Riobard

Bad luck, to be sure. At least it is out of the way, so to speak. I was briefly sick with classic COVID symptoms 5 weeks ago, fever etc, almost felt let down when repeated testing two days apart was negative. Moderna’s mRNA-1273 —> 90-94% protection, and the difference related to prevention of asymptomatic vs symptomatic is negligible. A sobering reminder that breakthrough cases happen. Maybe if you are able to access facilities, lab(s) doing genetic sequencing, you can assess for variants of interest in your sample. Or at least search for what they are in the location where you likely acquired infection. If Quintana Roo, could be any strain developing globally. The incidence spike is likely the mixology of folks flocking there cuz the doors have long been flung open to tourists, now pay the piper. Hope you didn’t get terribly dinged on cancellation charges.

It was meant to come off as humour for those among us familiar with the environment. I am no closer, compared to six months ago, as to guessing where my first voyage of the decade will take me: Spain, Switzerland, Dominican Republic, or Brazil.

It launches this year. Originally ground transport, so is planning some mix-and-match routes. https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/brazil-bus-company-itapemirim-braves-long-odds-launch-airline-2021-05-17/

I consulted about July ... my interpretation is that I’m still going to be jerkin’ it solo.

Wow, did 11 months fly or what! Thermas has just re-opened. I believe the only stipulation is mask-wearing, but we all know by now what that actually means in practice. The current probability of minimally 1 active novel coronavirus infection among 50 persons openly circulating there is roughly 10-20%. Open a window.

While that deficit exists, it has nothing to do uniquely or specifically with the advantages of backward contact tracing. The limitations you refer to apply to both forward and backward tracing methods. If you do not conduct backward contact tracing you totally lose out on identifying the source of new infections. The majority of people that are infected with novel coronavirus did not acquire it in a nefarious context. If you jump on backward contact tracing early in an incidence wave, prior to rendering it impossible due to new incidence volume, you can bend the curve more effectively. Montreal has the same admonishments regarding mitigation rules. Backward tracing has made a relative difference in offsetting a third wave.

Here it is: can enter Panama under these conditions, along with YF vaxx, if stranded in international transit waiting for a delayed connection. Note that the CoV test must be within 48 hours of arrival, in contrast to Canada’s requirement: within 72 hours of Brazil departure. Overall, a risky option for the inconvenience of possible quarantine order, but if you are a trooper willing to hang out airside, especially if not YF vaxxed ... Gonna wait until flights resume Canada/Brazil one day.

Correct. Can transit thru Panama, use the drop down menu. Flight connections may be wonky and make camping out in international transit area intolerable. Need Yellow Fever vaxx certification to leave the area. Not sure what is required to leave the transit area as far as COVID restrictions ... check by changing that part of the menu to entry, not transit. https://www.copaair.com/en/web/ca/travel-requirements

2 of 2

Now is the time for aggressive backward contact tracing in Thailand if not already being done ... 1 of 2

Google is your friend.

... for those interested in investigating routes, price competitiveness, etc.

Yeah I found that clinic years ago when I had an eye infection, or something like a sty(sp?). Good service. I still get a birthday greeting by email.

‘Feeling sick’ is pretty generic. My sense is that I over-interpreted, overlooking that it was simply stated as a reason for skipping 117 Tues, also that in your case it must be serious, like maybe full-blown COVID, to keep a man down. Of course anyone can say anything here and there is no fact-checking that it was not along the lines of ‘oh, not this morning noon or night, dear, I have a headache’. LOL

Depending on the symptoms, you may have had a SARS-CoV exposure. All depends on whether you are susceptible (a virgin) or have some immunity based on recovering from it previously or having had vaccination against it. That some symptom-alleviating meds worked does not mean it was not novel coronavirus. You can have short-term illness whether it is a new CoV infection, a reinfection based on the 100+ strains in Brazil, or have been inoculated and have mild vaccine breakthrough. Or if you are vaccinated I believe your immune response quickly kicking in following an exposure can feel like illness as your body’s immune memory is woken up.

... while the blocked banned one gets backed up.

What venue? There are two. Encontru’s has these features. I assume you mean PdeE doesn’t.

Wearing ... goddam ottokorrekt gremmlinz.

For all the trash talk about China’s vaccines, WHO with its stringent review process just signed off on Sinopharm’s BBIBP-CorV, the sixth product thus far to receive the stamp of approval, though recommending for under age 60 for now. The decision about Sinovac’s CoronaVac comes next week. The media’s call on it is a toss-up. I think it will be greenlit. The recent follow-up effectiveness trials all indicate meeting the 50% threshold or better. Brazilians and Chileans have been keen to queue up for it and there have been no indications of serious adverse events. Sadly, President Bolsonaro continues to badmouth China and much damage control is required. The Chinese cannot seem to take in stride that he is essentially insane. —-

Au contraire ... it’s common knowledge that the vaccines are assessed using the correct stepped-up phase methodology that depends on a study subsample getting sick and with higher numbers getting the illness. If the group subjects not receiving the vaccine are spared infection the efficacy is zero-to-inadequate infection risk reduction. No vaccine approved. The effectiveness of first-line vaccines already reduces the volunteerism willingness of research subjects to stay with the defined protocol. Huge drop-outs of placebo controls. Add the disincentive of freedom limitations for research subjects when a majority of the population essentially lobbies for unique privilege that was facilitated by those volunteers but is not accessible to them, why not just go out and squeeze a deuce into your closest essential worker’s corn flakes?

You can have vaccine passports required for most activities or you can sustain ongoing vaccine research & development utilizing the robust trial modalities that have yielded the inoculation options in the first place ... rescue vaccine interventions for which the notion of substantial immunity has sprearheaded the basis for formal recipient certification that privileges such activities. You cannot have both. The one paradoxically undermines the other. Short-term gratification is your agenda, or preservation of ‘gold standard’ research endeavours that may be continually required for a non-abating pathogen. Take your pick. Or use more common sense in determining alternatives prerequisite for actualizing privileged entry points into desired, renewed behaviour. It is more feasible to apply an overarching and more flexible range of validation for immunity or non-infectivity, all of which are preventive but not without their own unique flaws. The observer and subject-blind trial recipients of neither vaccine nor placebo will qualify for vaccine certification, and why would they volunteer, altruism grinding up against sacrifice of privilege? Surely the risk of non-intervention arm assignment is enough to have to endure. This is not Yellow Fever, the vaccination development and implementation strategy all laid out and stable. Without sufficiently longitudinal and solidly populated placebo-control randomized assignment research, the essential trial prospects that are left might include noninferiority SARS-CoV-2 vaccine comparison trials or challenge trials in which subjects are exposed to coronavirus infection following an experimental vaccine. The optimal structure for creating and testing vaccine candidates gets compromised. The essential foundations should be preserved.

Oh, good! You were spared infection thus far and your upcoming advantage is dosing at an interval that pays greater and faster dividends for protection.

We only see in the media vaccine efficacy expressed as relative risk reduction for study subjects able to benefit from vaccination. In contrast, absolute risk reduction considers the entire population and the infection attack rate based on the per capita background infection incidence over the same time period in which the research occurs. Absolute risk reduction tends to be ignored because the metrics appear to be unimpressive, all less than 2% for the currently predominant EUA product shortlist, and might de-incentivize vaccine uptake. It is much lower because the actual risk of infection without vaccination is quite low; the problem is the deleterious impact of a case. Moreover it is a moving target predicated on constantly changing infection incidence, whereas study efficacy has the illusory appearance of stability ... it doesn’t really have stability though, judging by the broad range of confidence intervals for the single-value efficacy metrics presented. Absolute risk reduction is utilized as the denominator, with the numerator held as a constant, the value 1, for calculating the number needed to vaccinate to prevent one more case of SARS-CoV-2. The difference in background infection incidence explains why the clinically less effective AstraZenecaOxford vaxx requires 78 persons vaccinated whereas PfizerBNT requires 119 vaccinated in order to offset each single new case. The former had a higher background population infection incidence. As community vaccination progresses, the background rate of infection will pivot from the entire population as denominator to the sub population of infection ‘susceptibles’ as denominator. In other words, although population incidence declines the new case incidence among those without natural or artificial immunity has the potential to peak at rates heretofore unseen for the general population throughout the pandemic. Much of this depends on the attack rate among the unvaccinated and assumes that they may generally tend to cluster together more (like seeks like). The subgroup number needed to vaccinate for new case prevention will shrink. By that time, the vaccine with greatest clinical efficacy will predominate on offer for the infection susceptibles, as simultaneously the number needed to vaccinate to prevent new cases will have declined within that specific subset. The greatest true effectiveness is based on the higher the relative risk reduction (ie, study efficacy) and the lower the number needed to treat to prevent each additional new case. These considerations will likely play a beneficial role for a potential second-wind surge towards the finish line for whatever the threshold of community immunity will be. —— Coles Notes version: The greater one’s risk of infection, the greater the personal and collective benefit of vaccination. Inoculation among those with high susceptibility to infection spills over preventively to the entire population at a greater level than for those vaccinated at an overall lower smoothed-out risk of infection. It’s shitty if early rollout vaccination is declined by essential workers, because their acceptance confers the greatest population collective benefit. But even a lower vaxx acceptance by them compared to a higher non-essential pop acceptance can potentially yield a better overall protective benefit by the former for the overall public. Residual non-immune susceptibles, same idea, but there is at that point a much smaller proportion of the progressively immune population subject to infection risk posed by those that transmit infection, as vaccine breakthrough is low.

Let’s remember that there were vaccine breakthroughs of initial wildtype SARS-CoV-2 for BNT162b2 from the get go in pre-EUA research, and the ratio of moderate to severe cases was technically mathematically suggestive of no less probability of severe disease than was observed in the population at large. It is not the spectre of a new strain that necessarily inflated the potential for lethal infection. That can occur across all variants. The massive breadth of vaccination simply provides enough volume of vaccinated people to have COVID death lurking among them/us, albeit lesser rates.

It is highly unlikely there will be a legal mandate for obligatory vaccination even though it is the prerogative of authorities at many levels in Canada and USA to physically impose inoculation in certain contexts for the greater good of public health, all of course subject to mostly futile court challenges. However, there will probably be at most the appearance of a mandate based on privileges and restrictions that amount to the vaccine decliner being forced to cooperate for the sake of the same freedom, paradoxically, their insistence of which takes current vaccination refusal to the mat. I would expect that there will be defined categories of people more subject to freedom limitations, based on a stratified hierarchy of transmission vector factors. This could play out to whatever arbitrary yet fluid definition of overall community immunity creates the right balance of health & safety, as well as some degree of grudging non-optional tolerance for a microbial entity that is not amenable to negotiation. It is somewhat silly at this juncture to extend the ‘all talk’ to ersatz active mandate since many folks that desire vaccination do not yet have access to it. Eventually, the supply chain will have eliminated the previous absurdity of enforcing a theoretical concept that is presently far from a uniformly concrete intervention. Again, the enforcement idea is figurative.