• 💖 [Donate To Keep MyPTSD Online] 💖 Every contribution, no matter how small, fuels our mission and helps us continue to provide peer-to-peer services. Your generosity keeps us independent and available freely to the world. MyPTSD closes if we can't reach our annual goal.

News Worldwide impact of the novel coronavirus (covid-19)

Status
Not open for further replies.
I was at our town grocery today and the cashier was wearing a mask under her nose.
Taiwan had direct flights from Wuhan, they tested in planes, paid folks to be in quarantine, gave each adult 2 masks and children 3 masks per week. Mask wearing was part of their COVID19 arsenal and wearing a mask is a point of pride, you are protecting yourself but also it protects your community. It's why they didn't have to lock down ever, and their economy grew 1.6%. They had a Pandemic Office that prepared for 16 years for the eventuality of a pandemic. It is illegal to spread misinformation in Taiwan. There was no overarching fear or panic. They have an app that tracks in real time where the newest masks available to purchase. They have had 7 deaths and 859 infections last time I checked. It's a special type of racism to ignore the successes of our Asian neighbours. I have written about this to just about every medical personel in the public eye in Australia, and not one has addressed my questions. Australia has a historical history of racism towards Asians and Australian Asians, so maybe that it is it? Who knows. My Taiwanese friends have no fears or concerns about their families at all.
She and a customer were talking about how now they would have to wear masks until the war, or 4 years from now.
Countries where it isn't illegal to spread misinformation don't seem to have the problems that countries where there isn't some line that politicians won't cross. Australia has had some real idiots spreading misinformation.

Professor Kim now looks so tired. They have to wear masks at all times now. He thinks that the count is one tenth of what it actually is, and he started with tubeculosis and did AIDS and I hope that he is wrong.

In Iceland the politicians decided they would not stand on the stage with the medical professionals, that was a deliberate decision so the public wouldn't worry that the information was tainted by political concerns.

As you watch the medical experts speak to the media and the public in various countries you can see them get more and more tired. Most of them are going on 4-5 hours of sleep a night now.


I couldn't believe that there are still people who don't believe Covid is real!
I feel so sorry for those people. It will be when they are dying of it or someone that they love dies that they will finally understand it. It's a terrible betrayal of them by their

Vo, Italy, tested absolutely everyone and they found all the asymptomatic cases, in many places, communicating about asymptomatic cases, and how you can have it and not know it but be spreading it doesn't seem to permeate.

In our area we have the virus in the waste water, it's been there for quite a few months. The general opinion, is that it is spreading asymptomatically. Now the government is starting to encourage people to go and get tested. The asymptomatic spread is a real problem. More virus fragments found in Gold Coast wastewater – myGC.com.au

It's just the flu, I was told.
That's a tragic misinformed position. I have been part of a group that was fact checking virus information on social media for awhile. Wow did I meet some well educated folks. Calm, kind, myth debunking. It was interesting to be part of. Unfortunately 52% of your interactions online are with bots or paid trolls, and they are often not acting in a countries or communities interests.

After my fusion surgery, the surgeon came in the room not wearing a mask, saying that Covid was not as bad as they say.
That's most disturbing, over 3,000 health professionals have died from the virus. If everyone wore a mask we could cut down that death rate significantly. In one part of India, they have lost not only a lot of doctors but many of those that taught at medical schools. It's most concerning. How does a health system rebuild itself after that?

What you are dealing with there is not medicine but ideology, which is a real shame as it could be years before America bounces back. You are not doing genomic testing so your own variants are being found by accident.
My paranoia grew by leaps and bounds.
My paranoia would grow by leaps and bounds in that situation. I would probably lose my mind. I just spent some days in hospital and my partner had their mask off and I did to eat a couple of times. It is in the waste water here, but low risk. As it is everywhere before it takes off. I can't imagine how paniky that I would have gotten in your situation. And you were treated in an abominable way by your alleged medical professional. I was really concerned at the poor way that you were treated.
I have to remember to calm myself every day.
I am also having to remember to calm myself every day. Given what you are going through at the moment I am really impressed that you can do that!
I don't want to be in a war, or civil unrest. Yikes!
America has had a terrible time of it. I hope that you are okay. That you get a break soon from everything that is going on.

Dr Kim is interesting. He's just been interviewed yesterday again as well.

Look how tired Professor Kim is now.
 
Last edited:
South Africa suspends the rollout of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine while it goes through the results of a recent study
That ^^ study was relatively small so they are awaiting data. Which is the right way of approaching the issue. It's unclear yet whether those preliminary results are actually accurate. A small sample may not always give a clear indication about what is going on.
caused by the country's now dominant coronavirus variant.
That's because in Sth Africa almost everyone has that strain of the virus or variant of the virus. But it still may be effective in preventing death and serious disease and to put it bluntly may be way better than nothing at all.
So considering Australia is relying on the AstraZeneca vaccine too - what could this mean for the vaccine more generally? Can we open our borders if this vaccine doesn't work against
Don't panic yet. Australia is not relying on only one type of vaccine and as you know, the Federal Government has confirmed it will receive at least three vaccines.

There are many vaccines still heavily in the research and trial stages and yet to get to the Australian regulators. I'm not exactly sure but it was around 61 vaccines? So there are plenty of options.

Australia doesn't have the Sth Africa variant.

Australia doesn't have hardly any virus at all. A few cases here n there at most.

Obviously every time a flight crew or repatriated Australian tests positive with the virus in any of it's forms there is the possibility of contamination and seeding into the community. So the vaccine will be effective in an otherwise uninfected population.

Always remember it's about reducing serious disease and death not stopping ppl from actually contracting the virus.

As a point of reference: there is growing data that in the case of vaccines for measles and polio that it's not that they prevent humans from contracting the diseases but rather that the vaccines prevent serious disease and death as is often the case in unvaccinated humans.

As for opening the borders - technically they are open. There are literally hundreds of flights bringing back Australians every month. I actually know this for a fact btw not just from media.

There may be ppl o/seas whining about wanting to come home faster and frankly I don't blame them. But since they wouldn't or couldn't take flights when our PM told Australians around the world to come home...last March... the fact is that almost a year on, we have a vulnerable population to protect here first. But flights are arriving, ppl are coming home. And if you absolutely have to and want to - you can fly out too.

A better question would be where in the world do you want to go that has a better health system, better governance of health regulations and is as virus free as here?

Regarding that media link - no there is no general opinion that the virus is spreading asymptomatically! How did you get that from that article? Finding fragments of virus in sewerage isn't necessarily caused by a person who is asymptomatic or even infectious. Humans shed fragments of the virus for many months sometimes after they've completely recovered and not infectious. In fact they can still test positive for a historical infection too but cannot and will not spread it.

I really think the Queensland Government would be pulling out all stops if it thought for one single moment that the virus was truly out there and 'spreading asymptomatically'. The facts are they cannot know so they encourage ppl who have the slightest of symptoms to come forward and be tested. The only way to know if the virus is present in the community is via testing ppl not waste water.

The tests in sewerage are so incredibly sensitive to virus remnants that it's impossible to tell the source so it's an indicator that isn't informative at all. Possibly if very consistent remnants were detected the government might pop up more testing stations but did you read how many sources are showing remnants? That's a lot of places but it may have no relation to actual virus load in the population.
 
Last edited:
Thank you so much ms spock. Right now I am just so overwhelmed, or underwhelmed. Watching all this on tv regularly seems to come down to....they just don't know......so much of the time. Now with all these strains, keeping up with them and the information is getting so much harder to digest.

Last winter we were wiping our food packages down with Lysol wipes. We stopped that.
I really appreciate all your information. Thank you
 
Thank you so much ms spock. Right now I am just so overwhelmed, or underwhelmed. Watching all this on tv regularly seems to come down to....they just don't know......so much of the time. Now with all these strains, keeping up with them and the information is getting so much harder to digest.

Last winter we were wiping our food packages down with Lysol wipes. We stopped that.
I really appreciate all your information. Thank you
Fauci says everyone should start to receive the vaccine by April

 
You are welcome @brat17, we just give everything a quick wipe down. We sanitise anything that goes into the fridge or the freezer. Things we don't need to use immediately we put in a room and let a week go by.

Australia does have quite a few countries that have done better than us. If Morrison had taken responsibility for the private aged care then we wouldn't have lost all those in private aged are in Victoria. They did give them about $240 million dollars but the money wasn't spent on PPEs, or socially distancing or improved hygiene practices.

Of the 904 deaths from COVID-19 in the country at the time of writing, 682 have been in aged care homes, mostly in the state of Victoria. That 75% of the country's deaths have occurred in such facilities gives Australia one of the highest rates worldwide of deaths in residential aged care as a percentage of total deaths. It has left families grieving and experts angry that their pleas to reform the sector had long been ignored.

“Homer Simpson could have seen the catastrophe in aged care coming with COVID-19 because it was there in your face”, said Professor Joseph Ibrahim, head of the Health Law and Ageing Research Unit at Monash University (Melbourne, VIC, Australia) and an expert witness at Australia's Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety.




It is interesting who makes it in to the top ten countries that have managed the virus well and those that didn't.


Iceland let any of its citizens to be tested. Around 13 per cent of those who initially came forward tested positive. Nearly half of those infections were asymptomatic, which revolutionised understanding of the virus. So Iceland's contribution to managing COVID19 significant, just like Vo, Italy.

Rwanda has had 186 deaths and 14,600 infectious and the trust of the public in their health system has left many 1st World Countries in the dust. Imagine only having 186 deaths and 14,600 infections.

Cypress demanded proof of being virus free very early in the pandemic. They are having a surge now but they did extremely well with lock downs and border controls.

Thailand has a largely female army of volunteers with basic medical training go door-to-door over the educating households on how to prevent transmission, doing one on one counselling and discussion actively dispelling misinformation, offering masks and sanitiser, and providing calm, factual, reassuring updates on public health measures. It is a powerful way to combat misinformation.

Taiwan has had 7 deaths and 859 infections, and they had flights direct from Wuhan. So they are a shining example. Taiwanese came home from around the world due to seeing citizens in the countries that they were living in not being looked after by their governments and health systems.

Vietnam went more than half a year without a single death from COVID-19. Their low-tech response was extremely effective at containing the virus. Mask wearing was compulsory from March 2020.
Vietnam used pool testing, which made tracing much quicker.

Mongolia did more to combat the virus in January, 2020, than many first world countries have done yet. But Mongolia doesn't make it into any of the top ten countries that had the best responses in the world. Mongolia is a two-hour flight from Beijing. Ulaanbaatar is connected to China and Russia by rail and road, and there’s constant movement across the borders. Ulaanbaatar has a similar density to Bergamo, Italy — the epicenter of the outbreak in Italy; one of the worst-hit places in the world. It has 1444 kms of shared border with China and exports happen every day of the week. As I am now fond of saying, that's a special type of racism to ignore actual action in January, 2020 and a country that continually stops the virus from both China and Russia. COVID Underdogs: Mongolia

Mongolia has had 2 deaths, and 2,207 infections. Mongolia Coronavirus: 2,207 Cases and 2 Deaths - Worldometer

Racism is having a lot to do with who is dying from the virus, and who is getting access to the technology to produce the vaccines, who is able to access the vaccines, and which countries are acknowledged as actually successfully managing the virus. Western media has racist bias. It's a shame because such successful approaches in Asia are being overlooked, and the lack of deaths has been disappeared in the COVID19 discussions. Whilst folks focused on Sweden? Sheer madness! What Anglocentric viewpoints have done have ensured the deaths of citizens in a range of countries.


It was travelers from Europe and not Asia, that brought the first cases of COVID-19 to at least 93 countries across five continents. Visitors from Italy brought COVID-19 to 46 nations, while travel from China is responsible for just 27 index cases. But that does not get covered.

Germany, with 83 million people, $3.9 trillion GDP, and over 9,300 COVID-19 deaths, does not seem so successful when compared to Vietnam, a country of 96 million people and $245 billion GDP, which had zero COVID-19 deaths in May, 2020.


Senegal and Ghana are worth reading about. They did much better than white, Western countries.

Updated death and infection tolls


It has been well documented how a patronising attitude towards east Asia is what allowed European countries to be caught by such surprise at the spread of this disease. Now a similar mindset seems set to ensure we don’t learn the lessons Africa has to offer in overcoming it.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Just because government officials or politicians don't create clickbait or sensationalist media news doesn't mean the situation isn't serious. Reading the research around waste water detection can be quite illuminating.

A few people I know have watched that in their countries and got their families, workplaces and friends to stay in lock down and missed getting infected. It's another tool in our tool kit of caring for ourselves and our communities. Those with pre-existing conditions are paying extremely close attention to waste water.

In Queensland:

“If there is a case we are not yet aware of, it is critical we detect it through our testing mechanisms as quickly as possible to contain any potential spread.

“Getting tested is especially important now more than ever, as we know the new variants emerging overseas are more contagious than previous variants we have seen in Queensland,” she said.



20,000 tests were undergone when virus fragments turned up in Warwick, Stanthorpe, Loganholme and Cairns. Waste water testing is being used to help target where testing needs to occur.

Waste water results are influencing and dictating some Australians choices to go out in the areas that they live. Researchers found the archived samples were able to detect the genetic fingerprint of the virus up to three weeks before the first COVID-19 cases were publicly reported. I know a lot of medical professionals who are not going out in certain sections of Sydney, particularly on the North Shore, due to the waste water results. (In a Murdoch dominated media, certain stories are run for certain reasons, and though that is being discussed in Australian culture that is another level of analysis, whilst important, is not of interest to me right now). They are choosing to stay in lock down. Some of the professional medical organisations, before scheduling their next meetings, are checking what waste water levels are, and are staying on Zoom. Likewise, on the Gold Coast, many of our medical friends have continued to stay in lock down whilst there is virus in waste water at Merrimac and Elanora. So it is having a huge impact on many life choices of quite a few Australians. Not a large number, that is for sure, but some, and particularly those with medical knowledge as professionals or medical knowledge that is hard won from having an family members with pre-existing conditions, who, in my circles, seem to be paying extremely close attention. It's often the first thing that folks talk to me about when I have contact with them.

Detections were made in a Southern Brisbane WWTP in late February 2020, up to three weeks before the first clinical case was reported there.
When analysed for this study, researchers found the archived samples were able to detect the genetic fingerprint of the virus up to three weeks before the first COVID-19 cases were publicly reported through the limited clinical testing available at the time.
 
Last edited:
Why has Australia ordered so many vaccines? Our 10 minutes with Norman Swan and Tegan Taylor. More than a 100 million have been immunised around the world. AstraZeneca potentially has a 67% prevention of transmitting the virus. Reduced transmission could be the key. Everyone in Australia will be vaccinated! Why has Australia ordered so many vaccines?

^^^The Australian Government sends aid (in lots of different ways) on a regular basis to it's island neighbours.
@ms spock , @blackemerald1 - this exchange between the two of you is based on a misunderstanding. Ms Spock's question of "why is Australia ordering so many vaccines" was not Ms Spock's question, actually - it was an unformatted quote from the article that is linked below it.

This has happened a number of times between the two of you overthe last four or so pages of this thread.

So: @ms spock, if you're going to link to an entire article, there's no need to also post the article's lede line. If it's not correctly formatted, it ends up being mistaken for your own words. I've gone through and cleaned up the posts as best I can, but going forward - please be more careful, thanks.

After my fusion surgery, the surgeon came in the room not wearing a mask, saying that Covid was not as bad as they say.
That's most disturbing, over 3,000 health professionals have died from the virus. If everyone wore a mask we could cut down that death rate significantly.
For what it's worth, @DharmaGirl and @ms spock - I'm in the US, in a major city. Had surgery a few months back, and because there were complications, I was in hospital for a week. Because there were no covid patients on the floor I was on (common practice when possible, in US hospitals at least), there were a number of times various medical professionals were in my room without a mask.

But, they also did a very good job of explaining exactly what their masking protocols were. I'm sorry @DharmaGirl that you weren't given the same kind of detailed explanation...but it's really possible that what your surgeon was meaning to communicate was that covid transmission is manageable in clinical environments, and therefore not as bad as it is out in the general population.

I don't know, and am not saying you're wrong, just sharing a story that is similar but not as alarming.

It's a special type of racism to ignore the successes of our Asian neighbours. I have written about this to just about every medical personel in the public eye in Australia, and not one has addressed my questions. Australia has a historical history of racism towards Asians and Australian Asians, so maybe that it is it? Who knows. My Taiwanese friends have no fears or concerns about their families at all.
This strikes me as a big generalization. What works in one country is not necessarily going to work in another - there are many, many variables to consider. It would be more plausible that Australia's decision-makers are actively aware of the situation in such a nearby region, but may not find those solutions relevant to Australia's particular situation. Think about it - has ANY country on this globe made policy decisions based solely on other nations' successes? "Well, country X did it, and they're doing better than us - let's do their thing and ignore the realities of our situation" - that's not realistic.

It was travelers from Europe and not Asia, that brought the first cases of COVID-19 to at least 93 countries across five continents. Visitors from Italy brought COVID-19 to 46 nations, while travel from China is responsible for just 27 index cases. But that does not get covered.
Always a good reminder: just because you weren't aware of it, doesn't mean it hasn't been or doesn't get covered. Again, I can only speak from my US perspective, but this info was in all our media quite awhile ago. And it doesn't absolve Asia of it's own part in the COVID story.

An index case is an identifiable source of an outbreak. "just" 27 index cases is not a meaningful statistic, unless you're comparing apples to apples. And then, it's not meaningful without incorporating a detailed timeline.

It's a lot of information, to be sure. But one thing is certain: the more information one incorporates, the more detailed things have to get. The advantage of a broad view, is that you don't need to juggle more and more data streams just to make sense of the information.
 
I'm sorry @DharmaGirl that you weren't given the same kind of detailed explanation
I'm pretty sure he was communicating that he didn't believe that one needed to wear a mask, since that's what he said. I live in a very rural area of the country. My pain doctor here told me not to get the Covid vaccine because "they use nanotechnology in the vaccine to track people". He also told me that soon that same nanotech would be used as a money system, and if you didn't get the vaccine, you wouldn't be able to purchase anything. He advised me to stock up on enough food and water for a year, which is good advice but the rest was off the wall in my opinion. I found it very hard to believe that someone as educated as a doctor would repeat conspiracy theories to his patients, but I don't think I would be believed if I did report him. I used this last as an example of the culture of my area.

I'm confused as to why you brought it up. Should I not have said it? I am pretty obtuse at times and I don't want to rock the boat so if it was inappropriate, I apologize.
 
I'm confused as to why you brought it up. Should I not have said it?
No, you're absolutely fine to say it. I brought it up because it's easy for things on a thread like this to spiral. One person relays their experience, and others can turn it into the universal experience. But no - you didn't do anything wrong. And it sounds like he (surgeon) was really as dumb as he sounded. I'm sorry to hear it.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top