Riobard

Hmmm ... Meanwhile, ‘success story’ Israel has single-dose vaccinated the entire population with Pfizer/BioNTech, and many are fully inoculated on the recommended 21-day cycle. Yet the rolling new case COVID case incidence there is 26th in a global field of 197, with a rolling mortality alone 2.4 times the new case incidence in Thailand. This is what artificial herd immunity looks like in Israel with a vaccine touted as about the most effective on the market. Far from perfect. Thailand has some wiggle room to pause AstraZeneca while re-reviews take place, likely coagulation association not causality. But many nations are deferring the follow-up injection of mRNA and other approved formats to trade off analyzed efficacy for volume. That is deliberative. The happenstance of AstraZeneca is a convenient deflection.

Lula has essentially been granted pardon and political rights; will likely face off in the 2022 election ...

... and strict curfew 20:00-05:00

Beginning tomorrow 12th, beach kiosks operate to 17:00 and bars/restos, etc, have an hour added, to 21:00, mainly to spread out the congested flow of public transit traffic a bit better. All up until 22March.

State lockdown extended to March 30th with Phase ‘Deep’ Red additional restrictions commencing March 15th.

The one sensible thing about Thailand is their not supplanting other CoV status criteria with insistence on artificial immunity through vaccination. That said, what is glaringly missing is the opportunity for proof of natural immunity, ie, antibodies, in conjunction with a negative viral test. The rates of re-infection among the recovered are currently less than breakthrough infection among the vaccinated. Additionally, the recently recovered should defer vaccination. However, imposing a longer quarantine for them, as their only recourse is the negative viral test, seems unreasonable if they can contemporaneously produce easily attainable serology that delineates immunity.

One fly in the ointment is that the article implies that Thailand is expecting the World Health Organization to establish standard criteria for vaccination certificates. Yet the WHO has pronounced being currently absolutely opposed to vaccine ‘passports’ for international travel. Its mandate is infection control, not jumpstarting non-essential travel. It appears that countries, or nation clusters such as the EU, will need to establish their own criteria and protocols. At best, they may be unofficially standardized.

São Paulo is likely to impose this week a brand new Phase, Purple, stricter than the current Red, rather than dialling back to Phase Orange. The country’s rolling average case fatality has bumped up about 50% over the past few weeks, also 50% higher than any previous pandemic peak there, accelerating astronomically per capita over the past few days. They cannot build field hospitals with cots fast enough and many infected are dying while waiting for urgent care. These measures suggest many cases will be housed to await death while acute care intervention systems simply collapse. Typically, whatever the rolling CoV prevalence, new recoveries keep pace with new case incidence as the trajectory of new cases increases gradually. Over the past few days, however, the average ratio is 1-to-1.5 ... that metric value is extremely disturbing, as it suggests about 50% more resources needed, stat, to maintain the previous average mortality rate.

As life is fraught with thwarted best laid plans, my province has done an about face, deviated from the country, and decided to imminently vaccinate my age group in my city Montreal that has the highest COVID incidence rate, prioritizing by case and mortality prevalence rather than equalizing across regions and age hierarchy. I have to give the decision-makers credit for having the balls to use common sense, since folks older than me in low-impact areas are naturally all up in arms about it. The country mice forget that city mice generate most of the resources budget. As I had expected that my place in the queue would be months from now, I entered a vaccination trial that ends February 2022, having received the second of two injections early Feb. At this point, I think I will commit to at least the halfway point this August so that the research will have 6 months of my immunity data. If I am to endure freedom restrictions due to a lack of formal inoculation documentation, I cannot imagine sticking it out beyond that. I doubt very many in the study cohort would. Make no mistake, the pharm companies set up to profit the most are strongly lobbying for vaccination passports rather than a broader and more flexible CoV status certification. With vaccination options gaining steam, there are hordes of vaccine research intentions that will likely be left in the dust. I wonder if the product I received, shipped up from Durham NC, will even make it to efficacy finality analysis and to market. In the meantime, maybe somebody needier than me, and in the developing world, will receive my missed official doses of whatever Quebec would have offered me this month. Who knows? Maybe later this summer I would benefit from a more refined vaccine after all. [I add that this is a real possibility, for those disappointed about a slow rollout currently. Vaxx virgins will likely trump booster recipients.] Other than that, my mood is tickety-boo. I have in the past often gone six months laying low without travel and “play”. This next time block could be a piece of cake.

Apologies, one vid got in twice and I cannot remove it. It was not there when I last read the post. Has anybody else noticed how challenging it is to edit a post once you have attached files?! Anyway, of the two examples, one is 10 seconds (duplicated), the other 15 seconds.

FullSizeRender.mov Anybody tried this new freaky still photo animator? Its brain seems to arbitrarily make movement decisions based on some type of judgement coding. For example, I tried it on two dated photos taken in the same sitting at the time. In one of them the app repeatedly blinks the eyes, keeping the eyeball relatively stationary as if the subject’s view is fixed on one point; in the other it has the eyes gaze around with minimal blinking. I edited them in iMovies and for some reason it picked up some soundtrack snippets, not intended. (sorry, ignore the audio) FullSizeRender.mov FullSizeRender.mov

It’s virtually impossible to travel from Canada to anywhere, too many impediments to list. I have been in isolation mode in Quebec for exactly one year, including in that full year the few days last March laying low in Brazil, cutting my trip short after a few weeks, ordered to leave by my government, and staying home-bound there while finding a business class seat out of São Paulo. It was so frustrating because I had just found some stride with a few unforgettable gems there. Trading in the budget for 20-30 top- drawer programas for the flight out. Spring is showing its face a bit today. I think travel will be possible in a few months, so there seems to be some light in sight. However, I think almost two years will have elapsed before it is realistic to renew hopping back down to my preferred destination Brazil. I think that Dominican Republic may emerge from the pandemic existential nadir sooner. [Eat your Wheaties, Manny, Claudio, or whoever.] ——— Oooh, but I see that Holland is in deep ... sorry, for some reason the attached photo not only blew up but it reverted to a pre-edit format on the first attachment try, and I cannot edit it out.

Erm, here’s a traffic report, Piers ... the weather is already inclement.

Gay is progressive but not progressive for me ... when the attending yanked me from the birth canal I slapped his ass and never looked back at the vag.

Chile has an impressively ramped up COVID vaccination rollout ... FullSizeRender.mov

SNIP: “... breath-on-the-mirror check ...” Do you assess whether the flies could be zombies too?

On the toilet early this morning and for 3 hours last evening for a colonoscopy at noon today, not at Bumrungrad but I am def a runny bum grad.

Imma break my curfew any day now if it keeps up ... go ahead and cuff me ;>P FullSizeRender.mov

I think it would be royally fitting if the next Mehganarry offspring, apparently a girl, were to be named Nerissa Katherine Alice Windsor after ER’s maternal 1st cousins and Philip’s once institutionalized mother.

Just a wild guess but, based on family gatherings in The Crown, Anne seems to come across as the more blunt and unfiltered. Since her children did not receive royal titles, she may have mentioned skin colour in an offhand manner if discussing title privileges with her nephew. It is perhaps somewhat ironic that this headline theme occurs in the context of Bridgerton’s prominence.

I prefer an even number ... a 6-pack of lagers with 6-packs of loggers ;>P

... especially procrastinating getting laid!

My ‘gay life’ consists of trade. At this point, I think the phased order of renewal this late Summer and Fall will be Montreal’s Stock and Campus; Barcelona’s Thermas and Zürich’s Paragonya; and lastly Brazil because I think COVID will be a shit show there much longer.

Hôpital Saint-Eloi (is that where the soup I am slurping today is made?) seems to be still recruiting for the Janssen (J&J) vaccine efficacy study but the protocol is blinded for one to two years and you may get placebo. It’s a two-dose regimen to try to improve on the one-dose format currently approved in some places.