The Vaccine for Covid is coming fast

[BobDobbs]

1 hour ago, SteveAJones said:

That son of bitch needs to die in prison.

Notice it didn't require fascist mandates? I do love me a homogenous society with strict immigration laws that are enforced.

How the hell did you get in then?

Just kidding, I'm surprised your not the Emperor

[Reggie29]

5 hours ago, JohnOsbourne said:

Except that the quarantine selfie app is being used in South Australia and New South Wales as well.  Maybe read the article next time.  Your whole "it's just Victoria, mate" act is getting real fucking boring, I have to say.  How many "isolated" incidents does it take to open your eyes?  (I know the answer.)

Another piece of bullshit.

I don't have the app nor do I have to upload it and I don't give a fuck what you think.

It was mooted by the Government but the Police refused to endorse or enforce it here in NSW. Typical, Zerocred only pushing their agenda and only giving one side of the situation and stretching the truth, as usual.

Isolated incidents or not, some of them are staged by attention seeking, tinfoil hatted, flat earth, exhibitionist loonies as you recently agreed to.

You are ennui personified.

 

 

[SteveAJones]

3 hours ago, BobDobbs said:

How the hell did you get in then?

Perhaps I blend in easily. This is me. Deal with it.

[Ross62]

On 10/12/2021 at 6:33 AM, Strider said:

They need to change their name to ZeroSense.

Done!

[rm2551]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-10-19/qld-coronavirus-covid-modelling-border-roadmap/100548868

This may well be the case, I don't know. We can't stay locked down forever though. It's not going to be fun when Covid burns through.... 

[BobDobbs]

7 hours ago, SteveAJones said:

Perhaps I blend in easily. This is me. Deal with it.

Deal with it? I would be more than happy to deal with this indeed 🙂

Hubba hubba, you're damn fine Stevie !!!

[SteveAJones]

8 hours ago, BobDobbs said:

Deal with it? I would be more than happy to deal with this indeed 🙂

Hubba hubba, you're damn fine Stevie !!!

Thank you, sweetie. 😘

[JohnOsbourne]

Can't make this shit up:

Businesses's In New South Wales (NSW) Will Be Held Accountable | ZeroHedge

[JohnOsbourne]

Great article tying a lot this together, in particular the lockdowns as a precursor to war:

There is No Getting off Europe's Elevator to Hell - Gold Goats 'n Guns (tomluongo.me)

[Ross62]

On 10/19/2021 at 6:35 PM, SteveAJones said:

Perhaps I blend in easily. This is me. Deal with it.

You were an obese African American man a few years ago...make your mind up!

[Stryder1978]

I much prefer this new and improved SteveAJones however!

[BobDobbs]

12 hours ago, Ross62 said:

You were an obese African American man a few years ago...make your mind up!

Hey now, be careful, you could get cancelled or doxxed for asking such questions. If Steve chooses to be Stevie instead we must respect their choice. Trans-gender should be respected and not discriminated against.

I hear Stevie will be appearing on the next season of Ru Paul's Drag Race. I say all us Zep-heads put our full support behind Stevie and back them up for the big win!!!

Go Stevie Go!!!!!

[Strider]

On 10/19/2021 at 12:35 AM, SteveAJones said:

Perhaps I blend in easily. This is me. Deal with it.

This is the transformation Michael Jackson was trying to achieve.

[JohnOsbourne]

[JohnOsbourne]

[Plant77]

On 10/19/2021 at 12:35 AM, SteveAJones said:

Perhaps I blend in easily. This is me. Deal with it.

Damn! You are one sexy, handsome? Amazingly good looking dude/women. Or LGTBQlmnop. I mean that with all do respect ✊. I don’t want to get canceled. Well, really I don’t care if I do. Either way. Steve. I’m impressed with your ability to change your look and style so effortlessly. Good job my man/women?

I say thank you Sir! Or Madam? Whichever you are comfortable with. 

[Plant77]

On 10/11/2021 at 12:33 PM, Strider said:

They need to change their name to ZeroSense.

Zerocred/Zerosense/Zerohedge is about as credible as the National Enquirer. Or slightly below it. However, I commend the commitment of the use of that site as some sort of authority, or even a source of information however silly it is. 

What has been making me laugh is when people try to lump the New York Times are Wall Street Journal, or some other highly credible new source in with the “Lame Stream Media”. It’s comical in some ways. If we all got vaccinated, and would just be mindful of others and show respect we would be in a much different and better place. 

[Ross62]

13 hours ago, BobDobbs said:

Hey now, be careful, you could get cancelled or doxxed for asking such questions. If Steve chooses to be Stevie instead we must respect their choice. Trans-gender should be respected and not discriminated against.

I hear Stevie will be appearing on the next season of Ru Paul's Drag Race. I say all us Zep-heads put our full support behind Stevie and back them up for the big win!!!

Go Stevie Go!!!!!

Nix Stevie Nix.

[Ross62]

 

[Stryder1978]

Melbourne readies to exit world's longest COVID-19 lockdown

Renju Jose

Wed, October 20, 2021, 5:19 PM

• 
  

 

By Renju Jose 

  SYDNEY (Reuters) -Millions in Melbourne are readying to come out of the world's longest COVID-19 lockdown later on Thursday even as cases hover near record levels, with pubs, restaurants and cafes rushing to restock supplies before opening their doors. 

  Since early August, residents in Australia's second-largest city have been in lockdown - their sixth during the pandemic - to quell an outbreak fuelled by the highly infectious Delta strain. 

  Officials had promised to lift lockdowns once double-dose vaccinations for people aged above 16 exceeded 70% in Victoria state, of which Melbourne is the capital. 

  Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Thursday confirmed the state had reached that target, with more restrictions set to ease as inoculations hit 80% and 90%. 

  "The longest road has been journeyed in Victoria and that long road really starts to open up tonight," Morrison told Seven News on Thursday. 

  From 11:59 p.m. (1359 GMT) Thursday, pubs and cafes can have 20 fully vaccinated patrons indoors and 50 outdoors, while hairdressers can allow entry for five customers. Masks will still be mandatory both indoors and outdoors. 

  By then, the city of five million would have spent a cumulative 262 days, or nearly nine months, under stay-home orders since March 2020 - the world's longest, exceeding a 234-day lockdown in Buenos Aires, according to Australian media. 

  Pubs have begun to take more beer ahead of the reopening with Carlton & United Breweries, owned by Japan's Asahi Group Holdings, saying it had moved an extra 50,000 kegs to venues across the city on Thursday. 

  As businesses prepare to welcome customers, daily infections rose to 2,232 in Victoria on Thursday, the second highest daily count in any Australian jurisdiction during the pandemic. 

  VACCINATION SURGE 

  After largely stamping out infections in 2020, Australia has ditched its COVID-zero approach and is aiming to live with virus amid higher vaccinations after being rocked by a third wave of infections in the country's southeast since mid-June. 

  Despite the Delta wave, Australia has recorded only about 152,000 cases and 1,590 deaths, far lower than many comparable countries. 

[Ross62]

^

[Ross62]

 

[Strider]

On 10/18/2021 at 7:26 PM, JohnOsbourne said:

Scientifically proven:

F.D.A. to Allow ‘Mix and Match’ Approach for Covid Booster Shots - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

You've really got to be willfully blind at this stage to not see what's going on.

Do you permanently live in "panic mode"? You need to chill out and relax instead of acting like Chicken Little at every news item. This New York Times piece does a good job of explaining what is going on with the 'mix and match' approach.

By David Leonhardt

Good morning. The federal government is slowly moving toward endorsing mix-and-match Covid vaccines.

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the C.D.C. director, at a hearing in July.Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times

The full truth

Early this summer, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the C.D.C., went on a podcast and did something that top public-health officials are often uncomfortable doing: She spoke in straightforward, clear language. She dropped the bureaucratic reticence that treats scientific questions as either settled or unanswerable. She acknowledged nuance and uncertainty while still offering useful guidance.

I want to revisit that interview today, because it covered a topic that’s back in the news: Covid-19 booster shots. Yesterday, the F.D.A. authorized Americans to receive a booster shot with a different vaccine than their original dose — an approach known as mix and match — and the C.D.C. may confirm that decision this week. If so, federal policy would be more in line with Walensky’s comments on that June podcast.

Today’s newsletter will explain how the change may benefit people — and ask why it took so long.

To veer or not

The podcast was “In the Bubble with Andy Slavitt,” and Slavitt’s background might explain why Walensky took a less formal approach.

Slavitt ran Medicare and Medicaid during the Obama administration, and when he spoke with Walensky in June, he had just finished a stint as a Covid-19 adviser to President Biden. Even though Slavitt and Walensky were speaking on a public podcast, their tone at times resembled that of a private conversation between colleagues — which is what they had been until a few weeks earlier.

During the conversation, Slavitt asked Walensky whether people who had received a Johnson & Johnson Covid vaccine should consider getting a follow-up shot from one of the mRNA vaccines, either Moderna’s or Pfizer’s. The J.&J. vaccine has officially been a single-shot vaccine, unlike the others, and also seems to be somewhat less effective. Understandably, many J.&J. recipients have wondered whether they should get a second shot from one of the mRNA vaccines. Some doctors and scientists, finding the evidence persuasive, have already done so themselves.

Walensky began her answer by restating official C.D.C. policy: “We’re not currently recommending it.” But then she added the fuller truth: “I’ll tell you what we do know, and some places where I think people might veer from standard guidance.”

She explained that the AstraZeneca vaccine — available in many other countries — was very similar to the J.&J. vaccine. And some people who had received a single shot of AstraZeneca decided to follow it up with an mRNA shot. There was not much data about how well that worked, Walensky said, but it was probably safe and she understood why some people might choose to do so.

At this point, Slavitt put the question in personal terms: “If someone you knew said, ‘I’m going to get the mRNA vaccine because I’m just too nervous,’ you wouldn’t lay down in the tracks necessarily and say, ‘This is a huge mistake’?”

“Not with what I’ve seen so far,” Walensky replied. If you chose to take a mix-and-match approach, she added, “you have to be willing to take the risk-benefit there.”

Black, white and gray

I found her comments both jarring and refreshing at the time, because they reminded me of how officials and experts often speak when talking to friends and relatives (or when talking off-the-record with journalists).

Walensky was being transparent. She was treating her audience like adults capable of handling subtlety. She was laying out what health officials believed with a very high degree of confidence: The vaccines were all extremely safe and highly effective at preventing serious illness, even if the J.&J. shot was a little less effective. She was also engaging with a specific question on many people’s minds and helping them think through the unavoidably uncertain options.

Health officials are frequently unwilling to take that second step in public. When confronted with uncertainty, they do not acknowledge it. They ignore gray areas and talk in black and white.

J.&J. booster shots have been one example: Federal policy has left many J.&J. vaccine recipients anxious and uncertain about what to do, even as the available evidence seems to indicate that a mix-and-match approach is the most promising. (In The Washington Post, Dr. Leana Wen explains how the evidence guided her own decision.)

The flip-flop on masks last year was another example. Government officials first dismissed the many reasons to believe that masks could reduce the spread of Covid (like their longtime effectiveness in hospitals) — and went so far as to discourage mask use. Then, after the evidence had cleared a certain threshold, they reversed themselves and urged Americans to start wearing masks immediately. It was a 180-degree turn on an issue that didn’t require it.

A line for booster shots in San Rafael, Calif.Jim Wilson/The New York Times

Getting there, slowly

Conducting public-health policy during a pandemic is not easy. There are rarely perfect solutions. And the country’s health officials overwhelmingly have good motives.

In many of their minds, an extremely cautious approach is the right one. Until they know something with near certainty, they don’t talk it about it publicly. When asked about an issue involving uncertainty, they tend to duck the question and restate official policy.

But this approach creates its own problems. During a crisis, people have to make uncertain decisions. Pretending otherwise doesn’t eliminate those decisions. If anything, the refusal to acknowledge uncertainty can undermine officials’ credibility, as happened with masks.

Imagine how things might be different if officials were more straightforward with the public:

On masks, health officials could initially have said that no studies yet showed masks to be effective in fighting this virus — and that they might not be — but that there were reasons to think they would be.

On outdoor Covid transmission, the C.D.C. could have avoided trumpeting a single statistic — technically accurate, but misleading and alarming — and explained the full, largely reassuring picture.

On rapid Covid tests, the F.D.A. could have approved them as quickly as some other countries have and explained the circumstances in which the tests were, and were not, useful.

In most of these cases, health officials ultimately decided that they were willing to trust Americans with something resembling the full truth. It just took awhile. That’s the path the government is following on J.&J. booster shots.

[1975NQ]

19 hours ago, Plant77 said:

Zerocred/Zerosense/Zerohedge is about as credible as the National Enquirer. Or slightly below it. However, I commend the commitment of the use of that site as some sort of authority, or even a source of information however silly it is. 

What has been making me laugh is when people try to lump the New York Times are Wall Street Journal, or some other highly credible new source in with the “Lame Stream Media”. It’s comical in some ways. If we all got vaccinated, and would just be mindful of others and show respect we would be in a much different and better place. 

NYT and WSJ stopped being "highly credible" years ago when it comes to certain areas of the news. Yes they offer facts, but the facts usually have a slant/agenda. I'm neither Dem nor Rep, just commenting on the sad state of journalism these days. Real, non-biased journalists with actual integrity are a dying breed. I wish I was wrong about that.

Edited October 21, 2021 by 1975NQ

[1975NQ]

But regarding your comment about respecting others and being mindful, I'm with you 100%. In my day-to-day life, most people I come across are pretty open-minded and respectful about the opinions of others. There's definitely discord all across the country, but I think our media exacerbates this for clicks. Gasoline on the fire is good for business.