[News] Coronavirus

A place to discuss the now-global coronavirus outbreak.

It blows my mind that people would be picky over which vaccine to get if they are eligible.

On the other hand I shouldn't be surprised as my late 70s mother in law is refusing to get the vaccine since Facebook and one of her doctor friends (who is not in a field that deals with vaccines) said it was dangerous. Once the vaccines get to my age group of she's not going to be seeing her grandkids until she changes her mind.

Yeah she's just one of those people who has severe reactions to medicines in general, so I'm hoping some data can persuade her.

Well, whatever symptoms she ends up having, they will A) be temporary, and B) be much better than catching COVID.

It seem to me that moving quickly is probably more important than trying to save yourself a sick day.

I HATE, HATE, HATE this title from KCRGs front page


Iowa announces new COVID-19 data reporting method, cancels centralized sign-up website
The change will significantly lower the state’s positivity rate

NO, IT f*ckING WON'T! The state's positivity rate will stay the same - people being informed about the rate will change.

Hiding information doesn't make it not true you f*cking god dammed republican assholes....

Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine is stable at standard freezer temperatures.

That's good news for distribution chains.

Moggy wrote:

Hopeful news (link forwarded to me from my wife)

https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/your-national-us-report-feb-19-2021

While it does seem we're making progress we have a long way to go and need more data to check the trend. I'm glad they call it out in your link, and it's being echoed elsewhere as well

US data shows a big decline in new Covid-19 cases. Here's why it could be deceptive

Overall, the US has seen nearly a 13.5% decrease in testing compared to this time last week.

It's unclear exactly how much of the decline can be attributed to the winter weather that's gripped much of the country, forcing officials to close testing sites, which affects the collection of crucial data.

Several states impacted by winter storms are seeing large declines in new cases this week, per Johns Hopkins data, including Texas, where cases are down 56% compared to last week.

Skimmer here:

Has anyone talked about the inflation rate that might be tied to this pandemic? The official rate given is the same as always, but there is this other way to see inflation by the total cash circulating around. First time i have heard of it, but it's called M1. According to it, there's been about a 60% increase in cash circulating around.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M1

Maybe someone can explain the difference to me, or let me know if the official inflation rate is just BS.

The way I see it, if you have a large sum of cash just sitting in the bank, you might want to put that in some sort of investment that (at the minimum) rises with inflation before your cash devalues.

FiveIron wrote:

Skimmer here:

Has anyone talked about the inflation rate that might be tied to this pandemic? The official rate given is the same as always, but there is this other way to see inflation by the total cash circulating around. First time i have heard of it, but it's called M1. According to it, there's been about a 60% increase in cash circulating around.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M1

Maybe someone can explain the difference to me, or let me know if the official inflation rate is just BS.

The way I see it, if you have a large sum of cash just sitting in the bank, you might want to put that in some sort of investment that (at the minimum) rises with inflation before your cash devalues.

Can't speak to inflation and the mathematical point is well taken. Would also point out the challenges some are having putting cash into long-term investments during a year(s?)-long global emergency. In the last year:

- People have lost jobs/reduced hours
- People in some states are now getting utility bills equal to 3x+ their monthly take home (or more)
- Grocery costs have risen
- Parents may now have high childcare costs with schools closed

Not saying there aren't ways to get around it. For financially literate folks with strong balance sheets this can be a challenge to get right. Can't imagine what that looks like for someone in a more precarious situation.

Top_Shelf wrote:
FiveIron wrote:

Skimmer here:

Has anyone talked about the inflation rate that might be tied to this pandemic? The official rate given is the same as always, but there is this other way to see inflation by the total cash circulating around. First time i have heard of it, but it's called M1. According to it, there's been about a 60% increase in cash circulating around.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M1

Maybe someone can explain the difference to me, or let me know if the official inflation rate is just BS.

The way I see it, if you have a large sum of cash just sitting in the bank, you might want to put that in some sort of investment that (at the minimum) rises with inflation before your cash devalues.

Can't speak to inflation and the mathematical point is well taken. Would also point out the challenges some are having putting cash into long-term investments during a year(s?)-long global emergency. In the last year:

- People have lost jobs/reduced hours
- People in some states are now getting utility bills equal to 3x+ their monthly take home (or more)
- Grocery costs have risen
- Parents may now have high childcare costs with schools closed

Not saying there aren't ways to get around it. For financially literate folks with strong balance sheets this can be a challenge to get right. Can't imagine what that looks like for someone in a more precarious situation.

yeah I think this is even harder on people who are just scraping by financially. Going from 1000$ in the bank to near half that will certainly have some negative effects. But you're right, it would be difficult to try and find a way to get into anything when your struggling to get by. Is just buying gold or gold ETF out of the question? My understanding of precious medals is that they don't always rise with inflation because of manipulation by banks.

because of manipulation 

Not to take us even further off topic but generally trying to time the market or understand what the heck its going to do is just gambling with extra steps. Sometimes you can do a ton of research to favor your odds but since you've got millions of other investors including companies that have massively more resources and people that are going to make those same moves. Yes people may have gotten lucky that they fairly or unfairly attribute to skill but far more has been lost than gained that you don't hear about as much.

So as far as the pandemic goes I'm doing the same thing as before the pandemic. Low fee index funds and hold no matter what craziness is going on in the market.

FiveIron wrote:

Skimmer here:

Has anyone talked about the inflation rate that might be tied to this pandemic? The official rate given is the same as always, but there is this other way to see inflation by the total cash circulating around. First time i have heard of it, but it's called M1. According to it, there's been about a 60% increase in cash circulating around.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M1

Maybe someone can explain the difference to me, or let me know if the official inflation rate is just BS.

The way I see it, if you have a large sum of cash just sitting in the bank, you might want to put that in some sort of investment that (at the minimum) rises with inflation before your cash devalues.

The economy is terribly sick, and it started getting sick under Alan Greenspan, when the Fed started on its current inflationary bender. In effect, he declared that there were only two acceptable economic outcomes: boom, and more boom. He began the process that's still ongoing, which is basically inventing justifications to inject more money whenever there's economic pain. Each time there's any kind of significant financial or fiscal problem, they step up and try to boost the economy by adding cash. They don't directly print it; rather, they set an interest rate they want (which started at fairly normal levels under Greenspan, but had dropped to near zero around Y2K, and has been hovering around that ever since), and then lend as much money into the market as is necessary to keep that interest rate.

The net effect of this, long term, is that savings are worthless. In a normal economy, you'd be able to get 5 to 7 percent or so for your savings, because the bank would be paying you for the cash, and then lending that cash out to other entities at a higher rate. Instead, you can't get anything for your deposited money, because you are competing against unlimited supplies of the exact same thing for free from the central bank. This is a gigantic, slow drain of wealth from the real economy into the hands of bankers. The system is stealing your retirement. The five percent that you should be making by being a good saver is being transferred from you to banks. You, and hundreds of millions of others, have been rooked for about the last two decades.

The thing is, this whole process is unstable. We're going through boom and bust cycles. All that free money means that people closer to the center of the system are using it to speculate wildly on various things, like stocks and real estate. Investors get a bee in their bonnet, chase some new idea, inflate the market like crazy, and then it starts to collapse because the real economic idea isn't worth what people are paying.

So when it starts to collapse, this causes the banks a great deal of pain, so the Fed steps in, over and over, and monetizes the pain away. Nothing gets fixed, and a new speculative cycle starts.

Initially, this process was roughly analogous to using morphine for a broken bone, but no other treatment, so the economy just kept walking on the break. So, of course, the damage has gotten worse and worse, and at this point, the economy has pretty much gone gangrenous. Real estate and stock market valuations have been totally disconnected from their real values, buoyed by this endless torrent of cash. The real economy couldn't possibly service those prices. Real wealth generation is being suffocated, and printed wealth is dominating everything.

In the 2021 economy, it is far, far more profitable to manipulate wealth tokens than it is to generate wealth.

I don't know if there's a way out of this problem that doesn't completely destroy the system. The monetary system has gone fully cancerous and is eating us, but the pain of stopping what they're doing would be insane. It's death by inches or death all at once, but it's death either way.

Before too much longer, the dollar is going to lose its status as the world's reserve currency, and at that point, all the other central banks in the world are going to stop bailing out the dollar by printing their own currency to buy dollars. At that point, things are going to get scary. Total fiscal collapse is quite likely.

Real economies, btw, need recessions. They teach everyone in the system what works and what doesn't. They reward the prudent and damage the profligate, meaning you get more prudence in the economy, and smarter risk-taking. And economies need recessions that resolve by themselves, without monetary intervention, because that's the process of the overall economy learning what's actually needed and what's wasteful or stupid.

At this point, however, we're so wildly far from that scenario that I don't think we can get back there without a massive crash. You can't have a Federal government spending all those trillions of dollars it doesn't have, and an economy taking on the insane debt ours has, while running the crazy trade deficit we do, when the actual productive economy can't service those debts. The money printing has fooled the overall system into taking on vast piles of debt that cannot possibly be paid at par value.

The longer it takes for that final crash and reinvention of a saner monetary authority to happen, the worse the crash will be.

Every time we get a new wave of pain from the cancer, the Fed will inject more painkiller. That doesn't mean we're getting better.

That's why the housing bailout was so stupid. The idiots that gave those loans that couldn't be paid back should have had to declare bankruptcy, and either reorganize or shut down because what they were doing wasn't working.

Instead they got free government money and kept doing ridiculous bonuses, insane CEO pay, and other nonsense.

Yep. In effect, we deployed trillions of dollars to make sure that absolutely nothing changed.

New analyses show Johnson & Johnson’s one-dose vaccine works well.

The vaccine had a 72 percent overall efficacy rate in the United States and 64 percent in South Africa, where a highly contagious variant emerged in the fall and is now driving most cases. The efficacy in South Africa was seven points higher than earlier data released by the company.

The vaccine also showed 86 percent efficacy against severe forms of Covid-19 in the United States, and 82 percent against severe disease in South Africa. That means that a vaccinated person has a far lower risk of being hospitalized or dying from Covid-19.

That is interesting because that is about the efficacy of the other 2 dose vaccines with a single dose. Perhaps this one will benefit from 2 staggered doses as well? (it may not be designed that way)

they're looking into that: (LINK)

In addition to the single-dose regimen ENSEMBLE study, Janssen has now initiated the two-dose regimen ENSEMBLE 2 trial. ENSEMBLE 2 is a complementary, planned, pivotal, large-scale, multi-country Phase 3 trial that will study the safety and efficacy of a two-dose regimen of the investigational Janssen vaccine candidate for the prevention of COVID-19 in up to 30,000 participants worldwide. The ENSEMBLE and ENSEMBLE 2 trials will run in parallel.

edit: from the New York Times' vaccine tracker: (LINK)

On Nov. 16, Johnson & Johnson announced that they were also launching a second Phase 3 trial to observe the effects of two doses of their vaccine, instead of just one. The results are expected in early spring.
cheeze_pavilion wrote:

they're looking into that: (LINK)

In addition to the single-dose regimen ENSEMBLE study, Janssen has now initiated the two-dose regimen ENSEMBLE 2 trial. ENSEMBLE 2 is a complementary, planned, pivotal, large-scale, multi-country Phase 3 trial that will study the safety and efficacy of a two-dose regimen of the investigational Janssen vaccine candidate for the prevention of COVID-19 in up to 30,000 participants worldwide. The ENSEMBLE and ENSEMBLE 2 trials will run in parallel.

edit: from the New York Times' vaccine tracker: (LINK)

On Nov. 16, Johnson & Johnson announced that they were also launching a second Phase 3 trial to observe the effects of two doses of their vaccine, instead of just one. The results are expected in early spring.

I am interested in hearing the results.

I was confused as hell trying to figure out why 7 was lower than 5.6 since the font is spaced a little and my brain probably couldn't comprehend it is 56%. These jerks are going to make this thing go on forever.

Ignoring that black and, to a somewhat lesser degree, hispanic/latino go mostly democrat; if you average the two "whites" in that graph, you come to roughly 31% as well.

AUs_TBirD wrote:

Ignoring that black and, to a somewhat lesser degree, hispanic/latino go mostly democrat; if you average the two "whites" in that graph, you come to roughly 31% as well.

White Americans heavily skew Republican. 58-41 in the 2020 election.

OG_slinger wrote:

Republicans are least likely to want the coronavirus vaccine

Hey, if they want to kill off Grandma, or themselves, that's one less vote next election. I wouldn't normally think that way, and I'd be horrified by the thought if they actually wanted the vaccine.

But, instead, they're choosing to live in an alternate reality that threatens people I care about, so if they get themselves killed by staying tuned into NaziVision, my conscience is absolutely untroubled.

OG_slinger wrote:
AUs_TBirD wrote:

Ignoring that black and, to a somewhat lesser degree, hispanic/latino go mostly democrat; if you average the two "whites" in that graph, you come to roughly 31% as well.

White Americans heavily skew Republican. 58-41 in the 2020 election.

True, I oversimplified. That brings it up to 36.5% against.

New Orleans Archdiocese warns Catholics to avoid ‘morally compromised’ Johnson & Johnson vaccine

Washington Post wrote:

On Friday, as a Food and Drug Administration expert panel recommended approving the Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine, the Archdiocese of New Orleans offered a differing opinion. Taking the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, the Archdiocese said, would be immoral.

“The archdiocese must instruct Catholics that the latest vaccine from Janssen/Johnson & Johnson is morally compromised as it uses the abortion-derived cell line in development and production of the vaccine as well as the testing,” the Archdiocese of New Orleans said in a statement on Friday.

The decision could put the archdiocese in conflict with the Vatican and Pope Francis, who have been aggressively pro-vaccine. Last December, the Vatican approved the use of vaccines “that have used cell lines from aborted fetuses in their research and production process,” adding it’s “morally acceptable,” although the pope has yet to specifically address the Johnson & Johnson shot.

As some houses of worship host vaccination centers, the advice could affect distribution efforts in New Orleans and drive people away from the single-dose vaccine as health officials urge Americans to take whichever doses are available.

I think any archdiocese who protected a serial child rapist for four decades and secretly paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in hush money to his victims should shut the f*ck up about the "immorality" of a vaccine for a disease that's killed over half a million Americans and whose development used a nearly 50-year-old cloned cell line that may not have even come from an aborted fetus, which is the actual problem these primitive f*cks have.

Oh look! Yet another reason to hate religion.

Florida's DeSantis faces criticism over Covid-19 vaccination clinics in upscale communities

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is facing bipartisan criticism and a call for a federal investigation after the state set up invitation-only Covid-19 vaccination clinics in at least two upscale communities.

One prominent developer in two communities donated to DeSantis' campaign -- in amounts of $25,000 and $50,000 between 2018 and 2019 for a total of $125,000, according to campaign finance records.
The exclusive vaccine clinics allowed about 6,000 people to jump ahead of tens of thousands of seniors on waitlists in Manatee and Charlotte counties, where the drives happened.

I don't even mean this sarcastically - what is the problem? Republicans have a pretty established platform that wealthy people deserve a better life because they are wealthy. So when a republican governor acts on that belief why do people act like it a wrong?
I mean it is ridiculously easy to see stats that show how people in rich neighborhoods have all sorts of better health outcomes. We even see differences in life expectancy in between rich and poor areas. So why do people pretend to be upset by this?
It is wrong to do it about a pandemic but a slow death by worse drinking water (Detroit) etc. is fine?