Corona Virus Now Spreading

denice

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Doctors and nurses doing this is much worse. There are people on the fence who haven't bought into conspiracies and aren't blind antivaxxers. They are afraid of this because it is new although the research for it has gone on for almost two decades since the first SARS outbreak. Having doctors and nurses peddling this stuff definitely isn't helping.
 

KittyFriday

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I have an upcoming bachlorette party and I have no idea what to do about it. I am vaccinated and it's one of my best friends, but the trip is at Lake of the Ozarks and one of my other friends texted me this morning saying that the Delta variant is running rampant there.

I do have some protection from the vax and I don't want to miss the party, but it's not 100% and I can't stand the idea of getting sick, or passing it on to my parents.
 

denice

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Yes that area is one where the Delta variant is spreading. Any area with a low vaccination rate is having the same issue. The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are effective against it as long as you are fully vaccinated. They are less effective after one dose then they are against the original and the other variants. That is why Britain is struggling. They are one of the countries that went all out to get everyone one dose then delayed the second dose until vaccine supplies caught up.
 

KittyFriday

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Yeah, the vaccine has some efficacy and obviously no vaccine is 100% effective, I am just so nervous to mess with Covid, especially such a contagious and serious variant.

Numbers in my town are shooting up. We have more in the hospital than we've had in months. We have 21 variant cases and 6 of those are vaccinated individuals, which is concerning.
 

denice

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No vaccine is 100%. Also there are factors that enter into how much of an immune response someone has to a vaccine. Older people often have a weaker response. People on immunosuppressant medications have a weaker response and if the dose is high enough no response. They have found that to be true of transplant recipients. What we really need is to have a very high vaccination rate. That will help protect those with a weak or no response as well as those with a valid medical reason to not be vaccinated.
 

KittyFriday

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How severe are the cases in the people who have been vaccinated?
They aren't saying if they are hospitalized, but I don't think that they are.

I do know no vaccine is 100%, I just have a fear of covid I suppose. I know the flu vaccine isn't 100%, but I get it every year with the knowledge that it will help prevent, and if I do get it it is likely to be a lesser case. The thing with the flu though is that they have targeted treatments and overall it's not as bad; I'm fearful of even a "not so bad" covid case because I don't want to chance spreading to my elderly parents (who to be fair are also vaccinated) or having any kind of long-hauler symptoms.

I'm sure this is a fear I'll have to get over, but I'm not sure it will be easy.
 

denice

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Right now Ohio is doing well with new cases. The last numbers that came in this afternoon was 303 for the state with a total population of over 11 million. The county that I am in had 96 new cases with a total population of 1.3 million. We have some counties with really low vaccine percentage so if it starts again in one of the counties the numbers will go up a lot. The county with the lowest vaccination rate is Holmes County which is mostly if not all Amish. Last time I looked their vaccinated percentage was only 14. I don't understand why they are doing this because it wasn't that long ago they had a bad measles outbreak. They don't have any religious objections to vaccinations so I don't understand it.
 

Jem

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I read an article that things are getting worse again for you guys in the US. How are things on a local level for everyone?
 

denice

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Here in Ohio cases are rising again but slowly. We were around 300 cases a day now it is around 500 cases a day. There are states with low vaccination rates where they are getting bad again. No place is where they should be as far as vaccinations go. It is being called a surge of the unvaccinated. There is absolutely no excuse for people to not be vaccinated. There is plentiful supply and they are free. Almost 100% of the people who are hospitalized nationally are not fully vaccinated. There are of course breakthrough infections of the fully vaccinated but those illnesses are much milder.
 

Willowy

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Cases got very low for awhile, under 50 active cases, now it's back up to around 200 active cases in the state. Almost all are Delta variant. About 20 current hospitalizations. About half of the recent deaths have been men in their 30s, so I guess we know the main demographic that didn't get vaccinated. Vaccine numbers are trickling upward, not completely flatlined, still not anywhere close to where they need to be. 57.33% of the population over 12 has had at least one shot, 53.25% have been fully vaccinated.

There's an article in the local news about how a bunch of older teachers have retired due to the pandemic, and a bunch of younger ones had to stay home with their kids, so they're 233 teachers short with less than a month to go before school starts. So that's not looking great for a smooth school year.
 

Jem

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Here in Ontario, one source says we are approx 69% with one dose and approx 51% fully vaccinated. In my Public Health District we are about 79% with one dose and 60% fully vaccinated.
The Province has moved into "stage 3" of re-opening. Most things are open and running (indoors and outdoors) but we still have mask mandates and social distancing in effect. Some capacity limits are in place, mostly for indoor places.
After not having any new cases for over a week, and only one active case left in our area, 3 new cases have been confirmed as of yesterday...all from a close contact of a confirmed case.
We're doing pretty good around here.
I do know several people who have not been vaccinated yet, but most of them aren't "anti-vax"...they're just hesitant and trying to wait a bit more until more data comes out...I have a feeling that come the start of cold and flu season, especially if there is an increase in cases, most will get them.
 

denice

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There are some that for valid medical reasons can't be vaccinated. People on strong immunosuppressant medications like transplant recipients have little to no immune response to the vaccine. If every adult who can be vaccinated would get vaccinated it would help protect people in those categories. When it comes to teenagers especially boys I would be a little hesitant. If I still had a teenage boy I probably would still get him vaccinated but I would be watching him like a hawk afterwards. I would be the stereotypical helicopter mom for awhile afterward which would drive him crazy.
 

Willowy

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My nephew got vaccinated around the same time as the news about mycarditis was going around. My mom asked him if he was concerned and he said, no, because COVID causes heart inflammation too, and the vaccine causes it a lot less often than the disease. I thought that was pretty good for a 15-year-old trying to explain things to his grandma, lol (plus he's also a bit of a germophobe so even the psychological benefits of knowing he's vaccinated would be worth it for him).
 

Lari

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There's this whole 'unmask our children' thing going on in Illinois, and people are signing petitions about how masks don't work and they should be optional vaccinated or not. With this Delta variant hitting kids that seems like the wrong time to be pushing this and it seems like some anti- vaxxers are behind it.

I'll feel better once J can get vaccinated.
 

bear

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I'm no longer a young male. Yet I have heard from young males they don't want the vaccine messing with their junk.

They should be much more worried about CoV-SARS-2 and it's variants messing with their reproductive areas.
If they understood that corona viruses are RNA and therefore not a living organism it would help.
To be a living organism, it must have the ability to replicate on its own.
DNA gives the ability to replicate and that is humorously "part of our DNA" as a living organism.
However, the replication mechanism of DNA includes replicating RNA, and it is not always selective and will sometimes replicate a nearby RNA chemical structure like a virus.

Do you remember the original comorbidity checklists for CoV-SARS-2?
The check boxes for the likelihood you would get seriously ill or perish?
Among the top boxes was "Male".

What is different about Males and Females?
People have DNA throughout their body.
Yet where is the concentration of DNA that differs from male/females enough for this to be a comorbid factor?
Oh yes, there is a localized collection of anatomical differences.

Age was also a comorbidity factor.
Age can also affect that localized collection of anatomical differences in us old guys.
Even in old guys that source of fresh DNA can get refreshed.

One of the earliest challenges (and still a challenge) of keeping the disease from progressing to death was the cytokine storms.
These basically result from an over reaction by the immune responses that resulted in more serious symptoms.
In about March 2020, they figured out that one or more of the medications older male patients were on was helping to reduce the extreme cytokine storms.
The medication(s) is a common treatment for BPH (benign prostatic hyperplasia) in older males.

The Pfizer, Moderna, J & J or the Astra Zenica (CHAD-OX01) do not include a corona virus (dead or alive).

I would really like to be a young male again.
I would get my Vax as soon as available.
I would counter act the BS (Bro Stupidity) of my young friends and encourage them to take action to reduce the spread of this virus. Extremely high vaccination rates will help reduce how many people eventually carry it providing an even larger pool of variations.

How is that new variant working? Most patients are between 20-40 years of age.
 

bear

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Jem Jem and denice denice
If have a deepening interest in vaccines going forward, look into these two 2020 Nobel Prize winners.
7 October 2020

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020 to

Emmanuelle Charpentier
Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens, Berlin, Germany

Jennifer A. Doudna
University of California, Berkeley, USA

“for the development of a method for genome editing”

This is for their CRISPR technology and tools for splicing parts of genes into other parts.
 
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