Coronavirus 5: Let the Vaccination Begin

[Coconut Flan]

https://www.sfchronicle.com/local/article/California-one-of-just-two-states-at-CDC-s-16229054.php

Even with the lowest rate in the country and I'm fully vaccinated, I still get a bit concerned going out into stores and such.  We have a mask mandate until June 15 and I'll still be masking after that.  If I need a mask in a medical office, I'll be wearing one in the more wild west grocery store.  People are already anticipating the end of the mask mandate as more and more are being worn below the nose.  I now call those people volunteers.  

[Howl]

Here's an excellent science based thread (and an unroll for non twitterati) debunking WSJ's aggressive push for a lab origin for COVID.  Unroll of twitter thread: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1401924051983953926.html (sorry, for some reason embed URL link isn't working) 

 

Edited June 7, 2021 by Howl

[FiveAcres]

So having read the thread, I am now wondering: just what is a breast care entrepreneur? ?

[smittykins]

I ended up with the obligatory sore arm, some tiredness, and felt hot even though my thermometer registered only 97-something(my temperature tends to run low).  I felt better after taking some ibuprofen.

[Dandruff]

10 hours ago, Coconut Flan said:

https://www.sfchronicle.com/local/article/California-one-of-just-two-states-at-CDC-s-16229054.php

Even with the lowest rate in the country and I'm fully vaccinated, I still get a bit concerned going out into stores and such.  We have a mask mandate until June 15 and I'll still be masking after that.  If I need a mask in a medical office, I'll be wearing one in the more wild west grocery store.  People are already anticipating the end of the mask mandate as more and more are being worn below the nose.  I now call those people volunteers.  

I'm much more comfortable going into stores than I was, but I always wear a mask.  With the mandate weakening I'm seeing at least a few people in every store, including employees, without them.  The numbers are increasing and there are also the usual idiots wearing it under their noses.  I try to keep my distance.  The stores claim to be following CDC guidance but I'm pretty sure they could encourage mask wearing a lot more than they're doing.

[Ozlsn]

6 hours ago, FiveAcres said:

So having read the thread, I am now wondering: just what is a breast care entrepreneur? ?

Dodgy mammogram salesman?

[CTRLZero]

Our local WinCo (grocery store) has signs up stating fully vaccinated people can come in without masks.  We still wore our masks, and everyone I saw had a mask. My husband reported seeing a handful of shoppers without masks.  I guess it’s all on the honor system at this point.  He wondered if we’d be mistaken for anti-vaxers if we wore masks!  Interesting transitional times.  

[WhatWouldJohnCrichtonDo?]

10 minutes ago, CTRLZero said:

My husband reported seeing a handful of shoppers without masks.  I guess it’s all on the honor system at this point.  He wondered if we’d be mistaken for anti-vaxers if we wore masks!  Interesting transitional times.  

I kind of considered buying this pin

or something like that, but I went with the one under the spoiler instead. 

Spoiler

This one:

I bought this one for one of my siblings:

Now we'll see if I'm brave enough to wear mine!

[Howl]

On 6/7/2021 at 4:11 PM, FiveAcres said:

So having read the thread, I am now wondering: just what is a breast care entrepreneur? ?

I looked up Steven Quay; his company is Atossa.  This is from his bio on the Atossa web site: 

Quote

In the Tedx U of W talk, Steven Quay, M.D., Ph.D.,   Atossa’s Chief Executive Officer outlines the journey of Atossa Therapeutics in identifying improved ways to identify women at high risk of breast cancer, using mammography to identify dense breast tissue.

He also has a lot of very basic corona virus info in another part of the web site that he almost certainly gleaned from publicly available information.  Just so you know, the Black Death was a more deadly plague! 

Edited June 8, 2021 by Howl

[Coconut Flan]

I still find this horrifying.  A pandemic should never have been politicized.

https://www.npr.org/2021/06/09/1004430257/theres-a-stark-red-blue-divide-when-it-comes-to-states-vaccination-rates

[WhatWouldJohnCrichtonDo?]

8 hours ago, Coconut Flan said:

I still find this horrifying.  A pandemic should never have been politicized.

https://www.npr.org/2021/06/09/1004430257/theres-a-stark-red-blue-divide-when-it-comes-to-states-vaccination-rates

On the plus side, the graphic shows my state being at around 50% vaccinated. That's higher than the less than 40% estimate I posted earlier on the thread. Not a big plus, admittedly.

[47of74]

Yeah all that plexiglass has to go somewhere.  Might as well put it to good use.

Quote

Throughout the pandemic, plexiglass played a major role in trying to stop the spread of COVID-19.

Plexiglas barriers were set up at offices, schools, supermarkets, as well as other places, but the question is - what happens to them afterwards?

One Iowa State University professor challenged his students to come up with an answer.

Dan Neubauer, an associate teaching professor of industrial design, along with a team and his students, counted 500-barriers on campus.

 

[Audrey2]

Although my state is doing well, my county is at around 30-33%. While my WinCo has the same signs as posted above, I'm continuing to mask. At this point, when I see someone in a store without a mask, I'm thinking "I'm not wearing an f-ing mask" instead of "I'm vaccinated."

[NotQuiteMotY]

On 6/8/2021 at 4:40 PM, CTRLZero said:

Our local WinCo (grocery store) has signs up stating fully vaccinated people can come in without masks.  We still wore our masks, and everyone I saw had a mask. My husband reported seeing a handful of shoppers without masks.  I guess it’s all on the honor system at this point.  He wondered if we’d be mistaken for anti-vaxers if we wore masks!  Interesting transitional times.  

At this point I'm fully vaxxed, but I'm still wearing a mask. I work with the public and hate the uncertainty of wondering if the guy with the mask sliding off his nose is "safe" or not, so I'm not going to inflict that on someone else.

16 hours ago, WhatWouldJohnCrichtonDo? said:

On the plus side, the graphic shows my state being at around 50% vaccinated. That's higher than the less than 40% estimate I posted earlier on the thread. Not a big plus, admittedly.

Mine's 70% of eligible adults, last I saw, and that graphic bears it out. I suspect a lot of teens and kids are going to as soon as they're eligible/can get vaccines, thankfully. I'm looking forward to mine getting their shots.

[Smash!]

@Howl There‘s an interview with German virologist Christian Drosten in a magazine called „Die Republik“ I quickly translated the interesting parts via Deepl.com: 

Spoiler

There is the thesis: This virus could have escaped from a laboratory. This is supported by the fact that Sars-2 is particularly infectious for humans. So far, it cannot be explained how it came about by means of natural selection. With Mers and Sars it can be explained. Then there is the theory that the virus mutated on Chinese fur farms. Mr. Drosten, where did this virus come from?
I think also in the direction of the fur industry. This laboratory hypothesis, of course there is. If you look at it purely technically, if you just look at the genome, it's within the realm of possibility. But I can say, I know very well the techniques that would be needed to modify a virus in this way. If someone had developed Sars-2 in that way, I would say they did it in a pretty roundabout way. They didn't have to make it that difficult.

What do you mean?
There are actually two laboratory hypotheses. One would be malice, that is, that someone deliberately constructed such a virus. The other would be the research accident, i.e. that an experiment went wrong despite good intentions and inquisitiveness. The malicious, so honestly, you'd have to talk to intelligence people about that. I can't judge that as a scientist.

And what about the research accident?
If you were to think about it now, you wanted to change certain things: There is the so-called furin cleavage site, a genetic property of the spine protein of the virus, the most striking thing.

The furin cleavage site: In Sars-2, it makes it easier for the virus to enter the human cell?
Right. So, let's imagine that someone wanted to see what happens when you give a coronavirus this furin cleavage site, which is known from influenza viruses: Does it become more malicious? For this, I would take the Sars-1 virus, and I would take it in a form that I could also modify in the lab. In other words, a DNA clone. Do you understand what I'm saying?

We are trying. Explain it to us.
You can't just put a virus in a glass dish and do experiments with it. It takes two to three years of molecular biology work to build a DNA clone from a virus. Researchers have actually made such clones from the original Sars-1 virus. So if you wanted to develop a kind of Sars-2 in the lab, you would have inserted changes, for example this furin site, into such a Sars-1 clone. In order to find out: Does this adaptation make the Sars virus more infectious? But that was not the case here. The whole backbone of the virus is different: Sars-2 is full of deviations from the original Sars-1 virus.

What does that mean: the whole backbone is different?
Let me explain with a picture: For example, to check whether adaptations make the virus more contagious, I would take an existing system, put the change there, and then compare that to the old system. If I want to know if a new car radio improves the sound, then I take an existing car and change the radio there. Then I compare. I don't build a completely new car for that. But that's exactly how it was with Sars-2: The whole car is different.

And that means?
This idea of a research accident is extremely unlikely for me, because it would be much too inconvenient. The idea of a malicious use of some intelligence lab somewhere: if anything, something like that probably wouldn't come out of the Wuhan Virology Institute. That's a serious academic institute.

What do you think is the most plausible?
Carnivore breeding. The fur industry.

Why?
I don't have any evidence for that, except the clearly documented origin of Sars-1, and this is a virus of the same species. Viruses of the same species do the same things and often have the same origin. In the case of Sars-1, this is scientifically documented, the transitional hosts were tanuki and creeping cats. That's been confirmed. Also assured is that in China tanuki are used on a large scale in the fur industry. If you buy somewhere a jacket with fur collar, it is Chinese tanuki, almost without any exception. And now I can tell you that there are no studies in the scientific literature - none - that shed light on the question of whether tanuki breeding stock or even other carnivore breeding stock, mink for example, carry this virus, Sars-2, in China.

 

 

[Alisamer]

17 hours ago, 47of74 said:

Yeah all that plexiglass has to go somewhere.  Might as well put it to good use.

Plexi and acrylic has been hard to get during parts of this mess. We print on it, and several times have had to wait weeks for it to come back in stock. 

Another odd thing that is happening with the pandemic-related supply chain is that the Bojangles chicken restaurant chain has been having trouble getting their chicken supremes in stock (chicken tenders, basically, with a spicy breading). My boss says it's because all the bigger national chains have bought them all and the regional chains have less buying power. I'm not sure if that's the real reason or not, but it's strange that just that one chain around here has been having that problem. 

I actually went into a store without a mask last week. I got there, and realized I'd left my mask at work and couldn't find one in my car. So I put on my "I got my shots" button and tried to keep a distance from people. I feel more comfortable wearing a mask in stores, still. There are too many stupid anti-mask, anti-vax people around for my taste.

I haven't been wearing a mask in the gym, though. Most people aren't, and there's a sign on the door saying masks are recommended but not required. The staff are all wearing them, and the equipment is all set up to distance people from each other, and the ventilation is good so I have been taking that chance. 

[Coconut Flan]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2021/06/09/msc-cruise-covid-passenger-italy/

Cruise passengers test positive for COVID because, of course, they did.  

[Ozlsn]

21 hours ago, 47of74 said:

Yeah all that plexiglass has to go somewhere.  Might as well put it to good use.

 

Are they taking it down in public facing areas? I am really surprised, we're not even close to thinking about doing that. I think it's likely the barriers will persist past the vaccination threshold just as staff protection.

[47of74]

13 minutes ago, Ozlsn said:

Are they taking it down in public facing areas? I am really surprised, we're not even close to thinking about doing that. I think it's likely the barriers will persist past the vaccination threshold just as staff protection.

Whenever they take it down they’ll need to do something with it. Whether tomorrow or next year. 

[47of74]

The Girl Scouts have a problem

Quote

The Girl Scouts have an unusual problem this year: 15 million boxes of unsold cookies.

The 109-year-old organization says the coronavirus — not thinner demand for Thin Mints — is the main culprit. As the pandemic wore into the spring selling season, many troops nixed their traditional cookie booths for safety reasons.

"This is unfortunate, but given this is a girl-driven program and the majority of cookies are sold in-person, it was to be expected," said Kelly Parisi, a spokeswoman for Girl Scouts of the USA.

The impact will be felt by local councils and troops, who depend on the cookie sales to fund programming, travel, camps and other activities. The Girl Scouts normally sell around 200 million boxes of cookies per year, or around $800 million worth.

Yeah, bring all those extra thin mints over here.  We'll give em a good home.

 

[smittykins]

Save some for meeeeeeee!

[WhatWouldJohnCrichtonDo?]

I'm pretty sure my husband bought more GS cookies than usual this year. Now I kind of wish he had bought even more. 

[OHFL2009]

I made the terrible discovery that you can order Girl Scout cookies online this year. There are two different bakeries that supply GS cookies, and the bakery that supplies our area only makes one flavor I can eat (I'm not complaining about Thin Mints, I just like variety). The other bakery makes several flavors I can eat, so I went online and found out the troop in my mom's hometown gets theirs from the second bakery. I may have ordered WAY too many boxes.

[therulesofjinx]

My state just stopped all Covid-19 restrictions and our state of emergency ends at midnight tonight. Yesterday, we hit the milestone of 80% of our population aged 12 and over having received at least one dose of the vaccine. I'm excited yet also conflicted. I think I'm still going to wear my mask inside stores. It just feels weird to have been cautious for so long and then just drop it.

[47of74]

I made a grocery store run last night and I noticed that they had taken down all the plexiglass shields around the cash registers.  I wonder if the local Target has done that yet.