2019 Novel Coronavirus Covid-19 Discussion

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#2601072 10-Nov-2020 15:13

Anyone with an overseas portal or is overseas able to check if airlines flag a banner when booking tickets to NZ?...

Like, I would HOPE that it either said check with local authorities. Or one would check MFAT etc first for travel advise.

However, apparently not. There are mixed 'issues' being discovered by personalities they are making more noise over vs joe bloogs.

I'm guessing with the 100 extra rooms found today many of these will possibly get a free pass now the media has taken note. Or be compared to the pre-arranged All Blacks movements. But it's a dangerous start, because the flood gates will open to all others pleading.

We now have

3?x Singers - https://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/pop-group-broods-among-those-barred-from-nz-over-isolation-vouchers/AACM4M5XXFA4BJPUBD75SOI3IY/

https://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/music/123302683/coronavirus-sol3-mio-singer-pene-pati-stuck-in-london-after-covid19-bungle

1x UFC Fighter

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/sport/ufc-israel-adesanya-stranded-overseas-due-to-voucher-system-will-miss-junior-fa-training-camp/F6B6XZHFOMSGFVZS23H4TAS4DI/

1x Basketballer which they flopped and then allowed

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/tall-blacks-star-tom-vodanovich-and-girlfriend-get-last-minute-reprieve-to-fly-home-from-dubai/GMCEZ3AYOSXET6CLJXNREWQNGI/

1x Tennis star

https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/audio/will-ward-michael-venus-career-could-be-affected-by-miq-voucher-situation/

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wellygary

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#2601088 10-Nov-2020 15:42

Oblivian:

Anyone with an overseas portal or is overseas able to check if airlines flag a banner when booking tickets to NZ?...

Like, I would HOPE that it either said check with local authorities. Or one would check MFAT etc first for travel advise.

However, apparently not. There are mixed 'issues' being discovered by personalities they are making more noise over vs joe bloogs.

I've had a look around some of the big airlines with metal flying to NZ and you do get a notice about MIQ...

I'm guessing some of the problems arise with codeshares being booked off a smaller partner airline website, which has no actual "real" flights to NZ, thus they have no knowledge of NZ's border situation.....

kingdragonfly

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#2601096 10-Nov-2020 15:49

Washington Post: Cruising won’t resume in U.S. waters until 2021, with lines renewing a voluntary suspension

The world’s largest cruise industry trade association says ships with passengers will not return to U.S. waters this year.

Cruise ships will not return to U.S. waters with passengers onboard until 2021, Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA), announced Tuesday. The group has extended through Dec. 31 a voluntary suspension of U.S. operations that expired Saturday. CLIA includes Carnival Cruises, Disney Cruise Line, Norwegian Cruise Line and Royal Caribbean, and makes up 95 percent of the global cruising industry.
...
Martin Cetron, the CDC director for the division of global migration and quarantine, told The Washington Post on Friday that there was no timeline for passengers to return to U.S. waters; they would only be permitted after cruise lines completed the required steps, including "a series of mock voyages with volunteers who will play the role of passengers.” The new framework draws upon health guidance submitted to the CDC in September by the Healthy Sail Panel, a team of CLIA cruise and public health experts that Royal Caribbean and Norwegian Cruise Line assembled this July.
...

wellygary

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#2601104 10-Nov-2020 16:17

kingdragonfly: Washington Post: Cruising won’t resume in U.S. waters until 2021, with lines renewing a voluntary suspension

...
Martin Cetron, the CDC director for the division of global migration and quarantine, told The Washington Post on Friday that there was no timeline for passengers to return to U.S. waters; they would only be permitted after cruise lines completed the required steps, including "a series of mock voyages with volunteers who will play the role of passengers.” The new framework draws upon health guidance submitted to the CDC in September by the Healthy Sail Panel, a team of CLIA cruise and public health experts that Royal Caribbean and Norwegian Cruise Line assembled this July....

Volunteer!!!!!..........I would want to be well paid to be guinea pig on a floating petri dish......

mattwnz

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#2601166 10-Nov-2020 17:11

Fred99:

Pfizer's vaccine seems to work. ~90% efficacy in phase 3 trials.

Vaccine is two shots, administered three weeks apart.

It needs to be stored and transported at -70 deg C. This is a problem.

Pfizer claim they could have 1.3 billion doses ready by mid 2021. (I don't know if that means 2 shots for 1.3 billion people - probably not).

Mike Pence, the lame duck Vice President of the US, has boldly claimed personal victory for his and the lame duck President's "Operation Warp Speed". Pfizer have corrected him by stating that they weren't part of Operation Warp Speed and took no funding from the US - because they wanted to maintain independence in their development program.

Hopefully other vaccine candidates that are administered as single shot and can be stored/distributed more easily - at normal refrigeration temperatures - will be effective. We'll know about those before Pfizer's vaccine is available.

Clearly how the vaccine is rolled out is going to get political. It would be extremely dumb to "take down safeguards against infection" too early and open everything up when free availability of the vaccine is months or even years away, but I'm reasonably sure that what 's going to happen.

Hopefully it will be opensourced out to the entire world so all countries,including third world countries can also get their own produced at speed. I think some of the vaccines being produced are going to be opensourced. Although I expect any company to financially benefit from it, I would expect in this type of situation, it would be more of a one off benefit, after-all this is a global disaster,and it needed eradicating. But suspect they will also need to keep adapting it over the years as it mutates, if it can't be eradicated.

At a 90% rate, combined with a less than 100% uptake, what I suspect it will do is reduce the R value down enough , so numbers going to hospital would be more similar to those that get a bad flu each year. Guessing it will also mean that anyone traveling to NZ in the future will need to prove they have been vaccinated, which could be difficult to prove with some countries.

Fred99

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#2601236 10-Nov-2020 18:47

mattwnz:

Hopefully it will be opensourced out to the entire world so all countries,including third world countries can also get their own produced at speed.

I think all the candidate vaccines will not be subject to patent under a global agreement, but will probably be made under license. There's probably "trade secret" that will allow them some de facto IP protection without a patent. Initial price in the USA is US$36 (not sure if that's for a single or two doses). It's free for Americans (it will be here too for sure).

As I understand it, mRNA vaccines are easy and cheap to scale manufacturing, they *should* be even safer than other vaccines because there's no "live" viral material, only the coded mRNA sequence to stimulate antigen production in your cells, which stimulate production of antibodies. Then (hopefully) memory lymphocytes stimulate production of antibodies quickly if you're ever infected in future - but to know how long this protection lasts - we can only wait and see. (disclaimer - I'm not an expert).

It is all pretty good news, there are other vaccines (including mRNA type) in trials, this one worked well as tested, the unknowns are things like how long protection lasts, if and how much it protects vulnerable people (aged and/or with co-morbidities), and the unlikely possibility that there may be side effects not seem so far.

Beyond Covid, the same technology may be able to be used for developing vaccinations against cancers, so it's really fantastic news today.

Geektastic

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#2601249 10-Nov-2020 19:13

Vaccine sounds good, but I think more caution is needed to season the optimism. I can see this turning into “Covid has been cured “ in the mind of the man on the Clapham Omnibus.

Fred99

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#2601257 10-Nov-2020 19:24

Geektastic: Vaccine sounds good, but I think more caution is needed to season the optimism. I can see this turning into “Covid has been cured “ in the mind of the man on the Clapham Omnibus.

I absolutely agree. You do not want to be dead (or infect others who could die) in three weeks when something which may prevent that is just around the corner - even if "just around the corner" is a year away - and no 100% guarantees.

I imagine that it crossed the minds of Pfizer of what the consequence may have been if they'd leaked this news before the US election. Trump thinks it's a conspiracy to hurt him. If it happened, more likely they decided that the consequence of what you describe would have been inevitable, and they did it to protect the people, even if for 70 million of them it was protecting them from themselves.

Oblivian

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#2601315 10-Nov-2020 20:30

Being relatively free is going to be our own demise.

Obviously no way to police it to stop it happening, but we were managing just fine during the past 4-6 months without vouchers etc. And people actually didn't book to come home too far in advance due to how fluid flights and restrictions were unless there was a dire need.

Yet for some reason. Come Christmas and wanting to come home for a visit, that's totally out the window and it's everyone elses fault.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/british-woman-feels-trapped-due-to-nzs-strict-isolation-rules/6GJ2HVINJKP265HYBIVSR4DZKY/

Who else is thinking there should have just been some form of a blanket DON'T COME HOME FOR CHRISTMAS (unless you had an emergency exemption excuse) and the rest into a ballot... Then again. That too wouldn't be 'fair'.

Batman

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#2601320 10-Nov-2020 20:37

Geektastic: Vaccine sounds good, but I think more caution is needed to season the optimism. I can see this turning into “Covid has been cured “ in the mind of the man on the Clapham Omnibus.

umm reading the headlines it's already happened

Tinkerisk

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#2601451 11-Nov-2020 05:19

Fred99:

Pfizer's vaccine seems to work. ~90% efficacy in phase 3 trials.

Vaccine is two shots, administered three weeks apart.

It needs to be stored and transported at -70 deg C. This is a problem.

Not a too big problem, rollout planning is ongoing here (as already posted). 445 Mill. $ funding of BioNTech Mainz/Germany (developer of the vaccine) was done by our Government, Pfizer is partner for the mass production since BioNTech is small and their Labs have not the capabilities.

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kingdragonfly

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#2601484 11-Nov-2020 07:50

New York Times: The F.D.A. grants emergency authorization of Eli Lilly’s antibody treatment.

The Food and Drug Administration has granted emergency authorization of a Covid-19 treatment made by the American pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly that was given to Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor, when he was infected with the coronavirus.

The authorization, announced on Monday, applies only to people newly infected with the virus, and the agency said it should not be used in hospitalized patients. The treatment is approved for people 12 and older who have tested positive and are at risk of developing a severe form of Covid-19 or being hospitalized for the condition. That includes people who are over 65 and obese, the agency said — a key group that early studies have shown can benefit the most from the treatment.

Eli Lilly said that its treatment, called bamlanivimab, should be administered as soon as possible after a positive test, and within 10 days of developing symptoms.

...The treatment consists of a single powerful antibody that is believed to keep the infection in check, and has been shown in early studies to reduce emergency room visits and hospitalizations in patients who get the drug early in the course of their disease.

Eli Lilly’s authorization raised immediate questions about who would get access to the treatments, which must be infused in a clinic or hospital. The company has said it expects to have enough to treat one million people by the end of the year. That means, even in the best-case scenario, there won’t be nearly enough to curb a virus that is now infecting an average of over 116,000 people a day in the United States.

kingdragonfly

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#2601489 11-Nov-2020 07:56

New York Times: Brazil halts Chinese vaccine trial after ‘adverse’ reaction in participant.

Brazil said on Monday that it had halted a late-stage trial of a Chinese vaccine, which had been considered a global front-runner in the race to develop a protective shot for the coronavirus, after a “serious adverse” reaction in a participant.

The Brazilian health regulator provided little information on its decision...

The participant who had the reaction became ill on Oct. 29, according to the authorities. ...They said that such a “serious adverse incident” might include death, disability, hospitalization, birth defects or other “clinically significant events.”

...CoronaVac is one of 11 experimental vaccines, produced by some of the world’s foremost pharmaceutical companies, currently in Phase 3 trials.

...Sinovac’s drug was seen in China as a leading candidate. But in Beijing’s push to get a Chinese vaccine to be the first on the global market, officials stretched the definition of “emergency use.” They have permitted tens of thousands of people to receive the Sinovac vaccine and two other locally made vaccines, despite having not yet concluded Phase 3 trials.

Adverse effects are not unusual in Phase 3 trials. AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson both paused their trials after a few volunteers fell seriously ill, resuming them six weeks later, in October, after concluding that the illnesses were not related to the vaccines
...

kingdragonfly

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#2601497 11-Nov-2020 08:10

New York Times: Virus cases in Thailand and Cambodia are tied to a visit by the Hungarian foreign minister.

The Hungarian foreign minister came to Southeast Asia to promote trade and investment. He would leave possibly having infected at least five people in two countries with the coronavirus. ...He was asymptomatic...

wellygary

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#2601541 11-Nov-2020 09:40

It appears that the NZ branch of F'wits anonymous is busy today...

"Police are looking into a claim made on a notorious terror website from a person apparently infected with Covid-19and wanting to spread it, The post has been shared on 8Chan,

"Long story short I'm pretty sure I have the woohoo flu - I was in the same restaurant as a confirmed case, I have a really sore throat and can't stop coughing...(sic)," it reads.

"How can I do my best to become a super spreader?"

The poster - only named Anonymous - goes on to say they have exams today and Friday for "big courses" and asks how he or she can change their breathing to "maximise infection risk".

"Is mouth-breathing better than breathing through the nose? I don't want to cough too much in case the supervisors move me..."

No location is mentioned in the post.

However, a number of University of Auckland students have shared it on Facebook in a bid to raise awareness among students - particularly those due to take an exam on the two days mentioned.

"https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/police-and-auckland-university-investigating-claims-from-covid-19-superspreader-turning-up-to-exams/ZEJLGZDY3SYOQUJPWV5PSPUOJQ/

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