onebir

56 minutes ago, snoop1130 said:

We are totally invested in Tessica Brown – the unsuspecting woman who applied super strong Gorilla Glue to her hair.

I hope they didn't invest too much

5 hours ago, webfact said:

Somchai said they spend $100 a day each on average or around 3,000 baht and on average stay in Thailand 4-6 months of the year. 

4 hours ago, RotBenz8888 said:

How does Somchai know that? 

I think it must be some kind of survey of the elite visa members. Given the 'luxury'/'high-end' tag, wonder if they don't feel under some pressure to inflate it. That said, if they're mostly staying in 5 star hotels, a starbucks or two and they're there ????

8 hours ago, webfact said:

Most respondents in the national online poll - 79% - said they had already made up their minds about conviction before this week, with the rest doing so this week.

How is it possible to do an online poll without selection bias?

1 hour ago, Emdog said:

Like asking Hannibal Lecter for cooking tips

But he (also) liked fava beans...

1 minute ago, fa lang 66 said:

The vaccination doesn't work unless over 90% have it. So that's a no. 

There's some evidence vaccinations reduce transmission by vaccinated individuals.

43 minutes ago, Tie Dye Samurai said:

That's Ok....even if he doesn't get convicted....this is just the first hurdle in the legal obstacle course that is about to become THE FORMER PRESIDENT TRUMP's life....The State Of New York is patiently waiting to make their case about tax fraud against THE FORMER PRESIDENT TRUMP

Patiently, because they're in a bit of a lawsuit queue...

Since the vaccine was rolled out to over-60s first, starting Dec 20, they just compared the viral loads from PCR tests of over-60s with those of 40-60 year olds. Until Jan 15th there wasn't much difference, then there was. They estimate a 1.6-20x reduction in viral load (1.6-2.6 in PCR cycle threshold) after a single dose of the Pfizer vaccine.

Paper

Two things I don't get:

- if the Israeli databases are so great, why just stratify by age? (ie why not match test results to vaccination status?)

- the relationship between cycle threshold and viral load. (I thought the relationship was: 2^Ct ~ viral load, but that's not consistent with the figures reported).

Anyway, to the people who keep saying there's no evidence vaccination reduces Covid transmissibility: NOW THERE IS

2 hours ago, snoop1130 said:

British people should not book a holiday domestically or abroad until more is known about the success of Britain's COVID-19 vaccination programme, transport minister Grant Shapps said on Wednesday.

Time for promotion to "non-transport minister"?

On a serious note, it's kind of shocking he has to say this...

#Pattadubaimi

1 hour ago, webfact said:

Waititi, who has called ties "a colonial noose," was told last year that he would be ejected from the House if he did not wear one. On Tuesday he wore a taonga, a Maori greenstone pendant, instead.

So he's ok with a culturally-appropriate noose...

Anyway, it's just a storm in a tie-cup!

1 minute ago, RJRS1301 said:

I see this discussion falling into an area where neither side is will to listen to a differing opinion, sounds like the Kinesit to me.

I will check back next year to see how the discussion is going.

Suggest a decade

5 hours ago, webfact said:

Anutin said that 200,000 doses of the Chinese CoronaVac will arrive in Thailand later this month, followed by a supply of the AstraZeneca vaccine, Bangkok Biz News reported. 

 

Thailand will then begin domestic production of  61 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine. Officials have indicated that production of the vaccine will begin around May or June. 

Isn't the AZ vaccine distributed at cost, and licensed free? Supplying it to expats at cost/free isn't exactly the bigliest of magnanimosities...

#TeenageSuperNinjaTurtleMomma

Or #TurtleWelfareQueen?

You picks your politics and you takes your choice.

Oldie but goodie.

On 2/6/2021 at 6:36 AM, uncleP said:

China's great firewall can't  beat well known VPN's so I doubt Burma can either. 

It's possible China allows some VPNs (eg which only accept foreign credit cards, don't advertise in China/Chinese etc) for the convenience of foreigners in the country (&/ hefty bribes).

1 hour ago, Bkk Brian said:

Close to 90% of people aged 60 and older in the country have received their first dose of Pfizer’s 2-dose vaccine so far. Now, data collected by Israel’s Ministry of Health show that there was a 41% drop in confirmed COVID-19 infections in that age group, and a 31% drop in hospitalizations from mid-January to early February. 

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00316-4

 

One reason there may be blips or spikes is due to the younger population not vaccinated yet?

Thanks, the drop in hospitalizations is bit more encouraging, though I see from that article it's not just me who's been disconcerted by the slow decline in cases.

I don' think the spike over the last few days is hard to attribute solely to the unvaccinated population, unless they suddenly changed their behaviour. One exception might be if they weren't social distancing much, and a more infectious variant has started spreading amongst them. Even if that's the case, since the Pfizer vaccine is supposed to work pretty well on both UK and SA variants, I guess the spread should slow markedly now vaccination of younger age groups has started...

(Another possibility is they've stepped up testing in order to provide better data to feed back to Pfizer. If so they should emphasize the +ve rate more; vaccinations failing to bring the case count down quickly risks playing into the hands of the anti-vaxxers...)

1 hour ago, darksidedog said:

Correct. It isn't late, it's non existent.

Israel has already given an initial shot to over 60% of its population in comparison.

Thailand still has no idea when or where theirs is coming from.

Israel was extremely lucky, with a smallish population and a rather good health system (notably the IT) & the initiative (&/ chutzpah) to try jump the queue. Most countries lack at least one of those factors (developing countries in particular).

But despite getting so many vaccinations done, the case count hasn't come down that much (~20% reduction from peak in 7dma as of 8th Feb) and had a worrying upward blip in the last few days. That may be due to lags in development of immunity + some superspreader events (huge religious funerals) about a week ago. I hope that's the case, because another possibility is that the spread's being driven by a variant (possibly even an undocumented one) that the vaccines they're using (mostly Pfizer) doesn't confer resistance to.

(I'd like to see if the hospitalizations in Israel are coming down better, if anyone has a handy link to a graph of that.)

11 minutes ago, ukrules said:

heard AZ are going to modify the vaccine to take into account any new mutations

"To be ready by November" according to a report I saw yesterday (Sky News). The Pfizer vaccine's the only one (I've heard of?) that's supposed to work well against the SA variant.

15 minutes ago, GroveHillWanderer said:

This new coronavirus so far has no new strains requiring a new vaccine, it only has variants that which are still susceptible to the current vaccines, to a greater or lesser extent.

The line between a variant and a strain seems a bit ill-defined:

Quote

"A strain of a virus has distinct properties and a particular immune response. Then there's going to be lots and lots of variants which will be, in many cases, minor accumulations of mutations and different kind of genetic lines of that strain," Soucy said.

Soucy said a certain strain of virus is considered a variant when it has enough mutations to change a minor portion of its genetic code.

Presumably changing a "major portion" of it's genetic code makes it a new strain. But where's the line between minor and major?

And if a vaccine still has some, but reduced efficacy for a new variant, where's the line for requiring a new vaccine?

(It's possible to get an estimate by plugging that reduced efficacy etc into the epidemiological models, and seeing if the R0 is reduced below 1 at a plausible vaccination coverage. But an awful lot of estimates are go into that...)

Small girlfriend + large golf bag for the final car-to-door leg?