Wuhan virus 2020

[Jimbuna]

Millions of children in England are back in class after more than two months of home-schooling.

Primary schools have fully opened for all pupils, while secondary schools will have a phased return to class.

Secondary school pupils in England will take regular rapid Covid tests and need to wear masks in class.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson described the return as an important first step towards a "sense of normality"

Teaching unions have called for checks to be made during the Easter holiday for any spikes in infections.

Hundreds of thousands of care home residents in England will be able to receive indoor visits from a nominated friend or relative from today.

Scotland's first minister has said mass gatherings of Rangers fans celebrating the side's Premiership win were "disgraceful"

Mr Johnson will hold a televised coronavirus news conference later today.

The UK reported 5,177 new Covid cases on Sunday, while 22.2 first vaccine doses have been given.

[Jimbuna]

The number of new coronavirus cases in Poland has risen by 29% from last Monday as the third wave to hit the country gathers momentum.
Poland’s health ministry reported 6,170 new coronavirus cases and 32 virus-related deaths on Monday, up from 4,786 and 24 one week ago.

Austria says there is currently "no evidence of a causal relationship" after one woman died and another developed a pulmonary embolism after receiving doses from the same batch of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.

Germany is further easing its lockdown restrictions, with five people from two households allowed to meet from today. Museums and galleries will also reopen.

People aged over 65 and other high-risk groups in Russia's capital Moscow are no longer required to self-isolate and their free travel on public transport is reinstated today following months of restrictions.

Spain's government has cancelled all marches to celebrate International Women’s Day in the capital Madrid amid high infection numbers. However, marches are expected elsewhere in the country.

Norway's Prime Minister Erna Solberg has warned that the country is likely to require stronger coronavirus measures following a rise in cases. Non-essential shops and some schools are already closed in and around the capital Oslo, with restaurants only allowed to provide takeaways.

More than 100 sailors from Kiribati in the Pacific Ocean are stranded in northern Germany after almost two years away from their families. Their government sealed off borders at the start of the pandemic to stop the virus getting onto the island and they remain unable to return home.

[Aktungbby]

Originally Posted by 2 day's WSJ

WASHINGTON—Russian intelligence agencies have mounted a campaign to undermine confidence in Pfizer Inc.’s and other Western vaccines, using online publications that in recent months have questioned the vaccines’ development and safety, U.S. officials said.
An official with the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, which monitors foreign disinformation efforts, identified four publications that he said have served as fronts for Russian intelligence.
The websites played up the vaccines’ risk of side effects, questioned their efficacy, and said the U.S. had rushed the Pfizer vaccine through the approval process, among other false or misleading claims.
Though the outlets’ readership is small, U.S. officials say they inject false narratives that can be amplified by other Russian and international media.“We can say these outlets are directly linked to Russian intelligence services,” the Global Engagement Center official said of the sites behind the disinformation campaign. “They’re all foreign-owned, based outside of the United States. They vary a lot in their reach, their tone, their audience, but they’re all part of the Russian propaganda and disinformation ecosystem.”

In addition, Russian state media and Russian government Twitter accounts have made overt efforts to raise concerns about the cost and safety of the Pfizer vaccine in what experts outside the U.S. government say is an effort to promote the sale of Russia’s rival Sputnik V vaccine.

“The emphasis on denigrating Pfizer is likely due to its status as the first vaccine besides Sputnik V to see mass use, resulting in a greater potential threat to Sputnik’s market dominance,” says a forthcoming report by the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a nongovernmental organization that focuses on the danger that authoritarian governments pose to democracies and that is part of the German Marshall Fund, a U.S. think tank.

The foreign efforts to sow doubts about the vaccine exploit deep-seated anxieties about the efficacy and side effects of vaccines that were already prevalent in some communities in the U.S. and internationally. Concern about side effects is a major reason for vaccine hesitancy, according to U.S. Census Bureau data made public last month.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied that Russian intelligence agencies were orchestrating articles against Western vaccines and said U.S. officials were mischaracterizing the broad international debate over vaccines as a Russian plot. It’s nonsense. Russian special services have nothing to do with any criticism against vaccines,” Mr. Peskov said in a telephone interview from Moscow. “If we treat every negative publication against the Sputnik V vaccine as a result of efforts by American special services, then we will go crazy because we see it every day, every hour and in every Anglo-Saxon media.”

The State Department GEC official said that four publications had direct links to Russian intelligence and were used by the Russian government to mislead international opinion on a range of issues.

New Eastern Outlook and Oriental Review, the official said, are directed and controlled by the SVR, or Russia’s foreign intelligence service. They present themselves as academic publications and are aimed at the Middle East, Asia and Africa, offering comment on the U.S.’s role in the world. The State Department said in an August report that New Eastern Outlook was linked to “state-funded institutions” in Russia.

Another publication, News Front, is guided by the FSB, a security service that succeeded the KGB, the official said. It is based in Crimea, produces information in 10 languages, and had nearly nine million page visits between February and April 2020, the official added. In August, the State Department was less explicit, saying that News Front reportedly had ties o Russia security services and Kremlin funding. Rebel Inside, the fourth publication, has been controlled by the GRU, which is an intelligence directorate of the Russian Armed Forces General Staff. It covered riots and protests and now appears dormant, the GEC official said.

The State Department had previously not gone so far as to say that these outlets were controlled or guided by Russian intelligence agencies—an assertion that generally relies on U.S. classified intelligence.

A State Department spokesman didn’t provide specific evidence linking the publications to Russian intelligence but said the assessment was “a result of a joint interagency conclusion.”

“Russian intelligence services bear direct responsibility for using these four platforms to spread propaganda and lies,” the spokesman said. “From the very beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic last year, we have seen Russia’s disinformation ecosystem develop and spread false narratives around the crisis.” News Front, New Eastern Outlook and Oriental Review didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Social-media accounts affiliated with the four websites have largely been removed from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and Pinterest, though some non-English-language accounts remained active earlier this year.

Highlighting reports in the international media, a January article in News Front played up the risk that a person who receives the Pfizer or Moderna Inc. vaccines could contract Bell’s palsy, in which facial muscles are paralyzed, while a February article focused on a man in California that it said tested positive for Covid-19 after receiving the Pfizer vaccination. In each case, the Russian outlets were repeating actual news reports but overlooking contrary information about the general safety of the vaccine. Numerous studies and real-world data have shown the Food and Drug Administration-approved vaccines to be safe and effective, and hospitalizations and deaths have begun to plummet in places like Israel where shots have been widely administered, though a small number of side effects have been reported.

“To date, millions of people have been vaccinated with our vaccine following the endorsement of regulators in multiple countries,” said Pamela Eisele, a spokeswoman for Pfizer, who added that individuals who have questions should consult the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website or their healthcare provider. A spokeswoman for Moderna didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

A November article in New Eastern Outlook said that the Pfizer vaccine’s use of mRNA gene editing was “radical experimental technology” that lacked “precision” and said it was rushed through the approval process with the help of billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates and Anthony Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical adviser for the Covid-19 pandemic, both of whom the article accused of “playing fast and loose with human lives in their rush to get these experimental vaccines into our bodies.”

Some New Eastern Outlook articles have been republished by blogs and purported international news sites. One article from January alleged that the U.S. has biological labs around the world that may lead to outbreaks of infectious disease. The article was republished in full or part by websites in Bangladesh, Italy, Spain, France, Iran, Cuba and Sweden, which were reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The U.S. has long accused Moscow of carrying out disinformation on medical issues. Judy Twigg, a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University who is an expert on global health issues, said that the Soviet KGB had accused the CIA of spreading dengue fever in Cuba and malaria in Pakistan. “A persistent KGB campaign claimed that the U.S. Army’s former biological weapons labs at Fort Detrick had unleashed the AIDS epidemic,” she said. Soviet officials denied responsibility for this disinformation.

Thomas Rid, an expert on Russian disinformation at Johns Hopkins University who reviewed the websites cited by the State Department, said the articles were generallyin line with Russia’s “rich history” of using communications technology to deceive both international and domestic audiences. He urged the U.S. government to do more to publicly explain how it has concluded the websites are controlled by specific Russian intelligence agencies.

With Russia and China seeking to sell their vaccines abroad, overt efforts to denigrate Pfizer have been well documented. The forthcoming German Marshall Fund report, which was reviewed by the Journal and is to be issued Monday, analyzed more than 35,000 Russian, Chinese and Iranian government and state media tweets on vaccine themes from early November to early February. “Russia provided by far the most negative coverage of Western vaccines.” it states, “with a remarkable 86% of surveyed Russian tweets mentioning Pfizer and 76% mentioning Moderna coded as negative.”

Actually, in a free global economy, the Sputnik name is way cooler to ...Moderna IMHO; but i had to take what they give me in the county drivethru line...this Thursday past.

[Jimbuna]

Russia eh?....No thanks, I'm more than happy with my Pfizer jab.

[Moonlight]

I don't get my jab for at least another two weeks, I'm getting it at my local GP surgery which is only 400 yards away, us youngsters are far more robust than the old bats in the village so it doesn't bother me when I get it.

[Catfish]

In Germany I'm sure we get our jab in march.. i did not specify which year though

[Rockstar]

Germany spends a great deal of time money and effort trying hold the E.U. together. Though it does seem at times you all have a bad rap in the E.U. for bypassing rules other E.U. members have to follow. Because of that I'm kinda of wondering if Germany is holding off until the rest of the E.U. get their vaccination programs going. Lets face it Germany isn't some backwater third world economy. If wanted to it could have finished vaccinating a large portion of its population by now. But it might look bad if some got theirs first while the rest of the E.U. was still struggling.



https://www.euronews.com/2021/03/08/...eading-the-way




That's just one of my many wild arsed guesses.

[Jimbuna]

[Jimbuna]

The UK government's top experts are appearing before MPs examining the government's roadmap for easing lockdown in England.

England's chief medical officer Prof Chris Whitty says it is likely there will be another surge of the virus in the UK

Modelling suggests it could come later in the summer, as society opens up, or later in the autumn or winter, he says.

Chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance says the roadmap out of lockdown in England is "broadly" in line with scientists' recommendations.

3,196 Covid deaths were registered in the UK in the week of 26 Feb, down from 4,448 in the previous week, ONS figures show.

Covid-19 restrictions in Scotland are expected to be eased slightly to allow more people to meet outdoors.

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon will update Scotland's parliament about the state of the pandemic and lockdown later.

New US guidance says fully vaccinated people can meet without masks and return to some sense of normalcy.

Globally, there have now been more than 117 million recorded cases of Covid-19, and 2.6 million deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.

[Jimbuna]

The number of new coronavirus cases in Poland has risen by 25% in the past week, the health ministry has said. On Tuesday, the government in Poland reported 9,954 new coronavirus cases and 282 virus-related deaths - up from 7,937 cases and 216 deaths one week ago.

Hospitals in the region around the French capital, Paris, have been told to reduce non-Covid care and surgery by 40% because the pandemic has filled most intensive care beds. Health officials say the Ile-de-France area is seeing 70 to 80 new admissions a day. Meanwhile, one MP believes veterinary surgeons could be called in to help push France’s vaccination programme. So far only 5.6% of the population has had a first dose but vaccinations are accelerating.

Estonia is facing a new lockdown from Thursday with all education going online and all non-essential shops closing. Prime Minister Kaja Kallas says the measures are required to tackle the recent spread of the UK (or Kent) variant of coronavirus and she’s appealed to people to sharply decrease contacts with others.

Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi has warned of a worsening health emergency, although Covid vaccines offer a way out that "isn’t far off”. Almost 14,000 new infections were reported yesterday and the total number of deaths reached 100,000.

The controversial overnight curfew in the Netherlands will remain in place for the rest of this month, but will be relaxed during next week’s parliamentary elections. Foreign travel should be avoided until mid-April, the government says.

Germans have unsurprisingly been spared hours of traffic jams because of the Covid pandemic. In Munich, the city with the worst traffic, commuters lost 65 hours last year – down from 87 hours in 2019.

[3catcircus]

I hate having to be right over and over again...

Multiple articles this morning about how lockdowns have been a disaster because they haven't stopped the spread of covid-19, they've harmed the poor, and they've caused serious psychological damage to children.

I said lockdowns were a terrible idea last April. Experts (as opposed to attention-whore no-help-whatsoever "experts" like Fauci and Neil Ferguson) were saying this last summer. How come it's taken so long for the media to report on these findings (or that a non-medical doctor like me who understands actual human behavior in the real world as opposed to theoretical human behavior in academia) instinctively understood this from the very start?

[Skybird]

Thgey HAVE repported about these things, at leats over here, form beginning on. Its just that many people are aware that there is just more factors to be considered than your endless lament on how bad it is to take any measurements at all.

I have yet to hear how you would have tried to prevent the health systems to get overwhelmed, like in Italy last spring. And if you would claim Italian codnitions in countries were an acceptable price for saving the economy like this mass murderer Bolsonaro does for exmaple, I would be done with you.

And no, its not just the elder getting serious, heavy cases and death. Its younger ones in their 20s and 30s as well. Especially woith the latest mutant forms. Germny rpeprts a higher rate of younger ones getting hospitalised than in the first wave. So do other countries.

Decision makers need to balance economic needs against civil rights against medical system needs against health relevant facts. The more psychopathic they are, the more incompetent they are - the more murderous they so far have shown to be.

There is no way out of this that does not cost. Getting the least bad mix is what it is about. And even then every sector I mentioned above needs to bleed. It cannot be avoided. Not everybody can be pleased.

Thats why they call this a desaster, a catastrophe. Catastrophies are events that have no happy endings. If they had, they would not take place in the first.


You are not right over and over again,m btw. You just have a very strictly limited attention focus beyond which you refuse to look. Your ignorration for the authors' own self criticsm of those two studies you linked to, is an example. Cherry-picking.

[August]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Your ignorration for the authors' own self criticsm of those two studies you linked to, is an example. Cherry-picking.

Accusations of cherry picking from the biggest cherry picker on the forum.

[Skybird]

https://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...363?via%3Dihub

A total of 31 papers were included. Study types included prospective and retrospective cohort studies, cross-sectional studies and case reports. Sequelae persistence since infection spanned 14 days to three months. Sequelae included persistent fatigue (39–73% of assessed persons), breathlessness (39–74%), decrease in quality of life (44–69%), impaired pulmonary function, abnormal CT findings including pulmonary fibrosis (39–83%), evidence of peri-/perimyo-/myocarditis (3–26%), changes in microstructural and functional brain integrity with persistent neurological symptoms (55%), increased incidence of psychiatric diagnoses (5.8% versus 2.5–3.4% in controls), incomplete recovery of olfactory and gustatory dysfunction (33–36% of evaluated persons).

[Jimbuna]