COVID-19 variants from the UK, Brazil and South Africa infecting greater numbers of young people

Yah, the "CCP virus" has mutated into the "UK virus" and has been detected in Michigan.

I suspect Michigan's Governor Cruella De Vil will be shutting down hair salons and indoor dining soon.

Oh, my God! It's the end of the world! Snowflake Jimmy will have to go back to cutting his own hair and eating carryout! Woe! Woe! Woe!

Cindy Hamilton

The good news here is that while the media keeps harping on about a new surge, for the US as a whole, so far there has only been a small blip back up and it doesn't look like the beginning of the two previous surges. There are 5 states that are having serious new surges, but the rest must be declining or at least not increasing.

Speaking of the media harping about the terrible new surge, that puts an end to the Trumpets claims that the media was only covering Covid last year, making a big story of it, to try to screw Trump.

Given where we are at, I think the US will not see a significant new surge, because the vaccine is winning, thanks to responsible people getting it. About 160 mil doses have been given, over 200 mil have been shipped. NJ here, about 40% have been vaccinated. Those are serious numbers that are having an ever increasing effect. If there was a mistake, maybe it was to not vaccinate the 20 year old dummies sooner, because it looks like they are the ones aggressively spreading it.

Try to catch up. Bolsonaro's no-mask no-lockdown policy has created the P2 variant. 90% more infectious and 100% more deadly than the common strains. Our ICUs are full of 30-59 year old victims. And it appears that most vaccines can only partially block it. But stats on that are still being compiled. Not many people here have received 2 doses..... Source: RIGHT WING media here in Brazil(from a recent study published by the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation). HTH []'s

Yes, but good data out of Israel showed that the Pfizer vaccine was 90% effective three weeks after the first shot. Nothing much happened in the first two weeks, then in the third week immunity ramped up. to 90%. The second shot just boosted it a bit more. Moderna is likely similar. So a lot more than 19% have a good deal of protection. And with the above numbers rolling out and supply increasing further the job is rapidly getting done. I doubt we're going to have the widely talked about third surge wave here, but we'll see. I think by June or so we may have more vaccine then people willing to get vaccinated. That remains a serious problem, about half of Republicans say they won't get it and there are plenty of other anti-vaxers too.

What a difference a competent Presidential administration makes. Imagine where we'd be if the previous Prez had been reelected.

You scoff, but if you read Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, you'll see that when the emperor** closed the restaurants and hair salons, it was the turning point for Rome. It's ascendanccy ended within a year and its decline began within 8 years.

I think Sen. McFuddle (KS, Rep.) suggested vaccinating teens and 20's first but in his proposed bill, they had to sign an affidavit that they were stupid. In a poll, some refused to do that, and then equality fanatics complained that the stupid ones would get priority over the sensible ones.

The compromise was that every teen and 20 would take a standardized test, the MCAT, the Maturity Conviction Assessment Test, which would through objective standards decide who was stupid and who wasn't.

But then fiscal hawks said giving the test to so many people was an unnecesary expense, and the government could tell who was stupid and who wasn't just by looking at everyone's Usenet and Facebook posts.

After applying two places and being ignored for months, I got an invitation on a Monday for any day that week, from a private, large hospital. Then they were running 5 days a week at 3 locations, but now I think it's down to two days a week, half a day, at one location.

Then about a month later I got an invitation to go to the State Fairgrounds. Out of curiosity I checked if they still had open slots (Walgreens still sends me email and usually by the time I open the page there are no slots in all of Maryland.) Well in the case of the county (using the state fairgrounds) the invitation came on Monday or Tuesday for two days later. I checked slots and the morning** was pretty full, but starting at 2PM, there were 19 or 21 empty slots for most time slots, each 2 minutes long. (Some slots only had 3 or 4 or none, especially 4:30 iirc, when people who get off work at 4 can arrive.)

So it came to about 1000 empty slots for the day i was invited for.

I chacked the following afternnon and it was down to about 800. Early the next morning, the day of the invitation, and about 800 then also.

I wondered if they would close the webpage, stop making appts. at 8AM or

1. But they sensibly kept it open all days and even at 4 that afternoon, there were about 750 enpty slots. I felt like going again.

Now I suppose for every slot that goes unfilled, they save the vaccine until tomorrow, and they wouldn't have so mnch vaccine, so many available slots on Thursday every slot on Wednesday had been used.

So maybe this says little about vaccine availabilty but it sure seems to say somehting about people's urgency. AFAIK there aren't many jobs where they won't let you take off 2 hours to get a shot, if the alternative is your coming to work sick. Most people in Balt. county have cars or friends with cars, or taxis, and thee is even a light rail station right at the fairgrounds. if you have to take public transportation, at most 90 minutes to get there.

The state fairgrouneds location in Md. was run by Balt. County, but I think the state took over about a week ago. From a distance, I haven't seen any change in operation however.

I hate to think about it. Although the advantage woulud be tha the problem would have been over by last February. Just ask him.