Re: International Effects of Covid-19
Posted: Sat May 15, 2021 4:48 am
Falsehoods Unchallenged Only Fester and Grow
https://thefogbow.com/forum/
While total infections since the pandemic began remain low at 1,475, the recent community transmissions have alarmed a population that had become accustomed to life staying close to normal, with no full lockdowns of the kind seen elsewhere.
In messages late on Saturday, the president, premier and economy ministry took to Facebook to say there was no need to hoard or rush to the shops, after people scrambled to stock up on basic goods, mainly instant noodles and toilet paper.
"After more than a year of preparation, the country's anti-pandemic materials, civilian goods and raw materials are sufficient, and the stores are also operating as usual to replenish goods," President Tsai Ing-wen said.
French supermarket chain Carrefour (CARR.PA) said it was limiting purchases of items such as masks and instant noodles in its Taiwan stores, asking people to buy only what they need.
https://www.axios.com/report-covid-19-p ... 59ec5.htmlThe COVID-19 pandemic was a "preventable disaster" that exposed weak links "at every point" of the preparedness process, according to a World Health Organization-commissioned report published Wednesday.
Why it matters: The report by the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response criticized governments worldwide for being unprepared for the pandemic despite the prevalence of past "global health threats," such as Ebola, Zika, and SARS outbreaks.
The big picture: The report states that the world's response to the emergence of COVID-19 was "too slow" and "too meek," and that the WHO was "underpowered."
"Global political leadership was absent," it adds.
The report also says that February 2020 was a "lost month" when governments should have taken action to prevent the epidemic from developing into a pandemic....
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Our tip to Portugal and Spain in October is looking better.The European Union agreed on Wednesday to reopen its borders to visitors who have been fully vaccinated with an approved shot, or those coming from a list of countries considered safe from a Covid perspective, its executive said, putting the rules in place just in time for the summer tourist season.
Ambassadors from the 27 member states reached consensus at a meeting on Wednesday, endorsing a proposal by the European Commission, which will see the bloc reopen its borders to tourists and other travelers more freely after being largely inaccessible for over a year. The list of safe countries based on epidemiological criteria will be finalized on Friday, and the new measures could go into effect as early as next week, according to European officials involved in the process.
The president of the European Commission had previewed the measures in an interview with The New York Times in April. The bloc will accept visitors who have received full immunization using one of the shots approved by its own regulator or by the World Health Organization. That covers the Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca and Sinopharm vaccines. This would open the door to Americans, who have been receiving shots from Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson.
Member states will retain the freedom to tweak these measures if they want to take a more conservative approach, meaning that some European countries could retain demands for negative PCR tests or quarantines for certain visitors. The bloc will also maintain an emergency-brake option, a legal tool that will allow it to quickly snap back to more restrictive travel conditions if a threatening new variant or other Covid emergency emerges.
The U.S. embassy in Afghanistan is suffering from a COVID-19 crisis as the virus sweeps across Afghanistan in a devastating third wave destabilizing the already fractured country.
Staff have been placed on a severe lockdown as dozens of employees have been hospitalized, filling the U.S. military hospital's intensive care unit to capacity and requiring medical evacuations of several staffers, according to an internal notice to staff obtained by ABC News.
Amid new spikes in violence ahead of that withdrawal, the coronavirus has wreaked havoc across Afghanistan, with infection rates skyrocketing by around 2,400% in the past month, according to the International Federation of Red Cross (IFRC). The country's already fragile health care system is on the verge of collapse with a shortage of beds and oxygen.
But what's particularly shocking about the outbreak at the U.S. embassy is that its staff have had access to vaccines for over six months now, meaning the spike there is largely because of staff who refused to get vaccinated or aren't yet fully vaccinated.
GONOGO 고노고 @GONOGO_Korea
Yantian International Container Terminal in Shenzhen is experiencing unprecedented disruptions due to rapid COVID19 upticks in the region.
Such massive congestion is expected to spread to other major container ports located in Guangzhou and Shenzhen.
As the U.S. heads into its second pandemic summer, President Biden warned that those who fail to get vaccinated against Covid-19 risk becoming infected by “a variant that is more easily transmissible, potentially deadlier and particularly dangerous for young people.” Vice President Kamala Harris visited a vaccination center in Atlanta on Friday, above.
In Russia, the Delta variant is now the most prevalent version in Moscow, where case numbers have tripled over the past two weeks and city officials have added 5,000 beds to coronavirus wards. The outbreak has led to some vaccine mandates.
And in England, “freedom day,” when the last remaining coronavirus restrictions had been scheduled to end, was delayed until July 19 after a spike in Delta cases. Prime Minister Boris Johnson expressed confidence that the curbs would be lifted next month but added that “at a certain stage, we are going to have to learn to live with the virus and to manage it as best we can.”
Boris Johnson to scrap most of England’s Covid rules from 19 July
PM will make England most unrestricted country in Europe despite saying cases could soar to 50,000 before date is reached
Jessica Elgot and Ian Sample
Mon 5 Jul 2021 20.43 BST
Boris Johnson will revoke hundreds of Covid regulations and make England the most unrestricted society in Europe from 19 July despite saying new cases could soar to 50,000 a day before masks and social distancing are ditched.
In a sign the government may reimpose restrictions this autumn, the prime minister warned the public against going “de-mob happy”, however. He said opening up – including the lifting of all limits on sports events and nightclubs – would be safest during the school summer holidays and did not say the changes would be irreversible.
Johnson told a Downing Street press conference: “We must be honest with ourselves that if we can’t reopen our society in the next few weeks, when we will be helped by the arrival of summer and by the school holidays, we must ask ourselves: when will we be able to return to normal?”
He said the aim in revoking the rules was to “move from a universal government diktat to relying on people’s personal responsibility” but added: “Obviously, if we do find another variant that doesn’t respond to the vaccines, if, heaven forbid, some really awful new bugs should appear, then clearly we will have to take whatever steps we need to do to protect the public.”
The planned changes announced by Johnson on Monday are set to make England an outlier in much of the rest of the world where restrictions remain to combat infections. The so-called “big bang” reopening was described as reckless by Labour and the dropping of the legal requirement for masks prompted a backlash from bereaved families and regional mayors.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/ ... on-19-july
Not everyone is in agreement with the new findings but it's worth noting that the super-contagious Delta variant is just the beginning.Israel Says Pfizer Vaccine Less Effective in Preventing Delta Variant Infection
Health Ministry says COVID vaccine at 64 percent effectiveness in preventing infections, but experts differ ■ Ministry notes vaccine is still 93 percent effective in preventing hospitalizations and severe symptoms
The Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine has dropped to 64 percent effectiveness in preventing infection in Israel as the delta variant continues to spread across the country, the Health Ministry said on Monday.
According to Israeli data published in March, two weeks after the vaccine was given, it had 99 percent efficacy in preventing symptomatic COVID-19 and 91.2 percent in preventing infection.
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Nevertheless, health sources believe that the inoculation's efficacy against the delta variant is much lower than initially presumed.
The models used by the Health Ministry have been called into question by health professionals.
Nevertheless a full vaccination leads to a mild process if Delta hits.Slim Cognito wrote: ↑Tue Jul 06, 2021 9:37 amNot everyone is in agreement with the new findings but it's worth noting that the super-contagious Delta variant is just the beginning.► Show Spoiler
That's right -- in general, a less lethal virus is a more successful one as it cannot continue to replicate if it kills its host. However, I think that effect may be muted with COVID-19 since it's most contagious before symptoms occur (once a person is no longer shedding virus, it doesn't matter to the virus whether or not they live or die). In any case, a variant becoming more virulent isn't what has been seen in the past as Suranis pointed out. That said, I think that there is a lot about this situation which is unprecedented due to the complexities in how susceptible (i.e. unvaccinated) people socially interact with each other and potential carriers, because it is spread primarily by those who are unaware that they have it, and the impossibility of contact tracing until community spread is stopped.Suranis wrote: ↑Tue Jul 06, 2021 1:14 pm Not necessarily. Really contagious viruses like that tend to burn themselves out fast, as they rapidly run out of hosts. People assume mutations mean it becomes more lethal, but in fact the reason the Spanish flu went dormant is that it mutated into a less lethal form, and that allowed it to survive better.
Slarti the White wrote: ↑Tue Jul 06, 2021 2:20 pm That's right -- in general, a less lethal virus is a more successful one as it cannot continue to replicate if it kills its host. However, I think that effect may be muted with COVID-19 since it's most contagious before symptoms occur (once a person is no longer shedding virus, it doesn't matter to the virus whether or not they live or die). In any case, a variant becoming more virulent isn't what has been seen in the past as Suranis pointed out. That said, I think that there is a lot about this situation which is unprecedented due to the complexities in how susceptible (i.e. unvaccinated) people socially interact with each other and potential carriers, because it is spread primarily by those who are unaware that they have it, and the impossibility of contact tracing until community spread is stopped.
Death Toll Rises to 92 in Fire That Gutted Iraq Hospital Coronavirus Ward
The blaze, caused by an electrical short in a ventilator, was the second such fire in three months in a country where corruption and mismanagement have left basic government services barely functioning.
By Jane Arraf
Published July 13, 2021
Updated July 14, 2021, 12:36 a.m. ET
BAGHDAD — The death toll at a southern Iraqi hospital treating Covid patients rose to at least 92 people on Tuesday, as witnesses described chaotic scenes of volunteers desperately trying to pry open a padlocked front door, malfunctioning fire extinguishers, and fire trucks running out of water as the ward burned.
The fast-spreading blaze tore through the new isolation ward at the Imam Hussein Teaching Hospital in the city of Nasiriya late Monday night into early Tuesday. It was the second such tragedy in the country in less than three months, after a similar fire broke out in April in a Baghdad coronavirus hospital and killed at least 82 people.
“Most of the patients were breathing through ventilators and unable to move,” said Dr. Aws Adel, a health official for the province of Dhi Qar which includes Nasiriya. “Most of the hospital staff were able to escape.”
The lack of precautions at the hospital, the speed at which the fire spread, and the feeble ability to fight it reflected a country in deep crisis after years of corruption and government mismanagement have left basic government services barely functioning.
The fire was sparked by an electrical short in a ventilator that resulted in oxygen canisters exploding, said Brig. Gen. Fouad Kareem Abdullah, a provincial police spokesman.
The Iraqi civil defense chief, Maj. Gen. Kathem Bohan, said the building that housed the three-month-old coronavirus isolation ward next to the main hospital had been constructed from flammable materials. The roof appeared to have melted along with sandwich board panels with foam cores that made up much of the construction. Other officials have said oxygen is stored haphazardly at almost all Iraqi hospitals.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/13/worl ... -fire.html
I can't remember if it was the head of the Japanese Olympic Commitee or the PM who said it, but the remark was along the lines that they couldn't stop it if they wanted to. The IOC has too much money riding on TV deals to stop it going ahead, so they're going to steamroll any local concerns, no matter the consequences.AndyinPA wrote: ↑Sun Jul 18, 2021 2:00 pm I will admit I'm not an Olympic or even a sports fan (not even the Steelers in Pittsburgh ), but these games should never have gone on. I feel very bad for the Olympians who have trained so hard, but a-once-in-a century pandemic should have been taken more into consideration. I understand the economic effects for Tokyo, too, but I just think they made the wrong decision.
That surprises me not one bit!MisterC wrote: ↑Tue Jul 20, 2021 1:17 pmI can't remember if it was the head of the Japanese Olympic Commitee or the PM who said it, but the remark was along the lines that they couldn't stop it if they wanted to. The IOC has too much money riding on TV deals to stop it going ahead, so they're going to steamroll any local concerns, no matter the consequences.AndyinPA wrote: ↑Sun Jul 18, 2021 2:00 pm I will admit I'm not an Olympic or even a sports fan (not even the Steelers in Pittsburgh ), but these games should never have gone on. I feel very bad for the Olympians who have trained so hard, but a-once-in-a century pandemic should have been taken more into consideration. I understand the economic effects for Tokyo, too, but I just think they made the wrong decision.
comment:Ministers under fire for putting France on England’s ‘amber plus’ list
Criticism grows after concerns raised over whether there was too much focus on Covid cases in Réunion
Aubrey Allegretti and Natalie Grover
Thu 29 Jul 2021 20.11 BST
Ministers are facing growing criticism for putting France on the new “amber plus” travel list, after concerns were raised about whether they focused too much on variant cases in its Réunion Island territory 5,700 miles (9,180 km) from Paris.
The UK foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, admitted on Thursday the decision to impose tougher restrictions on millions of fully vaccinated French citizens and Britons holidaying or living across the Channel was partly due to the prevalence of the Beta variant on Réunion.
He defended the move, saying it was “not the distance that matters” but rather “the ease of travel between different component parts of any individual country”.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/ ... -plus-list