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To: ggersh who wrote (175155)7/20/2021 7:06:22 PM
From: TobagoJack2 Recommendations

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ggersh
maceng2

  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 217786
 
It might be the case natural immunity is best at limiting CoVid than mRNA-enabled immunity, and should such be so, as my Chinese traditional doctor guessed, then that changes everything about what needs to be done w/r to vaccination, that traditional vaccine technology, the tried and true, ought to be favoured.

A few more variants might make up our mind for us.

The Washington Post, the very extremely suspect MSM, is already shimmying, and should it be proven wrong, guessing the market is not currently priced for 'wrong'.

“Just because a variant emerges that renders the vaccines less effective doesn’t mean those vaccines weren’t effective in the first place,” according to The Washington Post. ...
The people who are not testing positive in the current outbreak are those who have had COVID-19 previously and recovered. These people account for 9% of Israel’s population but less than 1% of recent infections, according to Kovler’s analysis. This has brought new questions about whether natural infections are more protective against the delta variant than vaccinations — but the answer is not yet certain.

deseret.com

A look inside Israel’s recent coronavirus outbreak

The first country to reach vaccine herd immunity has seen a recent rise in cases among vaccinated people. Here’s what’s going on and how vaccines are making a difference

Aspen Pflughoeft
Jul 20, 2021, 8:15am MDT
A medical worker tests a woman for the coronavirus at a basketball court turned into a coronavirus testing center, in Binyamina, Israel, Tuesday, June 29, 2021. Associated PressIsrael — the poster child for COVID-19 vaccination and the first country to reach herd immunity — has seen a recent rise in cases. Recently, most of the people testing positive are vaccinated, reported The Washington Post.

The trend has brought a slew of questions about the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines and the implications of new strains for future outbreaks. While these trends initially seem like cause for vaccine skepticism, a closer look at Israel’s current outbreaks shows that vaccines are effective and working — even against the delta variant.

Let’s unpack the situation.

What’s happening in Israel’s coronavirus outbreak?About a month ago, Israel celebrated what seemed like the end of its domestic pandemic. The country dropped all coronavirus restrictions, including mask mandates and social distancing requirements, reported Reuters. Unfortunately, the celebration was premature.

COVID-19 cases have begun to rise in Israel over the last few weeks, reported Reuters. The outbreaks started in schools among unvaccinated children then began spreading to vaccinated adults.

Last week, Israel recorded an average of 775 new daily cases last week, according to data from Reuters.
This is Israel’s highest number of daily new infections since March, Reutersreported.
The average number of weekly hospital admissions is currently 120 people, according to The Washington Post.
The country has reimposed mask mandates, social distancing requirements and quarantines for everyone arriving in Israel.Just like in many other countries, the recent outbreak has been driven by the more contagious and “ more vaccine-resistant” delta variant, reported The Washington Post.

Who is testing positive for COVID-19 in Israel?Unlike in many other countries, most of the people testing positive in Israel are vaccinated, reported The Washington Post.

But this should not be surprising, according to epidemiologist Katelyn Jetelina, per The Washington Post.
“The more vaccinated a population, the more we’ll hear of the vaccinated getting infected,” she said.And Israel has one of the most vaccinated populations in the world. About 60%of the nation’s entire population of 9.3 million has received at least one vaccine dose, reported Reuters. Among adults, about 85% have been vaccinated which means that Israel’s vaccinated community is five times larger than its unvaccinated community.

“Countries with high vaccination will see mostly vaccinated people getting ill from COVID,” wrote Arieh Kovler, a political analyst, on Hat Tip.

The people who are not testing positive in the current outbreak are those who have had COVID-19 previously and recovered. These people account for 9% of Israel’s population but less than 1% of recent infections, according to Kovler’s analysis. This has brought new questions about whether natural infections are more protective against the delta variant than vaccinations — but the answer is not yet certain.

What does Israel’s experience show about vaccines?The Israel Health Ministry’s data analysis has produced some new estimates about the effectiveness of Pfizer vaccines, according to The Washington Post:

In protecting against infection, Pfizer vaccines are 95% effective for the alpha variant but only 64% effective for the delta variant.
In preventing symptomatic COVID-19 cases, Pfizer vaccines are 97% effective for the alpha variant but only 64% effective for the delta variant.
In preventing hospitalization and serious disease, Pfizer vaccines are 97.5% effective for the alpha variant and still 93% effective for the delta variant.While the Pfizer vaccine is less effective against the delta variant, the vaccine’s effectiveness still far exceeds the 50% vaccine efficacy threshold required for WHO approval, according to the organization’s website.

“Just because a variant emerges that renders the vaccines less effective doesn’t mean those vaccines weren’t effective in the first place,” according to The Washington Post.

What is Israel’s post-vaccination outbreak like compared to pre-vaccination?While vaccinated people are testing positive and being hospitalized in Israel’s delta outbreak, the current post-vaccination outbreak is only a fraction of the country’s worst pre-vaccination outbreak in January, reported The Washington Post.

Currently, cases are less than one-tenth as many as during January’s peak.
Hospitalizations during the current outbreaks are less than one-sixteenth of January’s peak, per The Washington Post. Put differently, Israel is currently averaging 120 weekly hospital admissions. In January, the country averaged 2,000 weekly hospital admissions.
Most importantly, admission to intensive care units for severe COVID-19 cases is less than one-twentieth the number of admissions in January.“We estimate that we won’t reach high waves of severe cases like in previous waves,” said Israel’s health ministry’s director-general, Nachman Ash, per Reuters.

What does Israel’s experience mean for other countries?“Israel is as good an example of vaccine efficacy as just about anywhere in the world,” according to The Washington Post. “The delta variant means the virus will probably continue to spread, even among vaccinated people and even in a strongly vaccinated country, such as Israel.”



To: ggersh who wrote (175155)7/20/2021 7:11:34 PM
From: TobagoJack  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 217786
 
Remaining agnostic ...

Maybe partying per life-is-normal works

a few weeks should tell us the truth, and if the protocol works, then wonder what the shutdown was all about?

ft.com

New York City parties like there’s no more Covid

Crowds and maskless socialising feel like denial to one visitor

yesterday
Frantically normal: hula hoopers at a block party in Brooklyn, New York, which cancelled most Covid restrictions in late June © Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis/Getty On July 4, an Independence Day party was in full swing on the rolling greens of the Apawamis Country Club golf course just north of New York City. Hundreds of club members and their guests of every age — families with young children and teenagers, elderly grandparents, recent retirees — had all come out in a packed celebration.

People were hugging and kissing and crowding into jumbled lines at the cocktail tents. Everyone was maskless, joyful and, in the eyes of this outsider just arrived from London after two years of pandemic-imposed exile, wildly uninhibited. It all felt way too normal.

Since Governor Andrew Cuomo announced the near total cancellation of pandemic restrictions in late June as New York State hit the benchmark of 70 per cent of adults vaccinated, New York City has come back — intensely. In June alone, the leisure and hospitality industry added 18,000 jobs and hotel occupancy rates reached a post-pandemic high. Restaurant reservations are impossible to get again, in part due to labour shortages causing reduced service, but also because New Yorkers have returned en masse.

“We are having the best summer we have ever had,” says Bonny McKensie, managing partner of Bibi Wine Bar in the East Village. “You hear a couple of people talking about the Delta variant now, but two weeks ago people were not even saying the word Covid.”

New signs have replaced the old ones: “Please wear a mask if you are notvaccinated.” In some coffee shops and restaurants, even staff have quit masking, with these restrictions now up to businesses — and individuals — giving an ad hoc, carefree feel to any measures that might actually still be observed.

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Puru Das, the co-founder of Delhi-based design firm DeMuro Das, returned to New York for the first time since the start of the pandemic for the opening of a new showroom. “I found it so optimistic, especially coming from India,” Das says. “The world will get over this and New York is ahead. There was a brief moment of weird dissonance — why aren’t these people wearing masks? — but it’s also summer and the weather’s lovely. It felt amazing.” Brian DeMuro, his business partner, agrees: “I didn’t question it. I dived right in.”

The streets of the East Village and the Lower East Side that abound with bars and twentysomethings looking for fun, felt like a throbbing street party. The scent of cannabis floated everywhere in the hot summer air (it was legalised in New York in April), adding to the atmosphere of licence.

None of this would feel that unusual but for the fact that the city had just experienced 16 months of intense abnormality, with lives upended by an unprecedented global health crisis. One in nine people in New York City was infected and the city registered more than 33,000 deaths. That experience was compounded by an intense social justice movement last summer and overlaid with a fraught presidential election.

In comparison, New York now feels frantically normal. “Big social groups tend to do this. They tend to do quick manic turnrounds,” says Orna Guralnik, a psychologist and psychoanalyst practising in New York, and therapist for the Showtime docuseries Couples Therapy. “Germany after the war. They had this manic rebuilding. Collectives tend to do that.”

Embracing friends and loved ones — and strangers! — again, and relaxing into the deeply normal and sorely-missed pleasures of socialising felt marvellous. “It has the quality of a superficial recovery that people are clinging to,” agrees Guralnik. “But it’s like a slinky. One part of the psyche is stretched forward into this manic recovery and the rest of the psyche is trying to catch up.”

With much of the rest of the world still living under some form of restrictions or, in the case of countries such as the Netherlands and Israel, reimposing them in the face of rising infection rates, New York — however pleasurable — also feels like it is a little bit in denial.

In a few months’ time, when the financial support schemes end for good, when offices reopen but some jobs and industries do not come back, when the autumn brings another rise in infections, it seems likely that the psyche will catch up — and take a hit.

But until then, the party is on.



To: ggersh who wrote (175155)7/20/2021 8:14:08 PM
From: TobagoJack  Read Replies (3) | Respond to of 217786
 
Getting rather heated, and I must say, even as I am agnostic w/r to covid, origin, vaccination, vaccines, and forward outlook, Dr Fauci and Rand Paul play well together, and irrespective of the facts whatever they are, Fauci hit Paul and hard. Must have been a satisfying moment, albeit he refrained from using the F word.