or cancellation of things, everyone can exercise personal responsibility just fine. He’s now reaping what he sowed, so he can go fuck himself.
Sloane Ranger
Hope you enjoyed your break from all things COVID AL. I too am now freed from my own, rather less onerous, self-isolation. Now for the figures from the UK.
Monday in the UK we had 27,334 new cases. This is an increase of 53.2% in the rolling 7-day average but there may still be a delay caused by the usual weekend reporting delays. New cases by nation,
England – 23,286 (up 2832 from the day before)
Northern Ireland – 420 (down 113 from the day before)
Scotland – 2372 (down 354 from the day before)
Wales – 1256 (up 721 from the day before).
Deaths – There were 9 deaths within 28 days of a positive test reported yesterday, but usual weekend warnings apply. 7 were in England and 2 in Wales.
Testing – 1,276,593 tests were conducted on Sunday, 4 July. This is an increase of 6.1% in the rolling 7-day average. The PCR testing capacity reported by labs on that date was 608,654.
Hospitalisations – On Thursday, 1 July there were 1905 people in hospital. There were 321 people on ventilators on Friday, 2nd. The rolling 7-day average for hospital admissions was up by 24.2% as of 29 June.
Vaccinations – As of 4 July, 45,351,719 people had received 1 shot of a vaccine and 33,726,362 had received both. In percentage terms this means that 86.1% of all adults in the UK had received 1 jab and 64% were fully vaccinated as of this date.
General – Our new “Health” Minister, Sajid Javid, has announced that, once the remaining restrictions are lifted in England, which is still planned for 19th July, new cases may increase by something in the range of 100,000 a day. It is not clear if he is referring only to England or the UK more widely, but, in either case, we are not to worry as the vaccination programme has broken the link between case numbers and hospitalisation and death and we must all learn to live with the virus – sorry but I worry. This is NOT proven at this point and the more cases the more changes of new variants emerging. He is also planning to announce that fully vaccinated people who have come in contact with a COVID positive person will no longer be required to self isolate. What, if anything, will replace self isolation, is not yet clear. And some Tory backbencher yelled “Hallelujah”.
Cheryl from Maryland
Here in over 70% vaccinated Maryland (we heard you, President Biden), my husband and his 97-year-old mother, both vaccinated along with myself, can’t visit his first cousin/her niece because both of the cousin’s daughters have gone full Gwynneth Paltrow GOOP/immune system crazy and not gotten vaccinated, including their spouses and children, and the cousin allows them to visit her house. One of the children, who has a driver’s license and is 20 years old (so an adult) defied his mother and got the vaccine. We’ve been told the child’s mother is angry with him and they are regularly fighting over his “defiance”. We also had to tell the cousin/niece not to plan a party for mother/aunt’s 98th birthday as we won’t go to her house. She understood.
NotMax
@Soprano2
Didn’t your RWNJ governor make a half-hearted plea for people to go get vaccinated only a few days ago? As well as being among the first to request the newly designated federal teams come in to aid the effort?
Late blooming small potatoes, admittedly, in a garden of disease and doesn’t absolve him of the stain he’s so assiduously applied to himself during this whole crisis, of course.
Robert Sneddon
@Matt McIrvin: The vaccination rates in the cities here in the UK are lower than more rural areas in part because of the age of vaccine recipients. Cities have lots of younger people in them and the UK’s vaccination drive has concentrated on older people to begin with. This is changing now with most large municipal areas moving towards drop-in clinics as well as scheduled appointments since nearly all older people have already been double-vaccinated.
There’s a website based on the Tableau platform (not a great user experience in my opinion but it has the data) which breaks down Scottish COVID-19 information, updated daily at 14:00 BST. Clicking on the vaccinations tab produces a chart of vaccination rates for each NHS board area for people aged 40 and over. The big cities of Glasgow and Edinburgh are indeed significantly less vaccinated than other more rural areas. However even those cities have a fully-vaccinated rate of over 80% for that 40+ age group and over 95% have received their first dose of vaccine.
Sloane Ranger
@Matt McIrvin:
Yes, most Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) people in the UK tend to live in cities and these were identified very early on as having higher vaccine hesitancy rates than white people. I don’t know the details but there were concerns expressed about an experimental vaccine programme that went wrong in Africa some time ago and the Tuskegee experiment (curse you America!) but a lot of work has been put into re-assuring people that the vaccine is safe, liaising with community leaders and getting BME celebrities on board and the evidence is that this hesitancy is being overcome.
Another Scott
@Brachiator:
He still wants to get to herd mentality…
Grr…
Cheers,
Scott.
Robert Sneddon
@Sloane Ranger:
Another factor is that cities have a lot of younger people in them and the UK vaccination programmes have been focussed on older folks to begin with. Rural areas with older populations tend to have higher vaccine takeup for that reason — here in Scotland the Shetlands have over 97% of over 40s fully-vaccinated whereas that number is only about 80% in Edinburgh. However over 95% of 40+adults in Edinburgh have received their first vaccinations which indicates minimal vaccine hesitancy. It’s likely that those first-dose people will go on to get the second dose when it’s available to them.
YY_Sima Qian
Thanks everyone for the kind wishes. My colleague in Shenzhen, who had ridden the same train as a traced F1 close contact on 6/18, was also released from home quarantine this morning. Originally , he was supposed to go under 14 days of centralized quarantine followed by 14 days of home quarantine. That was reduced to 7 + 7, someone in charge probably decided 14 + 14 for riding the same train as a close contact (who turned out not to be infected) was way over the top. He was also initially placed in a room where the window was completely blocked off, but was later moved to another room whether the windows was not blocked.
Health authorities at Ruili in Yunnan Province has confirmed that the the latest outbreak there is of the Delta Variant.
Matt McIrvin
@Sloane Ranger: A similar thing is going on around here with urban Black and Hispanic populations, but, interestingly, surveys seem to indicate it has less to do with hesitancy about the vaccine itself, and more worry about missing work from side effects, and suspicions engendered by the messed-up US health-insurance system about whether the vaccine is really free. Meanwhile, actual fear of the vaccine harming you is more of a white thing.
mrmoshpotato
@Another Scott:
Herd slapdick
Robert Sneddon
Scotland — 2,363 new cases of COVID-19 reported today, six new deaths (some of those deaths may be delayed reports from the weekend). Test positivity rate is 10.2%, still way too high.
Vaccinations continue at the new normal rate of about 27,000 a day, more second doses than first doses.
Hospitalisations and ICU bed occupancy numbers continue to creep slowly upwards but nothing dramatic. I read a comment upstream that there’s a hospital in Kentucky with about 80 or so COVID-19 patients in ICU beds receiving mechanical ventilation, that’s more than double the number of ICU cases in all of Scotland.
The Scottish government is still on track to re-open Scotland for most things in a couple of weeks time notwithstanding the current surge in new case numbers. Like the Westminster government they are balancing the demands of an electorate that wants some sort of return to ‘normality’ against the predicted load on the health services. I think they’re hoping that with the current and ongoing level of vaccinations they can start to treat COVID-19 as they would a really bad influenza season rather than the public health disaster it was before needles started being stuck in peoples arms back in January.
New Deal democrat
@Robert Sneddon: Thanks. As I said, the U.K. experience is a bellwether for where the US is going to be in about 4 weeks. From what you say, it sounds like the coming US experience will be even worse.
I suspect the jury is still out on the matter of deaths in the U.K., given that deaths typically lag cases by 4 weeks – and the number of new cases has quintupled in the last 5 weeks. But otoh, that rate would still be far below the prior two peaks in the U.K.
Robert Sneddon
@New Deal democrat: It’s difficult to determine a significant trend from COVID-19 deaths in the UK or in the regions — in Scotland the number of COVID-19 deaths reported each day has been bouncing between zero and a handful over the past month while the new case numbers have soared over the same time period. The ICU occupancy rate should have increased similarly by now if the new cases were serious and it doesn’t seem that way. There will be more deaths, certainly, but not anything like the rate during winter when twenty times as many people were dying compared to today.
Soprano2
Yep, but it’s way too little, way too late. He spent the last year validating their worst impulses, and now he expects them to suddenly turn it around? What kind of an idiot thinks that will work?
Sloane Ranger
@Robert Sneddon: I agree. I study the figures and trends every day. At this stage we should be seeing a significant increase in hospitalisations and, while they are moving up, it’s a very gentle curve compared with the steep incline we’ve seen previously. Likewise, the trend with deaths in remaining essentially flat. It’s anecdata I know, but I know of several fully vaccinated people who have had symptomatic cases of COVID and, in all cases, they reported it as being like a bad summer cold. They felt like crap for a few days and then recovered.
Soprano2
@Matt McIrvin: I saw a story this weekend about a woman who didn’t get vaccinated because she was worried about the side effects of the vaccine (that usually last one day!), and then died of Covid. It’s just one in an ongoing series of these kinds of stories, all of them sad but predictable.
Steeplejack (phone)
J R in WV
@YY_Sima Qian:
That’s great news, congratulations !! It seemed that the odds of your infection were really slim, but still, you never know! So glad, plus you got a window before you got promoted to home confinement… all good.
Fair Economist
@New Deal democrat: We are going to get a lot more deaths than the UK, because the UK Vax rates have been limited by supply, while ours have been limited by gullibility. So they have ended up with much higher Vax rates for the vulnerable.
The falling rates of protection against any infection don’t surprise or concern me too much. Since COVID primarily infects cells on the outside of the body like lung cells only secreted antibodies can stop any infection. They tend to fall off fairly quickly with time, plus the virus can evolve fairly quickly to escape the very high levels of specificity neutralizing antibodies need. But other antibodies will still help limit severity of infection, and some can work at lower levels of specificity, so it’s harder for the virus to evolve away. And T cell protection is nearly impossible to evolve away from.
So vaccinees will be catching COVID soon enough, but they won’t be dying of it much. My rough estimate is that COVID risk for vaccinees will be similar to that for flu per episode; but we’ll get it more often because it’s more contagious.
There is still a possible concern with long COVID developing from repeat infections. We will just have to see.
barbequebob
@Matt McIrvin:
Yes, what caught my eye was that this is for the past six months?, a period of time that began the first week of January. I may be way off, but I do not recall there being many people vaccinated that early in the year here in the US. Things dib=d,t really seem to get going until February, and it was pretty slow initially.
I can see that rate, and disparity in results for the past 3 months, a point in time when far more people were vaccinated.
Matt McIrvin
@barbequebob: That’s true, the base-rate issues with the statistic might be lessened or even reversed by the fact that in the worst of the US winter wave, there actually wasn’t a lot of vaccination happening yet.
On the other hand, the vaccination that did happen early on was overwhelmingly of people in the groups most likely to die (they were old). My memory is that things really got rolling in February and March, when my elderly relatives got their shots.
RaflW
I’m really curious about that Delthia Ricks tweet. I’ve been wondering if it may eventually make sense for Americans who’ve received, say, Pfizer 1&2 to — prehaps six or 12 months later — get a J&J jab? (Or if a J&J recipient may eventually be advised to get Moderna, etc).
I’m mentally preparing for a booster shot at some point. (Not in the sense of vaccine fear, but preparing for the idea that Covid will be endemic and keep mutating and we’ll have to live with the fucker for a long time, perhaps indefinitely).
RaflW
@Brachiator: The linked your local epidemiologist post is really helpful. But if the news now is that efficacy against breakthrough (not severe) Covid is 65% while properly accounting for base rate bias, that”s not super great.
Dunno how many people follow John Pavlovitz, the progressive preacher, but his family of four had one sub-12 y.o. who, on vacation, contracted Covid, and then he + his wife + the vax’d kid all contracted Coivd. None seem severe, but that anecdote suggests Delta may be more of a monster than we’d thought.
I’ve also noted that well vax’d Minnesota has gone back above 1% positivity in the past couple days. Dang.
RaflW
@Matt McIrvin: “There’s this old notion… that conservatives have higher-conscientiousness personalities so they don’t feel they need the state to tell them how to live right. But that doesn’t seem to be what’s going on here.”
There are damn few conservatives left in the MAGA-smeared GOP. They’ve become infantilized reactionaries. “I’m gonna drive 100mph after three beers, with no seatbelt, and no one can stop me!” is s.o.p. for millions of these people, and it’s really really destructive.
ETA: I’m feeling a lot like Granpa Simpson right now. I had two tabs open and thought I was now reading and commenting on the afternoon thread. Hahah on me.
dnfree
@YY_Sima Qian: Congratulations! That was an ordeal.