New York lifts COVID restrictions across commercial, social settings
Source: WABC
NEW YORK (WABC) -- Governor Andrew Cuomo announced New York state-mandated COVID restrictions on commercial and social settings will be lifted effective immediately -- and to celebrate, there will be fireworks across the state Tuesday night.
"We have hit 70% vaccination," a triumphant Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Tuesday, meaning the state can "now return to life as we know it."
Any federal guidelines involving schools and mass transit remain.
During remarks at One World Trade Center, in front of an obliging audience, Cuomo recalled darker days of frequent death and overwhelming caseload.
wjfox wrote: ↑Wed Jun 16, 2021 2:14 pm
I don't know what other countries' vaccine programs look like, but here in the UK, we've been doing it based on the oldest first.
Same in Canada, but we prioritized vaccinating everyone with the first dose, whereas the UK seems to have gone for full vaccination. The rise in India variant cases in UK youth makes for a bit of a serendipitous development for Canada's approach; our government only did it this way out of necessity, as we had a pretty bad shortage of vaccines for the first few months of 2021, but it also means our youth are already mostly vaccinated with one dose. Hopefully this will keep transmission of the India variant low.
Russian scientists warn of possible new 'Moscow variant'
Source: The Telegraph
Russian authorities are investigating a possible new Covid variant amid a sudden spike in cases.
On Wednesday the country reported 13,397 new cases - around half of which were in the capital, Moscow - and 396 deaths.
The more transmissible Delta variant - now detected in 74 countries and behind India’s devastating second wave of Covid - has been identified in Russia but there are also fears that a new Moscow variant might be behind the recent spike in cases.
Denis Logunov, deputy director of the Gamaleya Institute, which developed Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine, told the state-owned Russian news agency Tass the capital may “have its own Moscow strains”.
wjfox wrote: ↑Wed Jun 16, 2021 7:30 pm
Here we go again.
This virus has pretty much ended the world as we know it.
Let's face it. We're never going back to normality. Destined to spend the rest of our lives in an endless cycle of lockdowns and vaccinations.
Not quite, and it's all thanks to mRNA tech. We can create new versions that can resist these mutations literally within a day or two; the only thing that takes a while is scaling up production. It literally doesn't matter how much the virus mutates— we have the technology to counter its every move like a kung fu master capturing his pupil's every punch.
However it is true we do have to be alert about it, especially considering the prominence of anti-vaxxers. If anyone's going to crash society, it's them.
And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future
More Than 500 Breakthrough Infections Reported in Mass. in Under 3 Weeks
Source: NBC Boston
By Mary Markos • Published June 16, 2021 • Updated on June 16, 2021 at 9:14 am
More than 500 fully vaccinated people tested positive for coronavirus in Massachusetts in under three weeks, according to recent state data.
As of June 5, there were 3,641 cases of COVID-19 among 3,500,011 fully vaccinated people in Massachusetts, according to the Department of Public Health. That's 558 more cases than the reported 3,083 fully vaccinated people who had tested positive as of May 17, first reported by MassLive.
The so-called breakthrough cases — cases where fully vaccinated individuals test positive for coronavirus — have so far been rare, but are possible. The numbers account for approximately one in 1,000 vaccinated people in Massachusetts.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a total of 10,262 breakthrough infections were reported throughout the country as of April 30, at which time 101 million people had been vaccinated.
I've got to admit that I've been expecting for a while that we will eventually see a few strains in circulation each year changing and likely some not being slowed by the vaccines. I think globally we've so mishandled this that we are likely in for a five year or more course, of waves.
I have a creeping suspicion that we will get a wave in the next 18 months of a variant that will if not lead to more deaths in the middle spread of age groups in the population, at the very least leave a lot of people in the middle age groups and potentially a lot of children with severe damage, and potentially life long health consequences (thinking like COPD, arythmias, elevated stroke rate in younger populations etc).
And I wonder if in the next 6 months as this situation starts to reveal itself as a possible course of things, if maybe we might see some brutal economic outcomes, bordering on the slide into depression.
