COVID vaccine or not ?

Will you get the COVID vaccine?...

  • Heck yes.. first in line

    Votes: 54 45.4%
  • You go first and I will wait and see

    Votes: 35 29.4%
  • I am already part of the herd

    Votes: 9 7.6%
  • Absolutely not

    Votes: 21 17.6%

  • Total voters
    119
World closes borders to Britain as new coronavirus
6 MIN READ

DOVER, England (Reuters) - More countries closed their borders to Britain on Monday over fears of a highly infectious new coronavirus strain, heightening global panic, causing travel chaos and raising the prospect of UK food shortages just days before the Brexit cliff edge.

India, Poland, Switzerland, Russia and Hong Kong suspended travel for Britons after Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned that a mutated variant of the virus up to 70% more infectious had been identified in the country, while Japan and South Korea said they were monitoring the situation.

A slew of countries have already suspended travel, including France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Austria, Ireland, Belgium, Israel and Canada.

The discovery of the new strain, just months before vaccines are expected to be widely available, sowed fresh panic in a pandemic that has killed about 1.7 million people worldwide and more than 67,000 in Britain.

Australia said two people who travelled from the United Kingdom to New South Wales state were found to be carrying the mutated virus.

Johnson will chair an emergency response meeting on Monday to discuss international travel, in particular the flow of freight in and out of Britain. EU officials held a meeting on coordinating their response.

France shut its border to arrivals of people and trucks from Britain, closing off one of the most important trade arteries with mainland Europe.

As families and truck drivers tried to navigate the travel bans to get back home in time for Christmas, Britain’s second-largest supermarket chain, Sainsbury’s, said gaps would start to appear on shelves within days if transport ties were not quickly restored with mainland Europe.

“If nothing changes, we will start to see gaps over the coming days on lettuce, some salad leaves, cauliflowers, broccoli and citrus fruit – all of which are imported from the continent at this time of year,” Sainsbury’s said.

Shellfish producers in Scotland said they had tonnes of perishable products stranded on roads as the French border was closed. Disruption in Britain will also snarl supplies to Ireland.

“No driver wants to deliver to the UK now, so the UK is going to see its freight supply dry up,” France’s FNTR national road haulage federation said.

The global alarm was reflected in financial markets. European shares slumped, with travel and leisure stocks bearing the brunt of the pain; British Airways-owner IAG and easyJet fell about 8%, while Air France KLM lost about 7%.

The British pound tumbled 2.5% against the dollar, and was on course for its biggest one-day drop since March, while the yield on two-year UK government bonds hit a record low.

Britain’s tabloids bemoaned the crisis. “Sick Man of Europe”, the Daily Mirror newspaper said on its front page beside a picture of Johnson while the Sun newspaper said “French show no merci”.

NEW MUTATION
Johnson cancelled Christmas plans for millions of British people on Saturday due to the more infectious strain of the coronavirus, though he said there was no evidence that it was either more lethal or caused a more severe illness.

The new variant contains 23 different changes, many of them associated with how it binds to cells and enters them. British Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said Britain had done some of the best global analysis of the mutations of the virus so it was simply seeing what was already at large in other countries.

Shapps said getting the bans lifted as swiftly as possible was his priority but that given British preparations for the end of the Brexit transition period on Dec. 31, the country was well positioned for disruption.

The British government triggered plans it had for stacking up trucks in the southeast county of Kent - part of its plans for potential disruption when the United Kingdom exits the EU’s orbit with - or without - a trade deal at 2300 GMT on Dec. 31.

Talks on a Brexit trade deal were due to continue on Monday.

“This is a serious situation as the stockpiled goods expected here are for Christmas and to help stabilise January,” Jon Swallow, a director of the British logistics group Jordon Freight, told Reuters. “This shows how fragile the cross-channel route is.”

ASIAN INFECTIONS
The new virus strain has been identified in Britain at a time when COVID-19 cases have surged in several Asian countries that had previously successfully contained the pandemic. The spikes have prompted localised lockdowns in some countries and more aggressive testing.

South Korea, which imposes a 14-day quarantine on everyone entering the country, said it was reviewing new measures for flights from Britain, and would test twice those coming in from there before they were released from quarantine.

New cases climbed to over 1,000 a day in South Korea several times last week. It reported on Sunday an outbreak in a Seoul prison where 188 inmates and staff were infected.

Thailand said on Sunday it was testing tens of thousands of people, and extended curbs on movement, following its worst outbreak yet that began at a market in a province that is a centre of the seafood industry and home to thousands of migrant workers.

Australia, where cases in Sydney have flared in recent days, cancelled dozens of domestic flights on Monday. New South Wales, which has reported 86 new local cases since Thursday, ordered more than a 250,000 people into a lockdown, though officials stressed the infections were not the UK strain.

Additional reporting by Toby Melville and James Davey in London, Laurence Frost in Paris; Sayantani Ghosh in Singapore, Josh Smith and Sangmi Cha in Seoul, Renju Jose in Sydney, Shilpa Jamkhandikar in Mumbai and Farah Master in Hong Kong; Writing by Guy Faulconbridge and Pravin Char; Editing by Alison Williams
You lost me at 6 MIN read :)
 
Last edited:
“...a new strain...” is the counter to any optimism about the vaccine by the public. Have to find ways to keep you masked up and locked down eh.
 
To some medical experts type 2 diabetes is the most preventable disease. Totally up to the individual whether they get it or not. This is not a secret. Everyone in the US has heard it. Some choose to ignore it. To their own peril.

Vitamin D deficiency, on the other hand, is strictly the fault of the medical profession. Even though it is well known that Covid-19 strikes harder at those who are VitD deficient (especially people with darker pigmented skin), do you see or hear the medical profession, dermatologists especially, changing their message? IMO dermatologists in particular are very culpable here because of their mantra of "put on sunscreen before going out in the sun", though sun on the skin can produce VitC.

The medical profession as a whole is culpable for never promoting to the general public the many health benefits of VitD.

Just my 2c.
 
You lost me at 6min read :)
You aren't fooling me for a second. You have way more attention span that that - when you want.

I always read voraciously. I even read a bunch of the threads on the site that El Capitan quoted from. And when someone tells me I don't understand something, I don't fire back a snowflake insult, I actually go and read as much as I can. If I am wrong about something, I admit it. Most of the time I end up understanding more about the other perspective on issues that are not black and white (not being racist :)). I generally don't change my mind in that case, but understanding of perspectives is important to rational points of view and decisions.

Sorry, probably lost you at "attention span";)
 
Last edited:
To some medical experts type 2 diabetes is the most preventable disease. Totally up to the individual whether they get it or not. This is not a secret. Everyone in the US has heard it. Some choose to ignore it. To their own peril.

Vitamin D deficiency, on the other hand, is strictly the fault of the medical profession. Even though it is well known that Covid-19 strikes harder at those who are VitD deficient (especially people with darker pigmented skin), do you see or hear the medical profession, dermatologists especially, changing their message? IMO dermatologists in particular are very culpable here because of their mantra of "put on sunscreen before going out in the sun", though sun on the skin can produce VitC.

The medical profession as a whole is culpable for never promoting to the general public the many health benefits of VitD.

Just my 2c.

Why would they be proactive in healthcare? That's just not good for business. Ever wonder why chiropractors are shunned by the medical profession? What they can cure and resolve in minutes for a fraction of the cost orthopedic surgeons do for thou$ands of dollars and months of physical therapy and rehab. The "system" would go broke if we actually cured and fixed problems.
 
Why would they be proactive in healthcare? That's just not good for business. Ever wonder why chiropractors are shunned by the medical profession? What they can cure and resolve in minutes for a fraction of the cost orthopedic surgeons do for thou$ands of dollars and months of physical therapy and rehab. The "system" would go broke if we actually cured and fixed problems.

Because prevention.
 
1B990229-3FA6-4744-9D12-22C18993D002.jpeg
 
To some medical experts type 2 diabetes is the most preventable disease. Totally up to the individual whether they get it or not. This is not a secret. Everyone in the US has heard it. Some choose to ignore it. To their own peril.

Vitamin D deficiency, on the other hand, is strictly the fault of the medical profession. Even though it is well known that Covid-19 strikes harder at those who are VitD deficient (especially people with darker pigmented skin), do you see or hear the medical profession, dermatologists especially, changing their message? IMO dermatologists in particular are very culpable here because of their mantra of "put on sunscreen before going out in the sun", though sun on the skin can produce VitC.

The medical profession as a whole is culpable for never promoting to the general public the many health benefits of VitD.

Just my 2c.
We did work for a large Canadian oil company in the winter in the north. They supplied all workers with vitamin D. No idea if it helped people not get sick. Our crew of 160 never had a sick day.
 
Article makes some good points. But probably some ethical questions with regard to forced exposure after the vaccine. But once they had enough data for the risk profiles -- ie; young and healthy have good odds, they could have gotten it done. But I think the big setback would be getting the manufactuirng infrustructure in place to make the millions of doses needed. I do think they could have offered it to the elderly early on to get them out of "jail." If you where 80 and missing your family, an uproven shot just might be worth it. All in all, it was still record pace.
 
Phew, thanks Ollie....my wife don't put up with any racist stuff, I was worried she'd leave me if she saw that post after folks said it was racist. I don't want her to leave...I'd never be able to hook another one like her now that I'm old and feeble. I think I posted this before...this isn't my wife but she used to look like this 50 years ago:)
View attachment 96510
Damn! I see where you got your screen name from then! :D
 
The challenge trial issue is quite a bit more complicated than the author seems to make it out. There have been efforts along those lines. AstraZeneca/Oxford had a plan and was moving towards a trial. The problem was related to how to infect the volunteers. The virus would have to be "grown" and calibrated so as to get meaningful results and that isn't an easy task. It turns out that moving down the standard path of Phase I/II/III (albeit streamlined and with some steps taken in parallel) and letting the subjects get exposed in the wild was just as fast as setting up a challenge. There's also the issue Golfman25 cites: the long pole in the tent is manufacturing the vaccine at scale and those efforts were started almost as soon as the vaccines were invented and are only now starting to produce useful numbers of shots.
 
Pfizer effectiveness is 2 months after second shot?...Moderna is 2 weeks?....
The article is saying that the duration of effectiveness has only been proven as of the date of the last snapshot of the trial data. True, but the indications from the levels of antibodies found indicate the duration will end up being much longer; only time will tell.
I'm a little surprised that the number of "health impact events" is as small as reported. The documentation I've seen has been quite clear in regards to the chance that the vaccine might put a person down for a day as their immune system kicks in.
 
The article is saying that the duration of effectiveness has only been proven as of the date of the last snapshot of the trial data. True, but the indications from the levels of antibodies found indicate the duration will end up being much longer; only time will tell.
I'm a little surprised that the number of "health impact events" is as small as reported. The documentation I've seen has been quite clear in regards to the chance that the vaccine might put a person down for a day as their immune system kicks in.
You would think trials would have given a better picture of effectiveness
 

Forum statistics

Threads
112,944
Messages
1,422,730
Members
60,927
Latest member
Jaguar65
Back
Top