COVID-19 Outbreak Information Updates (Reboot) [over 150.000,000 US cases (est.), 6,422,520 US hospitilizations, 1,148,691 US deaths.] (5 Viewers)

I don't know if any of this is being covered in the US media, but we're gradually getting a better picture of the B.1.617.2 variant (the one first seen in India), and it's not a disaster, but it's not ideal either.

John Burn-Murdoch on twitter has a good overview of the current picture. A few of the key points:

Cases are rising in the UK:



B.1.1.7 (UK variant) has been falling, B.1.617.2, rising (B.1.617.2 is now dominant in the UK):




But, the cases are staying low in the fully vaccinated groups (and deaths are following accordingly):



Summary:



And note that other countries are likely to see this too:




Initial indications are that vaccination is very effective (not 100%, but very high) against hospitalisation, so that's good:



The general picture seems to be that B.1.617.2 is more transmissible than B.1.1.7, but vaccinations are still effective. I've seen some modelling for UK that predicts, with the measures still in place, we'd see a modest rise. But if we fully unlock in June (as is currently planned), the modelling indicates we could see a very large rise as this variant runs wild in the not fully vaccinated population, and this could still cause problems for healthcare (as, while a lower proportion of younger people will be hospitalised, a small proportion of a very large number can still be a large number).

My conclusion is get vaccinated, keep an eye in the situation in your area, and if cases are rising, keep taking sensible precautions.
 
No. The extra unemployment doesn't really factor for most of them, if you read all that. I think you'd have a better understanding if you read the article.

It's that they have better jobs, more stable hours, bosses, etc. But those folks likely aren't coming back.

So the leverage is the feeding frenzy on the folks that are still out there, that's why they're offering bonuses in some cases. A $3000 bonus is a lot better than a few more weeks of $300/week.

This might squeeze out some smaller places, as the big guys go crazy fighting over the talent pool.

Everyone else who is hiring (like businesses that have mostly chugged along, or got a little leaner) have found that openings don't have enough people applying, because they don't exist for what they're asking for, or they're already working and not willing to leave for chump change.
@jrdbrn

Something else I didn't realize until today. It was snuck in this article about a beach restaurant temporarily closing.

There are only 150k Floridians collecting unemployment. There are approximately 500,000 jobs out there. There's approx 487,000 who are unemployed right now.

So, that tells me, it's not just the extra benefits (which were just cancelled) that's the issue. A lot of it is the age old issue of talent matching. The rest is people see there are options.

 
My son's school quarantined his entire class today for a week. Didn't know they were still doing that.
 
Well there you go. Of course they'd still quarantine and stuff. None of them are vaccinated.

Sure, risk is a lot lower with kids, but tell that to their parents. Most don't want it to be 'their kid'.
 
Well there you go. Of course they'd still quarantine and stuff. None of them are vaccinated.

Sure, risk is a lot lower with kids, but tell that to their parents. Most don't want it to be 'their kid'.

Interesting enough, none of the kids came to their parents with their masks on. It's obvious they are just following state guidelines because they have to.
 
New variant in Vietnam appears to be a hybrid of B117 and B167 (UK and India). Highly contagious.

B.1.167.2 is already looking bad enough by itself.

It does look like vaccines are a bit less effective against symptomatic disease with that variant compared to B117 (https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.22.21257658v1 - note, this study is a preprint):

Effectiveness was notably lower after 1 dose of vaccine with B.1.617.2 cases 33.5% (95%CI: 20.6 to 44.3) compared to B.1.1.7 cases 51.1% (95%CI: 47.3 to 54.7) with similar results for both vaccines. With BNT162b2 2 dose effectiveness reduced from 93.4% (95%CI: 90.4 to 95.5) with B.1.1.7 to 87.9% (95%CI: 78.2 to 93.2) with B.1.617.2. With ChAdOx1 2 dose effectiveness reduced from 66.1% (95% CI: 54.0 to 75.0) with B.1.1.7 to 59.8% (95%CI: 28.9 to 77.3) with B.1.617.2. Sequenced cases detected after 1 or 2 doses of vaccination had a higher odds of infection with B.1.617.2 compared to unvaccinated cases (OR 1.40; 95%CI: 1.13-1.75).​
Not what you want, but as the paper says, it's only a modest difference after two doses.

However, as I understand it, the problem is with that and a variant being more transmissible, population immunity requires a higher proportion of the population to be fully vaccinated. As, e.g. this letter to the BMJ (https://www.bmj.com/content/373/bmj.n1346/rr) outlines:

It seems that the Indian variant of the virus is likely to become the dominant one in the UK. For this variant, recent figures [1] from the PHE estimate Vaccine Efficiency, VE, after second dose of vaccine to be around 60% for the AZ vaccine and around 88% for the Pfizer vaccine. Taking the average of 74% as a very rough estimation of VE would indicate that to achieve population immunity would require vaccine uptake of roughly 81% for R0 = 2.5; or roughly 98% for R0 =3.6 (in the case where 50% higher transmissibility of the Indian variant puts R0 50% higher). Clearly, if it is necessary to give two doses of vaccine to between 81% and 98% of the population in order to achieve population immunity then this will be difficult to do, and we haven’t got there yet.​
With 'vaccine hesitancy', that could be tough to reach at all. And meanwhile, as it keeps circulating, more variants arising becomes more likely. Hopefully this variant identified in Vietnam isn't any worse than B167 is. But whether it is or not, it really needs to be emphasised to people who haven't got vaccinated yet that yes, there really is a need for it.

This is also causing a fair bit of debate here in the UK, because the current plan is to lift pretty much all restrictions on June 21st, and it's looking increasingly likely that might be bad. We're supposed to be 'following the data', so hopefully we do.
 
Well, you'd think they all got vaccinated. If not, may be their own fault.
We have some that fall under the Gates microchip/change DNA/mark of the devil going to hell/made up liberal conspiracy at my work that haven’t and won’t get the vaccine. Of course interestingly they are also wanting to stay away from kids, continue distance, have no one come in their rooms. I’ve gotten on their bad side because I remind them they need to own their choices and get back to work or find a new job. Not paying too salary for make work.
 
We have some that fall under the Gates microchip/change DNA/mark of the devil going to hell/made up liberal conspiracy at my work that haven’t and won’t get the vaccine. Of course interestingly they are also wanting to stay away from kids, continue distance, have no one come in their rooms. I’ve gotten on their bad side because I remind them they need to own their choices and get back to work or find a new job. Not paying too salary for make work.

I'm fine staying away from kids. Nasty things.
 
Interesting enough, none of the kids came to their parents with their masks on. It's obvious they are just following state guidelines because they have to.
I don't see what that has to do with the point I made.
 

Create an account or login to comment

You must be a member in order to leave a comment

Create account

Create an account on our community. It's easy!

Log in

Already have an account? Log in here.

Users who are viewing this thread

    Back
    Top Bottom