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Covid-19 - Treatments & Vaccines

JuiceCrewAllStar said:
why is the energy department looking into this?
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Yeah, I'm very confused why we are supposed to trust the DOE and FBI/CIA to honestly get to the bottom of this and let us know.

In my mind, the best either could do would be to figure out what China legitimately believes happened, which would be helpful but by no means a confirmation of anything. Unless the DOE has virologists on payroll for some reason, this seems like a strange story to me
 
The DOE runs a bunch of National labs, most as would be expected dealing with energy but almost all science is multidisciplinary these days so they have related projects dealing with things like cancer, supercomputers for research, nanoparticles for disease.

Almost every laboratory group did or is doing their own assessment because first Biden ordered it, second it’s the only groups where the lab leak outcome actually matters. If there is a fundamentally flaw that can be found, arrived at independently then that problem if it exists here can be fixed within our own national laboratory structure. Pretty typical after outcome risk assessment.
 
heard something the other day that the Chinese grounded local flights to and from Wuhan but allowed international flights at the start of the pandemic.
 
birdman said:
So maybe it was a wet market / wildlife origin:

New data links Covid-19’s origins to raccoon dogs at Wuhan market | Coronavirus | The Guardian

Analysis of gene sequences by international team finds Covid-positive samples rich in raccoon dog DNA
amp.theguardian.com amp.theguardian.com
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Certainly merits consideration, just like the lab leak possibility. Which is kinda the point. People (including me) got so wrapped up in "don't blame China" that there was little room for discussing something that may have laid blame at the feet of China.
 
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Liquid Karma said:
Which merits discussion. Which is kinda the point. People (including me) got so wrapped up in "don't blame China" that there was little room for discussing something that may have laid blame at the feet of China.
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Productive discourse on the source and how to prevent it in the future is great, calling it the China Virus and instigating violence against Asian people from the stage of a fascist political rally is not great.
 
birdman said:
So maybe it was a wet market / wildlife origin:

New data links Covid-19’s origins to raccoon dogs at Wuhan market | Coronavirus | The Guardian

Analysis of gene sequences by international team finds Covid-positive samples rich in raccoon dog DNA
amp.theguardian.com amp.theguardian.com
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The discovery does not prove that raccoon dogs or other animals infected with Covid triggered the pandemic, but scientists presenting the work to an expert group at the World Health Organization on Tuesday believe it makes that more likely.
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The latest genetic data does not prove raccoon dogs or other mammals were infected with Covid and spread it at the market. If the animals were infected, they may have contracted the virus from infected humans. But the findings do point to the possibility that the cause was an infected animal and, ultimately, the illegal wildlife trade.

While scientists expect the debate to rumble on, there are questions over why the Chinese team did not release the genetic data earlier. One member of the team, George Gao, the former head of China’s Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, told Science there was “nothing new” in the sequences. Why the data was later pulled from the Gisaid site is also not clear.
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Whether it came from a wet market, or a lab leak, China sure seemed to want that information suppressed.
 
dartsndeacs said:
heard something the other day that the Chinese grounded local flights to and from Wuhan but allowed international flights at the start of the pandemic.
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Hindsight being 20-20 and all, I don't think anyone managed air traffic well in the initial stages.
 

When it comes to preventing COVID-19 deaths, ‘how we feel about each other matters’​


Race, ethnicity and socioeconomic factors were the most powerful predictors of a state’s COVID-19 death toll, researchers found. The larger the proportion of residents who identified as Black or Latino, the higher the poverty rate, the greater the share of residents without health insurance and the lower the education level among adults, the more deaths there were per capita.

That may not be much of a surprise. But the researchers also discovered that the more people in a state trusted one another, the lower their collective risk of dying of COVID-19. That result underscores how America’s growing divisiveness seems to have made us uniquely vulnerable during the pandemic.

“How we feel about one another matters,” said political scientist Thomas J. Bollyke, one of the study’s lead authors. “The solidarity between people — the feeling that others will also do the right thing, that you’re not being taking advantage of — is a big driver in your willingness to adopt protective behaviors.”
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No single factor was more important than “vaccinated person days” — a measure of how much of a state’s population was vaccinated, and how early. If Alabama, which had the lowest score on that measure, had achieved the vaccine coverage seen in Vermont, the highest-ranking state, it would have seen 30% fewer infections and 35% COVID-19 deaths during the study period, the researchers estimated.

Another notable finding: Vaccination mandates for state employees, which prompted many legal challenges, “stood out” for their association with lower infections and fewer deaths, the authors wrote.
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The study highlights the tangible toll of the country’s us-versus-them mentality, which was on full display during debates over masking in schools and vaccine mandates for government employees. We don’t trust one another very much, which makes us less willing to do things to protect one another.

“Interpersonal trust” has been measured since the 1950s, and levels of that positive feeling toward others have declined steeply in the United States since the early 1990s, said Bollyke, who directs the Global Health Program at the Council on Foreign Relations. That trend has been driven by a decline in economic conditions for lower-income people with college degrees. It’s particularly low among Black Americans, and among those who voted for Donald Trump in the 2020 election.

Trust in the federal government and trust in science did not register as major drivers of COVID-19 death rates. But trust in fellow citizens held up strongly, Bollyke said.
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The associations the study uncovered clearly suggest that the strengths and weaknesses that states take into a national emergency — and some of the policies they adopt to respond to a crisis — make a big difference, said Lawrence Gostin, an expert in public health law at Georgetown University.

“This is a strong vindication of states that took COVID seriously, that used science and that mitigated health inequalities,” Gostin said. “A lot of the political rhetoric — that mandates don’t work, and that equity is not important — was just proven wrong.”




The study’s findings can be put to use to save lives long before the next pandemic, said Dr. Steven Woolf, a researcher at Virginia Commonwealth University who tracks the health status of Americans.

“Many of the same factors are affecting health outcomes right now,” Woolf said.
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map_static-Artboard_2.png


Covid deaths per 100,000 people. First line on left is 250…last line on right is 740
 
Sucks if you loved in Rutherford County, NC. They've only got 350,000 people and somewhere around 600 per 100K died. That's a 0.6% chance you died.
 
Can't quite put my finger on what is odd about the color distribution.
 
deaconson said:
Can't quite put my finger on what is odd about the color distribution.
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I think I know what you are getting at, but that map also coorelates with preexisting conditions like heart disease, diabetes, obesity, etc.
 
I would bet that COVID deaths were higher in any place in America where recipes often require a whole block of cream cheese.
 
myDeaconmyhand said:
I think I know what you are getting at, but that map also coorelates with preexisting conditions like heart disease, diabetes, obesity, etc.
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Probably poverty and education too.

And % of evangelicals.
 
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