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3 hours later…
4:50 AM
It will take a further 120 days for Russia to reach a level of 50% of total population vaccinated.
Thus, even in December there will be risk of an outbreak.
 
5:25 AM
> "For example, suppose you are standing next to a poster of your face, and someone takes your photo. The new photo contains your face twice—once in the poster and once beside it," says Dr. Kingstone. "Both faces are just different regions of the same photo, but people perceive the photo within the poster as being more removed from reality and having less capacity to experience feelings or make plans.
 
5:51 AM
 
6:28 AM
@CowperKettle A Belarussian Olympiad woman refused to board her return flight from Tokyo and is trying to get political refugee status in the Polish embassy. She has criticized the regime in Belarus. (The athletes are required to leave 48 hours after their last event.)
The San Francisco Bay Area is now requiring masks again.
The area is the probably the most vaccinated in the world, at 85 percent of adults.
 
7:19 AM
@CowperKettle so, if I understand statistics correctly (and I don't) running around in a thunderstorm reduces my chances of clotting from an AstraZeneca vaccine
 
 
1 hour later…
8:49 AM
@MattE.Эллен If you get struck by lightning, probably.
 
9:00 AM
Whatever works!
2
 
@Xanne Yes, a very famous case. She was threatened by her thuggish Belarusian overseers. She did well by defecting. And, thank God, her family managed to flee Belarus.
 
 
2 hours later…
10:54 AM
 
 
2 hours later…
12:34 PM
> Icefish blood is colorless because it lacks hemoglobin, the oxygen-binding protein in blood.[2][8] Channichthyidae are the only known vertebrates to lack hemoglobin as adults. Although they do not manufacture hemoglobin, remnants of hemoglobin genes can be found in their genome
 
@CowperKettle Oh deer.
2
 
I have been put on the revaccination queue, and scheduled for revaccination on August 16. Provided there is vaccine available.
 
1:31 PM
@Xanne Why would you think that was 'the most vaccinated in the world'?
@CowperKettle Not her parents, I believe.
 
2:02 PM
@Cerberus Ah. I hope they also flee later
One could probably put one of the Columbus' carracks on top and across this stern
Yes, Santa Maria had a length of 20 m, while the beam (widest width) of the Typhoon is 23 m.
 
@CowperKettle I doubt whether they can.
But perhaps I am confusing different political refugees.
 
2:42 PM
> As Russia persecutes Putin’s enemies for dubious lockdown violations, some of Russia Today’s audience begins to suspect that the brave new world waiting for them in Moscow isn’t the libertarian paradise they’ve been promised.
Liubov Sobol was sentenced today to 1.5 years of house arrest for alleged violation of covid rules.
She is an opposition politician.
This is so blatantly staged. Putin held a stadium rally at the start of the year, nobody was procesuted of course.
St Pete's governor held a huge celebration in late spring, with the city flooded with people, again no procesution.
So it's blatantly clear that the authorities are using any pretext to bar the opposition from running in elections. They passed laws that you cannot run in an election if you are under any kind of sentence.
Today three persons from the Yabloko party were taken off the candidate lists for invented violations of protocol. A missing signature here, a wrong number there.
As the Duma election draws near, more and more people are taken off the run.
It's 45 days from now.
 
3:27 PM
A design has been proposed for a vaccine that would work against all variants of covid science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2021/08/03/science.abj3321
 
@CowperKettle This may not bode well for Putin's vaccination strategy...
If you feed your people distrust, it may come back to bite you.
@CowperKettle Sounds excellent.
If it works, it will no doubt take a while, though.
However, I feel that the epidemic may have greatly accelerated vaccine science and development in general.
In Greek mythology, the Gargareans, or Gargarenses, (Greek: Γαργαρείς Gargareis) were an all-male tribe. They copulated with the Amazons annually in order to keep both tribes reproductive. Varying accounts suggest that they may have been kidnapped, raped, and murdered for this purpose, or that they may have had relations willingly. The Amazons kept the female children, raising them as warriors, and gave the males to the Gargareans.The Gargareans are held by some historians to be a component of the ancestry of the Nakh peoples, and equivalent or at least related to the Georgian name Dzurdzuks...
 
4:17 PM
Independent candidate Savva Fedoseyev has been trying to submit his documents for registration for running in the elections. The committee refused to open the door. After the working hours run out, a Committee member went out the door and said that since it's after hours, he will not accept documents for registration.
Just like that.
They could not come up with a plausible reason not to register an independent candidate, so they just waited till the end of the day.
What can people do against it?
Ah. He only arrived there 20 minutes before the end of the working day.
But the security guard at the entry refused the group to enter.
> In 1917, when he was 11, Great-grandpa Raymond “Bud” Burleigh ran away from home in Omaha, Nebraska, to join the Army and fight the Germans. He claimed he was 20 years old. Army recruiters believed him, but his mother discovered where he’d gone and rushed down with proof that he was only 11. Bud was undeterred.
> He eventually eluded his mother, claiming to recruiters that he was 20-year-old Fred De Reaux — a name he came up with after seeing a car called the De Reaux on the way to the recruitment office.
 
4:46 PM
@CowperKettle: You probably already saw this, but wow. ^
 
@Robusto Yes, he went for a jog. It was clearly the work of Lukashenko's secret service.
 
I guess subtlety isn't Lukashenko's strong suit.
 
Putin's propagandists are already at full tilt, muddying the water, saying that it was Ukrainian Nazis who did this as a false-flag operation, etc. etc.
 
Yeah. Just like the terrorists who attacked our Capitol on January 6 were actually "antifa" ...
 
Data from 5 million young people shows incidence of eating disorders has increased staggeringly during the pandemic (+15% vs. 2019) and patients' outcomes have worsened.
In the British Journal of Psychiatry, 27 July
 
5:56 PM
In Britain?
That's not good.
@Robusto Now, terrorists is a big word.
 
@Cerberus What would you call them?
 
@Robusto Something between insurrectionists, vandals, attackers, and looters?
 
@Cerberus In short, terrorists.
 
I don't think their main purpose was to instil fear in the population by targeting civilians with violence (a definition of terrorism).
 
@Cerberus If they weren't terrorists, they'll do until the actual terrorists get here.
 
6:02 PM
I think the term terrorism should not be watered down.
What happened was nothing like the Twin Towers.
It was just a different kind of act.
 
The ones hired by the CIA.
 
With a different motivation, and a different organisation.
 
Or, at least, on their pay roll.
 
CIA?
 
Central intelligence
Agency
Recall bin laden
Re: Twin towers
 
6:07 PM
@Cerberus I'm not watering it down.
The difference between this and 9/11 is degree, not kind.
 
Same motivation?
Does the definition fit?
 
Does the definition require death?
 
You can call it what you want. I call it terrorism.
 
Bully-ism
 
"Hey, Nancy Pelosi? We're comin' for you, bitch! We're comin' for you too, fucking traitor!"
Is that not calculated to terrorize?
 
6:13 PM
Sure, if you are easily frightened.
and it depends on how much you believe what you see on the net
as the rioters did
The bottom line is their leader got away, again.
 
6:30 PM
@user178758 Yes.
 
@user178758 Nope!
Just violence, or perhaps even just the threat of it.
@Robusto Isn't any attack or murder or violent crime involving a threat calculated to terrorise?
What's your definition of terrorism?
Many discussions require agreeing on definitions first.
3
 
@Cerberus No.
 
Agreed.
 
23 mins ago, by Robusto
You can call it what you want. I call it terrorism.
 
Mock terrorism?
Mockery or mocking is the act of insulting or making light of a person or other thing, sometimes merely by taunting, but often by making a caricature, purporting to engage in imitation in a way that highlights unflattering characteristics. Mockery can be done in a lighthearted and gentle way, but can also be cruel and hateful, such that it "conjures images of corrosion, deliberate degradation, even subversion; thus, 'to laugh at in contempt, to make sport of' (OED)". Mockery appears to be unique to humans, and serves a number of psychological functions, such as reducing the perceived imbalance...
 
6:45 PM
@user178758 Pretty fuckin' far from that.
 
 
3 hours later…
9:54 PM
@tchrist: 478 new cases in NM today. 94 were in a correctional facility, which is probably an aggregate report, but still ...
 
@Robusto The tide is still rising. It may not turn before October, if then.
 
Yeesh.
 
This virus continues to do things we never expect. But it also continues to do things we certainly did expect. For insufficient values of we.
@Robusto We only had twice that. Usually we have thrice yours.
 
Infections have been going down and down here for weeks.
 
It's hard to tell what's happening here in the aggregate across the country on a day to day basis because of reporting disparities.
But apparently some places have hospital situations that are as bad as they've ever been, and then some. There are also anecdotal reports that there are a lot more young people being committed to those.
 
10:08 PM
Hmm.
 
Vaccine uptake among twenty-somethings is rather worse than among sixty-somethings.
 
I hear various employers are enforcing vaccination in your country?
 
I have no big-picture data for this. I've only read and heard reports from the folks in the thick of it in hospital covid wards.
@Cerberus Only a few here and there.
 
Hospitalisations seem to have stabilised again here.
At a fairly low level.
@tchrist I read about various large computer companies, and the government?
 
@Cerberus We're at around 50,000 daily, and rising.
@Cerberus Federal employees, yes.
 
10:12 PM
Is that new hospitalisations?
Or the number of people currently in hospital?
@tchrist That must be a large number of people?
I'm sure you'll make the turn as well!
 
@Cerberus Not really. Something like 1.8M civilians.
> State epidemiologist Dr. Rachel Herlihy said Colorado documented 2,074 cases, 92 hospitalizations and three deaths among fully vaccinated residents from July 1 to July 24. The unvaccinated accounted for 80 percent of cases, 87 percent of hospitalizations and 92 percent of deaths.

So in other words, breakthrough cases for just those three weeks represented about 20 percent of cases, 13 percent of hospitalizations and 8 percent of deaths. For the period Jan. 1 through July 24, breakthrough cases in the state represented a smaller share of the pandemic burden: just three percent of cases, f
 
I do not believe we are seeing that here.
And we have had the Indian variant for longer.
 
> A vaccine that was 80 percent effective at preventing infection would be considered a tremendous success. But the 20 percent breakthrough figure also comes as an unexplained surprise and far exceeds anything seen throughout the pandemic, in Colorado or other states reporting their breakthrough case numbers.
 
I don't recall reading about any deaths amongst the vaccinated.
 
Oh yes.
 
10:16 PM
Here, I mean.
 
Dead men tell no tales?
 
?
 
Maybe it just has not been reported.
Right now 95.5% of cases are of the most transmissible strain here.
So many bodies for mutations to happen in.
 
We have maybe 5 deaths daily.
I assume almost everyone infected is either young or vaccinated.
I think it would have been a news item if anybody infected had died.
 
Our 7-day average is over 300 daily deaths.
Nationally, not just this state.
 
10:20 PM
Oh, we had zero deaths yesterday.
 
People had been hoping that the previous ratio and lag from cases to hospitalizations and hospitalizations and deaths would not hold. Hopes haven't held there though, because we're getting the same lay and volume of hospitalizations as before, so deaths will surely track behind that.
It's in part because most, but not all, of the hospitalization cases are among the unvaccinated.
So the old relations would naturally hold if the lethality also held.
 
Of all newly hospitalised Corona patients from 12 to 18 July, 9% were fully vaccinated.
 
There?
 
In Holland.
 
Right.
Pretty sure all this means that people can't pretend it's gone away.
 
10:24 PM
Research is ongoing as to whether those people had severe underlying afflictions that put them at increased risk.
@tchrist They have held here!
 
How would that change public or personal policy one way or the other?
@Cerberus Unfortunately.
 
Hospitalisations did increase some weeks after infections, but at a far lower level than during the previous wave. And certainly deaths have remained minimal.
@tchrist I mean hopes have held.
We shall see what happens in September, if and when nightclubs and large festivals reopen and bars are allowed to stay open after midnight again.
And people become less frightened.
 
Hospitalizations are really bad in some states, ok in others.
 
> "Het kan ook gaan om een slechtere antistofrespons op vaccinatie en het coronavirus bij sommige personen. Daar loopt al onderzoek naar, onder andere in het Erasmus MC waar sinds deze week bij elke opgenomen covid-19-patiënt de antistoffen tegen het coronavirus in het bloed worden gemeten."
They are researching whether vaccinated hospitalisations are caused by lacklustre antibody response.
> "Het lijkt ongeveer gelijk verdeeld over de verschillende vaccins", zegt Van den Toorn.
If there is no difference between the different vaccines, that suggests some people simply don't respond well to any vaccine.
Because it has been shown that Biontech/Pfizer protects better than Astra Zeneca in general. That should be reflected in these hospitalisations, but it isn't.
 
@Cerberus It's really complicated.
 
10:31 PM
A caveat is that the numbers here are small, so less significant.
 
Just because active antibodies wane with time doesn't mean that your body has forgotten how to spin them up again quickly at need.
The CDC is only tracking hospitalizations and deaths in the vaccinated, not mere positivity. In part this is because that's the only data they can be sure of; they wouldn't detect asymptomatic cases which never got tested, for example. But we're flying too blind again.
Plus vaccinated people with mild cases often don't get tested.
 
> not mere positivity
 
Our governor has just made a plea for the government to formally authorize third shots for the very old and the immunocompromised just like with most other vaccinations. But we're not to that point here yet.
 
Not sure I understand this.
They are considering third shorts here as well.
 
They aren't closely tracking how many positive tests are among the vaccinated.
 
10:36 PM
On the other hand, shouldn't those go to Africa instead?
@tchrist Ah, right.
I'm not sure how well they track that here.
But, as you say, the vaccinated must be less likely to get tested.
I got tested twice in the past two weeks.
But I am still not fully vaccinated.
Six more days!
 
We've already bought them. It's part of the U.S. defence reserve stockpile. There's enough to give every citizen a third shot. Those won't go to Africa. Many doses in excess of that are shipping aboard though.
@Cerberus Why?
 
First food poisoning, now a cold.
Before that time, I never got tested.
Never got any symptoms.
 
Not sure how you get colds. You must be fraternizing with humans again.
 
Always have.
 
But food poisoning, ug.
 
10:40 PM
Though not many.
People have largely stopped wearing mouth caps in supermarkets.
I am wearing one now, because of my cold.
And I will probably continue to do so when it's crowded.
But there is always a chance.
 
The U.S. has apparently shipped 110 million donated vaccine doses abroad so far.
 
Good.
I wonder how many Europe has shipped.
 
We have many more than that in this country who haven't been vaccinated.
So the numbers rise.
 
I think people will eventually be vaccinated in larger numbers.
It often takes time for people to get used to new vaccines.
Which is regrettable.
But it is not some immutable thing.
Forced vaccination, or semi-forced: not sure what the effect of that will be.
I think it has worked in the past.
 
I was talking to my great-uncle this afternoon about when he got the polio vaccine in the 50s, how important it was for everyone then.
 
10:45 PM
You have a great-uncle!?
 
Sure, don't you?
 
I think it took much longer for people to accept the polio vaccine(s)!
@tchrist Not since I was err 20?
 
Not in my family. His dad gave it to him, because he was the town doctor. And his dad's sister had a doctor for a partner too. So we were always well informed about such things.
 
That helps.
But people have so far accepted the new vaccines extremely quickly, in your country as well.
Compared with other vaccines.
 
You mean these particular vaccines for covid?
 
10:47 PM
I think the smallpox(?) vaccine took over a century to become fully accepted by the population.
 
Ah yes.
 
@tchrist Yes.
 
People younger than me no longer got it. They stopped routinely vaccinated children for smallpox here.
Winter is coming.
 
Huh.
 
Kids in school.
 
10:50 PM
90% is high!
 
Only amongst seniors.
Funny, isn't it?
 
I suspect those younger will eventually gravitate towards that same percentage?
It just takes time.
Which is of course unfortunate.
 
Time is the crucible in which we burn.
 
It might accelerate as news items become more alarming.
 
Apparently it has, a little.
 
10:53 PM
I think news items made people more careful, a few weeks ago.
 
We're at around 7% positivity rate in Colorado. But it depends on the county.
 
Hmm.
 
There are places in this country where it is many times that.
 
We're at 11.6%.
Nationally.
 
Florida is over 18%.
> "Until this month, we were fortunate to report a low positivity rate of 5-6% within our patient population exhibiting viral symptoms," the post said. "In the last 10 days, we have seen daily positivity rates for those children tested in our offices between 20%-40%."
That's from Palm Beach.
 
10:57 PM
Hmm.
That's high.
Perhaps children rarely get tested?
 
No idea. It's much higher than the general Floridian figure, though.
Well, 20% is not much higher than 18%. But 40% is.
 
I think I told you about my mother's coughing and sneezing at Christmas.
Oh, I get that all the time, it's from the grandchildren.
She didn't even get tested, and I bet the grandchildren never did either, when they were sneezing or coughing or had drippy noses.
So perhaps parents only test their children when they are very sick.
 
Check for antibodies.
 
In which case their chance of being infected with the Corona virus is much higher than for other people?
 
Looks like survival of the fittest in action there. The fittest variant, that is.
@Cerberus Children are virus factories. Always have been.
 
11:02 PM
Yes.
They kept saying children couldn't really transmit the Corona virus, for many, many months.
I think the chance was lower than with regular colds, but they are still able to transmit it.
 
I don't know why they were saying that.
It is not true.
 
And lots of touching means a higher chance.
 
Right now we're up to chicken pox.
 
And grandparents touch their grandchildren a lot.
As do children each other.
@tchrist You are saying the chance of children transmitting the Corona virus wasn't much lower than transmitting the common cold?
 
@Cerberus Show me the science.
 
11:05 PM
We were bombarded by scientific studies saying that last year.
Which is why health authorities declared that children were a minor factor.
 
Here's some:
> Children and adolescents can be infected with SARS-CoV-2, can get sick with COVID-19, and can spread the virus to others.9-15 In the United States through March 2021, the estimated cumulative rates of SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19 symptomatic illness in children ages 5-17 years were comparable to infection and symptomatic illness rates in adults ages 18-49 and higher than rates in adults ages 50 and older.16 Estimated cumulative rates of infection and symptomatic illness in children ages 0-4 years are roughly half of those in children ages 5-17 years, but are comparable to those in
Start reading at "COVID-19 among children and adolescents".
> Several studies conducted early during the COVID-19 pandemic suggested that the incidence rate among children and adolescents was lower than among adults.9, 10, 18-23 However, the lower incidence rates may have been due in part to children, when compared to adults, having fewer opportunities for exposure (due to school, daycare, and activity closures) and a lower probability of being tested.17
> Studies that have systematically tested children and adolescents, irrespective of symptoms, for acute SARS-CoV-2 infection (using antigen or RT-PCR assays) or prior infection (through antibody testing) have found their rates of infection can be comparable, and in some settings higher, than in adults.12, 15, 24-29
So not sure it's all that much better.
 
> transmission does occur
 
> The evidence that children and adolescents can be infected with, get sick from, and transmit SARS-CoV-2 continues to evolve. As with the studies from early during the COVID-19 pandemic, the quality and comparability of reported studies is affected by the study design, the method used to detect SARS-CoV-2 infection, the prevention measures in place during the study period, and the background rate of infection in the community.33, 44, 45
 
As I understood it, first they suspected young children played almost no part in transmission; much later they revised that, saying they played a minor role (much smaller than teenagers and especially adults).
It may also have changed as the British variant became dominant six months ago.
Or how long ago was it?
By the way, how many foundlings do you think are left in the Netherlands yearly on average?
I have just read that it is 1.
 
The very existence of foundlings is deeply troubling.
> About 135,000 children are adopted in the United States each year. Of non- stepparent adoptions, about 59% are from the child welfare (or foster) system, 26% are from other countries, and 15% are voluntarily relinquished American babies.
 
11:24 PM
I think here you only count as a foundling if you're left in a helpless condition.
E.g. on the street.
Not when you're left somewhere in a building where there are people.
Probably.
 
blames the faeries
Wait, those are changelings not foundlings.
Or maybe both.
@Cerberus Yeah, that's pretty much what it means.
 
> Dat er gevaccineerden in het ziekenhuis liggen, is volgens Van den Hof geen verrassing. ‘Het komt overeen met het beeld bij degenen die positief testen: van hen is ook 9 procent volledig gevaccineerd.’
 
Unnamed infants mysteriously left at the church doors. Things like that.
 
"Of all those who test positive, 9% are fully vaccinated."
This was about a week ago.
Perhaps the real proportion is higher, because the vaccinated are a bit less likely to get tested.
 
Just stop testing the unvaccinated. That percentage will go up in a flash.
 
11:36 PM
?
 
kdding
 
Ah.
 
11:47 PM
> Many doctors on the front lines say unvaccinated patients in their 20s and 30s are becoming more severely ill, and more quickly. But comprehensive data is lacking.
That's what I meant about anecdotally. We don't know.
 
11:59 PM
I'm sure it's more.
 

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