You are funny.

It's interesting that this seems to be an adjuvant effect again. Useful things adjuvants in that they allow killed vaccines which have a small finite dose because they don't multiply in the body to produce a useful immune response, but they themselves can be a problem. The local soreness and malaise that are trivial non-specific adverse effects of a vaccine are actually reactions to the adjuvant. The bleeding calves saga also turned out to be caused by the adjuvant in the BVD vaccine.

The cute thing about DNA vaccines is that they have the safety profile of killed or subunit vaccines in that they cannot possibly revert to virulence, but they multiply in the body like live vaccines to produce a much larger effective dose and so they don't need an adjuvant. Adjuvant problems will not be an issue with the Oxford virus. I'd be looking for issues with the vector method, and I'd have to go to animal vaccines to find much. I'm not aware of any issues there though.

There's a lot more than that preventing an AIDS vaccine. The MERS vaccine is still in development but as the disease is controlled it's not urgent to fast-track it. The SARS vaccine was doing fine but was abandoned because the disease was successfully eradicated by ordinary contact tracing and isolation. Sure the ADE thing has been an issue but it's been addressed, it wasn't a deal-breaker with either SARS or MERS and people seem to be blowing it out of all proportion as a way of rubbishing the potential for a Covid vaccine.

An effective vaccine is capable of solving all the problems surrounding this virus if it's used properly. That is, don't just shoot it into everyone who'll hold still long enough and declare "job done" but use it as part of a structured elimination strategy. Ring vaccination around new outbreaks. Targeted vaccination to people most at risk (care workers, taxi and bus drivers and so on). That mitigates the issues with not having enough doses at first.

If it is possible to blanket-vaccinate the entire country, do it all at once so that the peak immunity happens in everyone simultaneously (assuming the protection isn't very long-lived). And continue with case identification, contact tracing and isolation until there really aren't any more new cases.

In fact this virus is a push-over. No insect vector, no wildlife reservoir, no airborne spread, no long-term asymptomatic carriers. It's a sitting duck. The only thing that keeps it going is the difficulty of getting human beings to change their behaviour for long enough. Once the majority of people are vaccinated there really is a good chance it will vanish permanently, we just have to usher it out to be on the safe side.

And yes, this assumes the vaccine is safe. I'd be more concerned about the possibility of something previously unknown, like the bleeding calves thing, than a known hazard that vaccine developers are well aware of. But on the whole, the odds are very much in our favour here.

That's very wise. If he's in Scotland, especially if he's not in Glasgow, Edinburgh or Lanarkshire, the risk is small, but there's no sense in letting your guard down prematurely.

I have three sets of relatives in Motherwell who have been shielding throughout, although one cousin spent ten days in hospital with a heart issue a couple of weeks ago. And another is due to go in for some sort of eye procedure. The cousin who was in hospital says she was tested for coronavirus every four days while she was in.

I'm planning to pick a nice day and drive over there and see all of them, but I'll stay in the gardens just as an extra precaution. I sure as hell don't have it and I'm pretty confident none of them do either, but I've been trained in disease control and my spinal reflexes say don't go into a confined space with anyone at all, not yet.

Pretty much what Dad says too.

And like, you it was animal disease control. Early in his career he was involved in the 1967 Foot and Mouth outbreak, and was quite shocked at how the lessons from that had been forgotten in 2000-2001 and the start of this epidemic in the UK.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-53320155

"Only 22% of people testing positive for coronavirus reported having symptoms on the day of their test, according to the Office for National Statistics."

https://theferret.scot/scotland-coro...ng-care-homes/

"The number of tests in Scotland has not reached 10,000 on any day during the coronavirus pandemic, according to official figures.
Testing capacity has been significantly increased, with Scotland now able to undertake at least 15,000 tests per day. But the highest number of tests, combining tests done in NHS labs with those done in regional testing centres, was 6,519 on 16 May 2020."

I work in care and not one of us has been tested. Madness, when we could be unaware we are carrying and there is plenty of capacity to test us.

I'm like a stuck record on that one. I even came across an article I wrote about it in 2001, tucked away on my hard drive.

And the idiot who caused and oversaw the carnage in 2001 is Sir David King, chair of Independent Sage, and he actually boasts about it. I don't think he realises even now what he did. It's not reassuring.

I agree they need to expand the testing. Although there seems to be better testing in hospitals now. Overall though, how do we winkle out the cases we're not seeing from the 5.45 million people here.

The models say we're really having about 75 new cases a day. I think the model is a bit pessimistic but better that than complacent. But how do we find these since we can't test everything that moves and breathes?

I really like this paragraph, but is the highlighted correct? My understanding is such a reservoir exists, in pangolins and/or bats.

That should be interesting; in my experience the average Tory party member can't operate a smartphone without a distinct risk of electrocution.

Not in terms of general transmission to keep the pandemic going. The virus was almost certainly zoonotic in origin but the pandemic is purely human transmission. It's not like rabies or even tuberculosis.

I'd like to know if they followed up with people: who developed symptoms and how soon after the positive test?

Do we know?

There certainly was a wildlife reservoir this emerged from. But we did get SARS 1 down to no human cases and a further transfer of infection from an animal reservoir did not reinfect the human population.

Unless this one is a directly related genetic cousin anyway.

But as for airborne, I've been posting the research that it is airborne months ago. Now a bunch of scientists are speaking out about that very problem.

So, it would appear Melbourne is locking down a giant high rise in the poor side of town while rich suburbs including apartments are not given the same discourtesy.

Victoria coronavirus restrictions: Which suburbs are in lockdown?

Doesn't show the high rise locked down so I'll have to keep looking for the story reported on in the BBC news tonight.

I saw something about this draconian step. It reminds me of what they were doing in Wuhan, China. In a democracy?

Video is from the BBC:

YouTube Video This video is not hosted by the ISF. The ISF can not be held responsible for the suitability or legality of this material. By clicking the link below you agree to view content from an external website.

I AGREE

That's the news I saw and that's what I thought of when I saw the news coverage.

Thanks.

And Italy and Spain and Germany and New Zealand and the list goes on. All these above, reacted to the pandemic by restricting people to their houses.
All democracies.
Fortunately Australia have not gone the "democratic" route that the UK and the US have gone down by killing thousands of their citizens when new outbreaks have occurred.

I assure you it was when Farage was there. Just because he won't do it, doesn't mean he can't.

That is not exactly true. It was not specifically a covid party other than the fact that all parties are covid parties at the moment.

People living in rich suburbs don't have the kind of jobs where you get infected. They are much more likely to work from home, their living quarters usually aren't as cramped as in poor suburbs, and they don't use public transportation as much as people in poor neighborhoods.
That is at the root of it. It's not a 'courtesy' given to people in rich suburbs. Those suburbs just aren't as infected as the poor ones so there is no need to quarantine them.
And it's not just in Australia; it's the same all over the (Western) world:
In the USA
In Germany
In Sweden

The Chancellor has announced a raft of measures to bolster the economy and protect jobs, whether its enough is debatable, but it does once again demonstrate Sunak seems to be the only one in the Cabinet actually paying attention:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-53333253

tenner off a restaurant meal midweek?

woop de doo

I thought the measures where distinctly underwhelming, total value about 1.4% of GDP so hardly New Deal levels.

VAT cut won't help most of the high street. Stamp duty cut will be eaten up by price rises which always happens when stamp duty is reduced. A lot of the other measures already pre-announced. But you can get up to £10 off your meal at participating pubs and restaurants* which is probably the bung they put in to keep Wetherspoon's happy. A better (in the economic term) but more costly measure would have been the proposed £500 voucher for everyone to spend on the high street.

*(Monday-Wednesdays only, only in the month of August, other terms and conditions may apply)

Well I suppose we could go to the Lion Inn Trellech for a meal before our Tuesday night band practice were it not for the fact that it's in Wales so may not be open in August, that we'd need a table for people from three households which is probably a no-no and the Lion Inn is a standalone pub owned by the landlady so likely wouldn't be eligible (I'm thinking the scheme has been designed to benefit the PubCo's).

edited to add....

Looks like I was being really unfair about that last part. It's likely that the Lion would be eligible and because it's pre-practice we'd likely be drinking non-alcoholic beverages.

FDR in the 1930s let's build the Hoover Dam to get out of the depression. BJ in 2020s let's have £10 off Nando's to get out of the depression.

From New Deal to Meal Deal in just under 90 years.

With our half-baked classicist's record on infra-structure schemes (garden bridge?) I wouldn't want him anywhere near something like a Hoover Dam...I mean, I wouldn't leave him in charge of making a sand castle.

Israel looks to be a case study in the effects of increasing and relaxing lockdown.

I've plotted the cases and deaths data from

https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/public...ases-worldwide

Then plotted the 7-day average (3 days before and 3 after, so it's not lagging, unlike the Excel rolling average)

And then plotted when it increased (with a red X) or relaxed (with a green +) its restrictions.

Attachment 42550

I had the pleasure of working in Leeds City Hall for a while - a project which was designed to provide jobs in the 30s. A magnificent building, built from great materials, built to last and looked after with pride.

As a Boro supporter it hurts me to say anything nice about Leeds - that's how impressive that building is.

It's nice to see a democracy doing what is needed to keep people safe.

Unfortunately this requires people to behave sensibly and reliably.

Eventually they will ... after all the alternatives have been exhausted.

Agreed. There have been times when our democracies took away the freedom of every able bodied man to send them to the front line. Telling people to stay in their homes or wear face masks is nothing. But that was because of war? Well, this pandemic will soon have killed more americans than the number of US troops who were killed by the combined efforts of the nazis and japs during WW2. It's time people stopped being such snowflakes.

I disagree. The reaction of idiots in Melbourne Australia is one example, mostly anti-government retoric of the nature that the state's Premier is "a dictator revelling in his power, with “a disturbing streak of authoritarianism”, a premier who wildly exaggerated the risk of Covid-19 and is now deliberately hampering the economic recovery."
Unfortunately a number of people resent the impingement on their "freedom" and such such BS up - I've been disappointed by a number of friends who have this attitude.

Only this morning I was in a discussion with an USAan colleague who resents "having" to wear a mask because of COVID.

She says,
"I wear one usually anyway because it is the smart thing to do in this crisis
I just resent the government telling me to, so I don't wear one"
:boggled:

Sensible and reliable my arse.

Just been down the hospital with Boris wheel clamping the nurses cars.
Got to make money for the parking management companies.

Mind, a lot of hospitals didn't lift the parking charges anyway, their contracts with the management companies wouldn't let them.

https://news.sky.com/story/coronavir...rules-12022566

Worth reading the rest too

We had a similar problem here, solved with angle grinders and a refusal to arrest anyone.

It's interesting, sad but predictable to see how many companies are taking the opportunity to "rightsize" their business in the wake of Coronavirus. Today we've had announcements from John Lewis and Boots but there have been recent announcements from a variety of other companies.

Translation from British English:

Just been down the hospital: Uncertain, but I think it means "It has been reported that a hospital"

with Boris wheel: A colloquialism describing a vehicle immobilisation device. Here in North America I've seen it described as a "Denver boot."

clamping the nurses cars: vehicles owned by nurses are being immobilised.


How'd I do? :)

I laughed at this bit: "The Germans were lucky. They had lots of machines lying around and a system in place."

Those lucky, lucky Germans! Always so lucky! No, it isn't skill! Just blind luck! :p