SARS II: Respiratory Boogaloo

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.05.22268800v2

Pending a second round of peer review, looks like hard evidence vaccination effectively prevents long COVID. Cross your fingers, but this is really big.

Tell me your healthcare system is broken without saying your healthcare system is broken.

Almost all restrictions are being lifted here now. Although we're probably "ahead" of the US in terms of this wave. And have higher vaccine coverage.

In all fairness, most countries health care systems are completely overloaded at this point. There's a huge backlog of cancelled surgeries here, many of which are/were of the "lifesaving" variety.

My business partner is 72 and he's scheduled for the first of two knee replacements in March. He was supposed to have his first in November. It may not be life or death, but his knees are so bad that if he goes much longer even new knees might not be enough. Multiply that by who knows how many others....

The last story I saw about the delays featured a woman that had her exploratory cancer surgery delayed for over a year. By the time she finally got it, she was terminal.

Doesn't say which vaccines. Will my Sinovac inactivated series protect me?

Early reports are not so great. I'd be looking for a Pfizer shot if I were you...

The two-dose Sinovac vaccine alone did not show any detectable neutralization against Omicron, according to the study that analysed plasma samples from 101 participants in the Dominican Republic.

A study from Hong Kong last week said that even three doses of the Sinovac vaccine did not produce enough antibody response against Omicron and that it had to be boosted by a Pfizer-BioNTech shot to achieve "protective levels."

Not available at all here, because nationalism.

Any chance of getting to Hong Kong?

Open border with HK has been on the horizon, and always will be.

The fact of China's vaccines offering no protection against Omicron -- this is the context in which China remains committed to closed borders and "zero covid," even as the rest of the region is moving on.

General mandate passes in Austria; fines up to €3,600 for being unvaxxed (BBC)

Love it.

It’s a bit buried, but most of the vaccines in the study are Pfizer.

Luckily for anti-vaxxers, there's a federal law on the books that requires their insurance companies to cover their pre-existing conditions...

I guess that includes stupidity.

This was my most prescient comment in the early pandemic. My goodness, who could have predicted so many Jesus freaks committing collective suicide?

I'm still very proud of this post, but it also sucks that @We Are Borg may have had COVID.

And we all know how it turned out for Anne Frank.

Woman charged after threatening to bring 'every single gun loaded and ready' if her children had to wear masks at school

Charged?!? If there was any justice in this world, the woman would be institutionalized for life and have her children taken away from her.

What an absolute piece of human garbage and stain on the gene pool.