2 Dec, 2020, 36m ago 16:08
COVID-19 UPDATE
Here is a quick summary of recent events:

The UK recorded a further 57,725 cases of Covid-19 on Saturday, and another 445 deaths, official data showed.

In a bid to help schools reopen, Greece will tighten Covid curbs for a week from Sunday, meaning businesses including hair salons and book stores will close. A 9pm night-time curfew also comes into effect on 3 January.

The US Covid vaccine distribution effort has been criticised as inept and in chaos, as the federal government fell 17 million short of its target to inoculate 20 million people by the end of last year.

A health official in Ireland has said the virus is “absolutely rampant”, as the country braces for 9,000 more Covid cases to be added to the official tally.

Vietnam confirmed it had detected its first imported case of the new Covid variant that is spreading around Britain. A woman, 44, who was quarantined upon her return to Vietnam from Britain tested positive for the virus on 24 December.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/ ... st-updates

Interesting article about being infected in-flight:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/07/heal ... break.html

timmydownawell wrote: ↑Fri Jan 08, 2021 8:47 am Interesting article about being infected in-flight:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/07/heal ... break.html

Definitely an interesting story. Passengers were not required to wear a mask before boarding and some passengers did not wear a mask during the flight. Overall, very sloppy work by Emirates and the airport authority.

Australia will temporarily lower the cap on the number of international arrivals and introduce new rules around air travel, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has announced, as the country moves to combat the UK's new mutant strain of COVID-19.

[...] and travellers to Australia must now return a negative COVID-19 test result prior to their departure to Australia.

https://www.theage.com.au/politics/fede ... 56sp0.html

About time.

timmydownawell wrote: ↑Fri Jan 08, 2021 11:09 am Australia will temporarily lower the cap on the number of international arrivals and introduce new rules around air travel, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has announced, as the country moves to combat the UK's new mutant strain of COVID-19.

[...] and travellers to Australia must now return a negative COVID-19 test result prior to their departure to Australia.

https://www.theage.com.au/politics/fede ... 56sp0.html

About time.

Genius!

Ginger root and meteorite dust: the Steiner ‘Covid cures’ offered in Germany
Philip Oltermann in Berlin
Last modified on Sun 10 Jan 2021 11.00 GMT

In a pandemic where global leaders have peddled quack treatments and miracle cures, Germany has often stood out as a shining beacon for science.

It is the country that developed the first diagnostic test to detect the coronavirus, and the first vaccine approved in the west to shield people against the disease. It is a country whose physicist chancellor told parliament she passionately believes “there are scientific findings that are real and should be followed.”

But Germany is also a country where some people who fall severely ill with Covid-19 can find themselves taken to hospitals where they are treated, under sedation and without a formalised opt-in procedure, with ginger-soaked chest compresses and homeopathic pellets containing highly diluted particles of iron supposedly harvested from shooting stars that have landed on earth.

Followers of the “spiritual scientist” and self-proclaimed clairvoyant Rudolf Steiner advocate such therapies to fight the coronavirus because of a supposed “anxiety-relieving effect on the soul and the body” and ability to “strengthen the inner relationship to light”.

There are no peer-reviewed studies or clinical trials proving the effectiveness of these remedies, and they are not included in the official treatment guidelines issued by Germany’s leading intensive care associations.

Yet in Germany some of these therapies have been given to critically ill patients throughout the pandemic at Steiner hospitals such as Gemeinschaftskrankenhaus Havelhöhe, one of a network of 16 clinics in Berlin offering intensive care to Covid-19 patients under the oversight of the prestigious Charité university hospital.

The country’s public health insurance companies, which are part-financed by German taxpayers, have duly picked up the tab via flat-rate payments for hospital treatment of coronavirus patients.

However, public acceptance of the movement and its philosophies is facing renewed scrutiny after a year in which Germans have seen followers of the Steiner philosophy march alongside anti-vaxxers and the far right in protest at the government’s measures against coronavirus.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/ ... in-germany

If the vaccines for Covid-19 are given to give a person to get anti-bodies to fight off the virus when they get it, why are these vaccines not given to those who are already sick with covid-19. Instead of waiting for the body's own immune system to build up and fight the virus, would it not be better to vaccinate those sick people even if they had to have a double size dose to do the trick.

1h ago 14:00
USA
Coronavirus deaths in the US hit another one-day high at over 4,300 with the country’s attention focused largely on the fallout from the deadly uprising at the Capitol.

The nation’s overall death toll from Covid-19 has eclipsed 380,000, according to Johns Hopkins University, and is closing in fast on the number of Americans killed in the second world war, or about 407,000. Confirmed infections have topped 22.8 million.

With the country simultaneously facing a political crisis and on edge over threats of more violence from far-right extremists, the US recorded 4,327 deaths on Tuesday by Johns Hopkins’ count. Arizona and California have been among the hardest-hit states.

The daily figure is subject to revision, but deaths have been rising sharply over the past two and a half months, and the country is now in the most lethal phase of the outbreak yet, even as the vaccine is being rolled out. New cases are running at nearly a quarter-of-a-million per day on average.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/ ... id-testing