Manic of a panic is geopolitical

[Nick]

Tonight, as part of our battle against Covid, the Netherlands is under curfew,
something we have not had since the occupation by the nazis.

[xilman]

Originally Posted by Nick

Tonight, as part of our battle against Covid, the Netherlands is under curfew,
something we have not had since the occupation by the nazis.

At least the UK has escaped that punishment. Though the pubs are still closed

[Dr Sardonicus]

Johns Hopkins (last updated 2021-01-24 3AM EST) gave the figure of 417,399 deaths in the USA from COVID-19.

I think it's reasonably likely the next update will top the highest figure for US military and civilian deaths in World War II I've run into so far, which is 418,500.

EDIT: As of the update for 2021-01-25 3AM EST, Johns Hopkins lists 419,208 COVID-19 deaths in the United States.

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by Nick

Tonight, as part of our battle against Covid, the Netherlands is under curfew,
something we have not had since the occupation by the nazis.

...And the crowd gets ugly...

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Dutch police took to the streets of towns and cities across the Netherlands on Monday night in an attempt to prevent a repeat of rioting the previous night that saw clashes linked to the country's coronavirus curfew. Before the curfew came into force, two cities reported unrest.

Police in the port city of Rotterdam reported youths took to a street "seeking a confrontation with police." Riot officers attempted to break up the violence and made a number of arrests, police tweeted. National broadcaster NOS reported that police used a water cannon. In the southern town of Geleen, police tweeted that youths in the downtown area were throwing fireworks.

Dutch media reported calls on social media for further violent protests even as the country struggles to contain new coronavirus infections, hospitalizations and deaths.

Police in the southern town of Goes and the North Holland province said they people on suspicion of using social media to call for rioting.

"It is unacceptable," Prime Minister Mark Rutte said. "This has nothing to do with protesting, this is criminal violence and that's how we'll treat it."

Worst hit during the rioting Sunday was the southern city of Eindhoven, where police clashed with hundreds of rioters who torched a car, threw rocks and fireworks at officers, smashed windows and looted a supermarket at its railway station.
<snip>

[tServo]

Originally Posted by Dr Sardonicus

Johns Hopkins (last updated 2021-01-24 3AM EST) gave the figure of 417,399 deaths in the USA from COVID-19.

I think it's reasonably likely the next update will top the highest figure for US military and civilian deaths in World War II I've run into so far, which is 418,500.

EDIT: As of the update for 2021-01-25 3AM EST, Johns Hopkins lists 419,208 COVID-19 deaths in the United States.

And also, we were at war for 45 months and have been recording Covid deaths for just shy of 12 months.

[Dr Sardonicus]

The greatest number of deaths in the US from any outbreak of an epidemic disease (high incidence, rapid spread) seems to be the estimated 675,000 from the "Spanish flu" pandemic of 1917-1918. The US population was around 100 million at the time, making for an easy rough estimate of 675 deaths per 100,000 in the US.

The estimated "case fatality rate" for Spanish flu was 2.5%. For COVID-19 it was around 3% in the US in early days and has slowly decreased to around 1.7% today. (Obviously the "recent" case-fatality rate has to be somewhat lower, but I don't know by how much.)

Last year I read right-wing ideologues' claims that the "real" COVID death rate was only 0.1%. With 420,000 dead Americans, that would require that 420 million Americans be infected. There aren't even close to that many Americans. And with the large number of new cases, it seems to me that there is still a pretty hefty proportion of the US population that has yet to be infected or immunized.

So far, COVID-19 has achieved a death rate of 128.3 per 100,000 in the US. To reach the death rate from Spanish flu, COVID-19 would have to claim something like 2.2 million victims here in the US. At the current case fatality rate, that would require that around 130 million Americans become infected, compared to the 25 million currently known.

[tServo]

While watching my local news last evening, I saw a report wherein gov. Pritzker ( Illinois ) announced the results of an investigation into why our ( Illinois ) vaccination rates are so low ( 5th worst in the nation ) and where are the unaccounted vaccines? They found that the tRump administration contracted with CVS and Walgreen's to vaccinate people in nursing homes and shipped them about 40% of the total doses received. And then they ..... sat on most of them, doing only token vaccinations, with the unused doses sitting in refrigerators.
Then the next news cast, the national news, had a story ( CBS ) about the Biden wondering where all the missing doses are.

Then when I read my NYT, I found the article linked below stating that West Virginia is leading the country far and away with not only first doses but second ones also. You may pooh-pooh this as just a result that they have fewer people, but it goes beyond that. As it turns out, W. Virginia was the only state that eschewed the Walgreens and CVS deal and took the doses to administer themselves. They have been using a network of mom-and-pop pharmacies and their national guard to do this statewide. Also, their reservation system has been hailed as fast and efficient.

So the state previously known for their opoid epidemic puts the rest of the country to shame and once again we have a stellar example of why big corporations just plain suck.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/25/u...e-rollout.html

[storm5510]

I just read where members of the European Union are being really critical of Great Britain's very slow vaccine roll-out. Their response was to threaten the other member countries by saying they might refuse to share it. I was under the impression that Great Britain had broken away from the EU. Apparently not.

[xilman]

I really can't tell whether you are being ironic or whether you posting in good faith the result of you having read some rather dodgy news source.

Clearly it must be time for my irony detector to have a service.

[storm5510]

Originally Posted by xilman

I really can't tell whether you are being ironic or whether you posting in good faith the result of you having read some rather dodgy news source.

Clearly it must be time for my irony detector to have a service.

It is definitely in good faith. Otherwise, I would not have mentioned it. I believe I have gotten it backwards though. The source is NBC.

E.U. threatens to restrict exports of Covid vaccine amid rollout anger.

I have some difficulty with reading. Perhaps someone else can simplify it.

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by storm5510

I have some difficulty with reading. Perhaps someone else can simplify it.

<snip>
"E.U. member states are united: Vaccine developers have societal and contractual responsibilities they need to uphold," Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides said late Monday after two tense negotiating sessions with representatives of the vaccine maker AstraZeneca, in which the commissioner said "insufficient explanations" were provided.

AstraZeneca took E.U. officials by surprise last week when it announced its initial delivery volumes of the Covid-19 vaccine, developed in collaboration with U.K.'s Oxford University, would be lower than originally anticipated because of manufacturing issues in Europe. The company did not say how much lower the volumes will be
<snip>
Britain, which has recently left the E.U., has so far administered more than 10 doses per 100 of its residents, while the top performing E.U. nation, Denmark, stands at 3.6 doses per 100 residents. Germany and France are at 2 and 1.6 doses respectively.

The EU is dissatisfied with AstraZeneca. It seems they're failing to meet contractual obligations for delivery, and haven't explained themselves sufficiently.

I'm not sure this is the only reason the UK is outpacing the EU in getting people immunized.