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Platystemon posted:If I were in Australia, and didn’t deal with coronavirus‐infected travellers professionally, I would decline the AstraZeneca vaccine. I am generally 100% on board the train of "we've accomplished something amazing in this country and don't need to worry about the slow vaccine rollout," but characterising it as dickheads making tourism dollarydoos is churlish. There are tens of thousands of Australians still stuck overseas, tens of thousands of separated partners and families, millions of Australians who have family and friends overseas and would like to attend weddings and funerals over the next few years, and those tourism dollars normally support thousands and thousands of jobs. I am 100% in favour of the border closure continuing for some time to come, and only coming down in cautious stages, but we shouldn't be flippant about it. It's a big loving deal. AFAIK AZ is the only vaccine we have the capability to manufacture here and we aren't going to be getting enough of anything else for a while. If I were offered the AZ today I'd take it, no hesitation.
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Apr 30, 2021 10:28
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Helith posted:The number/trend to watch is how many people are getting their first dose compared to second doses. I was curious about this. I got my first shot the week that everyone regardless of age or condition was eligible in my state, and at the local Meijer clinic there was a 10 minute line to check in and another 10 minute line to get the shot. This week, there was no line for checking in or getting a shot. I'm hoping it's mostly a case of less insurance processing (only had to show my vaccination record card this time) and people understanding the process better, but that falls apart when there's limited seating for the 15 minute monitoring period and that wasn't full. It was cool getting poked 3 minutes after arriving though.
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Apr 30, 2021 10:54
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Any facility that can manufacture the Oxford vaccine under licence is capable of manufacturing the Janssen vaccine under licence. The adenovirus is cultured in human cells rather than chimpanzee cells so there it’s a different thing to master, but it’s the same basic process. The rest of the ingredients are pedestrian.quote:The Janssen Ad26.COV2.S vaccine is a colorless to slightly yellow, clear to very opalescent sterile suspension for intramuscular injection. The vaccine consists of a replication-incompetent recombinant adenovirus type 26 (Ad26) vector expressing the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) spike (S) protein in a stabilized conformation. The vaccine also contains the following inactive ingredients: citric acid monohydrate, trisodium citrate dihydrate, ethanol, 2-hydroxypropyl-β-cyclodextrin (HBCD), polysorbate 80, sodium chloride, sodium hydroxide, and hydrochloric acid. Last time I suggested this was before the Jansen bloodclot news, but it’s still a better vaccine even with that, and the gap will only widen as antibody‐resistant strains become increasingly prevalent. Tell Scomo to get on the phone and get it done. Platystemon fucked around with this message at 11:36 on Apr 30, 2021 |
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Apr 30, 2021 11:07
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Platystemon posted:Tell Scomo to get on the phone and get it done. Currently there's only the CSL plant in Broadmeadows making coronavirus vaccines within Australia and they're only capable of making one type of vaccine at a time, so if they wanted to switch from AZ to J&J they'd have to shut down production completely for however long it took to retool the entire factory. Also we've only got provisional approval for AZ and Pfizer currently so even if they started making J&J we couldn't actually stick it in any arms yet, and of course we can't even manufacture an mRNA vaccine like Pfizer here. (The Vic gov just assigned $50 million towards mRNA production but it'll take 12 months to get all that up and running.) We've got a deal for 51 million doses of Novavax for "mid 2021" but that also hasn't been provisionally approved yet and ScoMo doesn't have a great track record of getting vaccines delivered when he promised they would be so we'll have to wait and see when they turn up.
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Apr 30, 2021 11:25
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To be clear, I know that it would be selfish of hypothetical Australian me to not take the Oxford vaccine. The thing is that there are a lot of people out there at least as selfish as I am in this matter. We have to get them to present their arms somehow, whether with the carrot or the stick. In a country that has wild coronavirus, that alone is a strong incentive to get a vaccine, but at this point, there is nothing on offer for Australians. I have zero confidence that if I took the Oxford vaccine today, that would be considered sufficient for travel, officially or unofficially, by year’s end. When the Detroit mayor rejected the Janssen vaccine, I advanced the point that when it comes down to it, it doesn’t matter if the vaccine is just as good as Moderna’s and Pfizer’s. If the people of Detroit don’t believe it’s as good, it behooves the mayor to get what his constituents want. Perhaps it is ironic than since then, the Janssen vaccine has proven to be not entirely safe, and here I am arguing that it’s the better option for Australia. Snowglobe of Doom posted:Currently there's only the CSL plant in Broadmeadows making coronavirus vaccines within Australia and they're only capable of making one type of vaccine at a time, so if they wanted to switch from AZ to J&J they'd have to shut down production completely for however long it took to retool the entire factory. I’m saying that this is going to have to be done sooner or later, and it may as well be sooner. Taking that month or whatever now, then churning out however many million million Janssen doses is better than doing some Oxford, then having a changeover, then doing some Janssen. Not only are you getting more effective vaccine, but in all likelihood you’re getting more total doses because they’re doing the same process for longer and have more time to optimize it. Platystemon fucked around with this message at 11:44 on Apr 30, 2021 |
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Apr 30, 2021 11:37
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jokes posted:Yeah this tracks with my experiences too. They regularly think themselves to know more than the doctors too which is weird since doctors are also notorious for thinking they're smart in everything. I wonder if this is because they also meet so many people who are Just So Sure that what they have is <thing> because they read it on the internet or something, so they're constantly reminded of how they always know more than the average person and as such carry that into everything else?
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Apr 30, 2021 12:31
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Oh man I feel so much better than yesterday!! I still don't want to do this yearly though.
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Apr 30, 2021 12:40
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Picnic Princess posted:We broke records today Kenney really is the worst. Ummm trade Alberta for uhh....Minnesota? Let's do it USA
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Apr 30, 2021 13:12
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stab posted:Kenney really is the worst. Nah Minnesota is cool May we offer the Dakotas, with Wyoming thrown in as a bonus?
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Apr 30, 2021 13:15
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You can’t just give away Yellowstone.
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Apr 30, 2021 13:17
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Actuarial Fables posted:It was cool getting poked 3 minutes after arriving though. Call me.
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Apr 30, 2021 13:28
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Ugly In The Morning posted:There are a lot, LOT of stupid nurses, just like most fields have stupid people. An urgent care LPN isn’t going to have critical patients or likely even hear directly about them since they don’t really interact with ER/ICU nurses and is also exactly the demographic that will buy into the essential oils thing and other woo bullshit. Yup. I heard through the grapevine that a former nurse friend of mine has been flippant about the whole pandemic and saying everyone should just get sick, it’s just the flu. She was also gathering with large groups of people the entire time. Nurses can be particularly bad because they know just enough about medicine to think they’re infallible. There are some great nurses out there for sure, but the bad ones can be remarkably so. My husband works for the College of Registered Nurses and the organization has fortunately been really cautious about Covid. He’s been working from home for over a year now with no plans for opening the office again anytime soon.
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Apr 30, 2021 13:36
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I bet Chaplains are busy right now .. Additionally, does the issue of Australia's border closures have a specific thread devoted to it? would like to read more about that Sjs00 fucked around with this message at 14:34 on Apr 30, 2021 |
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Apr 30, 2021 14:31
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You can't just switch between Oxford and Janssen vaccines that easily, to retool the CSL plant would probably be at least three months of hard work and the difference in effectiveness is probably fairly minimal. It's one of the big bonuses of mRNA vaccines that you can pretty much wash out the machines, change some fittings and software and you're good to go making a different vaccine. What they should be doing is building a parallel production capacity for Janssen using the resources and expertise they already have but that would take gov funding which isn't appearing. Also while adenovirus vaccines aren't as insanely hard to make as mRNA vaccines they are still quite challenging to produce at scale. Just look at the massive issues Sputnik v is having with competent/non competent adenovirus in their batches to the point where Brazil, one of the worst hit countries in the world has rejected using the Sputnik v vaccine.
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Apr 30, 2021 15:10
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I work with nursing students, and I can tell you a lot of them are dumb as poo poo and are only becoming nurses because they know it will be an easy path to steady work. Or in other words, they don't know what to do with themselves, so they picked the option that means they don't have to think about it. One of them wrote a paper arguing that experience was not necessary for knowledge, and her supporting evidence was that she once had "a feeling" about something and it turned out to be right, so we "just know" things and that's good enough for her (thereby arguing that practice and experience is not necessary to become a nurse. You can just do that poo poo on intuition alone). That's the level of critical thinking that some of them have. (I have no idea if that one graduated. I hope not, but I suspect yes...) They have to write a paper for an ethics class and some of the arguments they pick are enlightening in all the wrong ways, man. Now, I am NOT saying that all nurses or nursing students are incapable of critical thinking (although most of the fantastic ones I've worked with went on to med school  ), but the availability of guaranteed work is pretty appealing to people who otherwise have no plans or skills.
Tagra fucked around with this message at 16:01 on Apr 30, 2021 |
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Apr 30, 2021 15:48
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24 hours after 2nd Pfizer dose and so far not too bad. Some fatigue, a real minor headache, and the injection site is sore. Felt a little hot yesterday but that passed in a few hours. Feels like at this rate I'll be sunshine and rainbows in a few days.
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Apr 30, 2021 16:29
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While I personally find vaccine hesitancy real dumb, I also can't really find much fault with people being confused and concerned about safety. Public messaging throughout the course of the entire pandemic has been muddled and contradictory, and trying to keep abreast of Covid and vaccine news is almost a full time job these days. I know some otherwise very smart people who had concerns about getting vaccinated simply due to the accelerated timeline (thankfully it was pretty easy to allay those fears by explaining how that acceleration was accomplished and what it likely meant in terms of safety). It's worth remembering that the regulars in this thread are probably better informed about vaccine safety and efficacy than the average public by an order of magnitude.
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Apr 30, 2021 18:16
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If only actual medical staff and other professionals who’ve dedicated their lives to healthcare could be as smart as mouthy goons that just months ago were shrieking that masks don’t work lol.
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Apr 30, 2021 18:23
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sad but true
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Apr 30, 2021 18:27
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Bape Culture posted:If only actual medical staff and other professionals who’ve dedicated their lives to healthcare could be as smart as mouthy goons that just months ago were shrieking that masks don’t work lol. I just want a zorb bubble I can roll around in with a full air purification system attached to it.
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Apr 30, 2021 18:32
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Bape Culture posted:If only actual medical staff and other professionals who’ve dedicated their lives to healthcare could be as smart as mouthy goons that just months ago were shrieking that masks don’t work lol. Not sure if this was directed at me, but I've never made any claims about masks not working, and I've been consistently masked up since the start of this mess. I *did* complain at some length about how lovely the messaging from the CDC and WHO regarding mask usage was though, and how ridiculous it was that the WHO only stopped claiming that the general public should NOT wear masks in July of 2020. That still boggles my mind. E: June of 2020, not July. But still. Castaign fucked around with this message at 05:02 on May 1, 2021 |
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Apr 30, 2021 18:37
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Bape Culture posted:If only actual medical staff and other professionals who’ve dedicated their lives to healthcare could be as smart as mouthy goons that just months ago were shrieking that masks don’t work lol. goons and nurses have in common that they think the dunning-kruger effect explains how they're so much smarter than everyone else, but it's actually saying they're dumber than they think they are
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Apr 30, 2021 18:57
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stab posted:Kenney really is the worst. Maybe Wisconsin? We could get the RLM guys
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Apr 30, 2021 19:05
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Castaign posted:While I personally find vaccine hesitancy real dumb, I also can't really find much fault with people being confused and concerned about safety. Public messaging throughout the course of the entire pandemic has been muddled and contradictory, and trying to keep abreast of Covid and vaccine news is almost a full time job these days. I know some otherwise very smart people who had concerns about getting vaccinated simply due to the accelerated timeline (thankfully it was pretty easy to allay those fears by explaining how that acceleration was accomplished and what it likely meant in terms of safety). I would like to know a little more about this. Don't get me wrong, I believe in the vaccine and getting my second jab in a couple of weeks but I have also seen some people hm and haw on twitter over this. I know that the mRNA vaccines have been put out due to a CDC (FDA?) emergency order, which entailed I think was a 8 month testing period (this is off the top of my head so forgive me if it is wrong), and they basically ruled the benefits outweighed the risks, so while they are not approved, it is probably as close as you are going to get to it in these extraordinary circumstances. And I heard that mRNA vaccines have been in the works for some time and they only pivoted to COVID once the outbreak was in full swing.
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Apr 30, 2021 19:30
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Unlucky7 posted:I would like to know a little more about this. Don't get me wrong, I believe in the vaccine and getting my second jab in a couple of weeks but I have also seen some people hm and haw on twitter over this. Here's an article in Nature published in 2018 on the development of mRNA vaccines, if that helps: https://www.nature.com/articles/nrd.2017.243
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Apr 30, 2021 19:49
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OMFG FURRY posted:they were refusing it based on lack of testing which makes sense when you consider how long medical trials normally go on for i think everyone at my hospital who said "oh im gonna wait and see" plans to keep on waiting until it's mandatory for keeping their job.
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Apr 30, 2021 20:58
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quote:until it's mandatory for keeping their job.
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Apr 30, 2021 21:09
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Castaign posted:Not sure if this was directed at me, but I've never made any claims about masks not working, and I've been consistently masked up since the start of this mess. Hippie Hedgehog made multiple claims about how ineffective masks are but they are Swedish, uh not the best source for pandemic advice unless you want to kill your grandparents. The CDC's messaging has ranged from incorrect, to contradictory, or just needlessly confusing, about pretty much everything. Also, many people seem intent on drawing the conclusions they like the best from the information they are provided so when the CDC posts new confusing guidance Like this:  What they see is: 
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Apr 30, 2021 22:02
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Good to see the Gamepro review face is getting work again. 
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Apr 30, 2021 22:27
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I’ve had my second dose for a while now and it cannot be overstated how much of a mental/emotional burden the vaccine lifted. I still regularly sanitize my hands and mask in public setting but the sense of dread that comes with masking up when I enter a store is gone. I’m not constantly worried about being the unlucky gently caress with a mask that still catches it. My whole team got fully vaccinated, my boss is fully vaccinated, almost everyone I work with daily is fully vaccinated. Right now the only person I interact with regularly that isn’t vaccinated is my daughter (hopefully this fall). I’m on a two week business trip and just complete chill about it. Last time I flew during Covid I was freaking out internally the whole time. This time was just so much better. This is the least stressed I’ve been in months. I didn’t realize how bad it was until today.
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Apr 30, 2021 22:27
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lo carb Lo Pan posted:Good to see the Gamepro review face is getting work again. God that hits a nostalgia bone
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Apr 30, 2021 22:30
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So is anyone here actually an epidemiologist or virologist
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Apr 30, 2021 22:40
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Fabricated posted:So is anyone here actually an epidemiologist or virologist Mostly just armchair eschatologists.
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Apr 30, 2021 22:45
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Ugly In The Morning posted:Mostly just armchair eschatologists. 
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Apr 30, 2021 22:46
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Snowglobe of Doom posted:Currently there's only the CSL plant in Broadmeadows making coronavirus vaccines within Australia and they're only capable of making one type of vaccine at a time, so if they wanted to switch from AZ to J&J they'd have to shut down production completely for however long it took to retool the entire factory. Also we've only got provisional approval for AZ and Pfizer currently so even if they started making J&J we couldn't actually stick it in any arms yet, and of course we can't even manufacture an mRNA vaccine like Pfizer here. (The Vic gov just assigned $50 million towards mRNA production but it'll take 12 months to get all that up and running.) We've got a deal for 51 million doses of Novavax for "mid 2021" but that also hasn't been provisionally approved yet and ScoMo doesn't have a great track record of getting vaccines delivered when he promised they would be so we'll have to wait and see when they turn up. Victoria is also looking at building a 500 bed quarantine facility starting in September. You don't do that unless you expect an ongoing need for quarantine facilities well into the future.
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Apr 30, 2021 23:10
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The Australian government has finally solved the problem of returned travelers sneaking back from India! They haven't actually figured out how to physically stop them coming into the country because hey border control is tricky, amirite????? (Unless they're refugees in leaky boats, of course. We'll pump billions towards stopping those.) So instead of stopping people flying in from a pandemic hotspot, they're just threatening to fine/imprison anyone that get through. quote:Australians stuck in COVID-ravaged India could face up to five years in jail and heavy fines if they breach a travel ban to return home. Huh, who knew you can stop a virus via financial disincentives PORBLEM SOLVED E: I can just imagine the LNP's eyes lighting up when they realised they could wheel out their old standby solution "Blame brownskinned people fleeing from a humanitarian crisis for all our problems and throw them in a cage" instead of actually getting off their rear end and doing something proactive and constructive towards an ongoing crisis Snowglobe of Doom posted:(The Vic gov just assigned $50 million towards mRNA production but it'll take 12 months to get all that up and running.) Lolie posted:Victoria is also looking at building a 500 bed quarantine facility starting in September. You don't do that unless you expect an ongoing need for quarantine facilities well into the future. They asked the fed government for some  and Dutton went "But hotel quarantine has worked great so far, why would we fund this?????!??????" which once again really highlights the huge gap between the federal government response and the Vic government response
Snowglobe of Doom fucked around with this message at 01:44 on May 1, 2021 |
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May 1, 2021 01:34
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Australia's done a world class job of battling covid hasn't it? There are lots and lots and lots of places that haven't and need vaccines much more. The reward for doing a good job on covid is the past year of there not being covid and all the people who are alive and in good health instead of dead or ill.
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May 1, 2021 01:52
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hakimashou posted:Australia's done a world class job of battling covid hasn't it? There are lots and lots and lots of places that haven't and need vaccines much more. Yep, but ever since Australia smashed local cases back down to zero we've kept having close calls and quarantine mishaps and short term emergency lockdowns and detection scares. Just yesterday we had a traveler who returned via the NZ travel bubble who'd only just entered NZ without quarantining (which is a breach of the bubble) and a few days before that we had an alert here in Melbourne when we suddenly detected 'strong and unexpected' traces of covid in the wastewater, etc etc etc.. Our safety net has constant leaks and poo poo could pop off again at any moment, it's crazy that we worked so hard to get back to 'normal' and now we're sitting back and relaxing and the federal government is acting like a toddler refusing to eat its vegetables when the states ask for funding towards increasing preventative measures.
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May 1, 2021 02:20
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Blitter posted:Hippie Hedgehog made multiple claims about how ineffective masks are but they are Swedish, uh not the best source for pandemic advice unless you want to kill your grandparents. Can I eat inside a restaurant? Doesn't that necessitate, ya know, taking the mask off?
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May 1, 2021 02:34
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I was fine with banning direct flights from India - there's about 100 or more countries in the world which don't currently have direct flights, so it's hardly discriminatory - but making it illegal is loving nuts. It's not even a straight up indefinite ban - it's for people who've been in India in the last two weeks - but that in itself is basically saying you want another country to shoulder the risk of that two weeks of quarantine if Australians in India manage to get out and then want to fly in from elsewhere. It reminds me of when Western countries strip dual citizens who went off to fight ISIS of their Western citizenship - sorry Iraq or Syria or Bangladesh or Egypt, this extremist who is too dangerous to let back into Britain or Australia is your problem now! Snowglobe of Doom posted:Yep, but ever since Australia smashed local cases back down to zero we've kept having close calls and quarantine mishaps and short term emergency lockdowns and detection scares. Just yesterday we had a traveler who returned via the NZ travel bubble who'd only just entered NZ without quarantining (which is a breach of the bubble) and a few days before that we had an alert here in Melbourne when we suddenly detected 'strong and unexpected' traces of covid in the wastewater, etc etc etc.. Our safety net has constant leaks and poo poo could pop off again at any moment, it's crazy that we worked so hard to get back to 'normal' and now we're sitting back and relaxing and the federal government is acting like a toddler refusing to eat its vegetables when the states ask for funding towards increasing preventative measures. The occasional lockdowns and border closures are a goddamn nuisance, but stuff isn't going to take off again the way it did in Melbourne last winter. We have learned and changed too much of our systems for that to be possible, and we don' have one safety net, we have multiple safety nets. The regular quarantine breaches are actually an example of that: every single one of them has been caught, traced, and we've gone back to normal within weeks at the worst. The Avalon cluster over Christmas peaked at 30 cases in a day and NSW was still back to zero in, what, a month?
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May 1, 2021 03:27
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