Coronavirus Pandemic

[lazerwalker]

Pfizer boosted on Friday, and just the proverbial sore arm for me, same when I had the AZ shots earlier in the year. I almost wanted a little reaction, just to reassure me that the vaccine was doing its thing!

[gilesgoat]

Gone home. I know people at work will be like "what a wet blanket I didn't have to go home for any of my jabs" but fuck spending 9 1/4 hours sat at a desk shivering, aching, headache and absolutely knackered - maybe resting up will speed things along a bit...

I have been hearing even worse horror stories from others, including all the above plus a day-long leaky arse.

Conversely, I have noticed no side effects in myself other than a mildly bruisy arm for perhaps half a day.

Ex-wife claimed it properly hit her for 6. I popped in to hers to pick the kids up and she was laid up, sweating like mad. Reckoned it felt worse that a bad bout of proper flu that took us both down 20 years ago.

But I also know plenty who've just had the sore arm

Interesting thing that "seems repeating itself" like "there appears there could be a correllation" .. "most of people complaining about strong side effects where of female sex" .. maybe there's something that affects more females than males ?

[KlaxonCow]

Also, Winter Solstice is when we have the big festival - to celebrate getting passed "the worst day", as it were - so it's just putting together "blubbering up" with the big party. Make it into a "blubbering up" party! The timing is also there for other reasons - astronomical ones - so might as well use that as your "time to blubber up" signal.

Many centuries before Sol Invictus, the Romans seem to have had a week-long blubbering up during Saturnalia (ending a day or two after the solstice).

Thinking ahead, innit.

But, yeah, I said "Winter Solstice" there because I was trying to talk generically about the common underlying thread of all the various different "Winterval" festivals - across cultures, across history - and the fine details of any particular version of the celebration may slightly differ.

But that's kind of the point that I'm getting at, that you can strip away the religious bits and the commonality there is, broadly, a Northern Hemisphere "big party to celebrate dragging our arses through the shortest and darkest day, blubbering up for what's to come", often holding friends and family closer - maybe, sometimes, exchanging gifts to show one's appreciation - because this is a "we survived this time!" party, so appreciate what you got and, indeed, make some good memories, in case it doesn't work out so well next year.

Stripped of its religious flourishes, it's a pragmatic exercise - blubbering up, a slightly hedonistic release to the tension for one's sanity, making memories with family and friends - against that part of the year that, still to this day, claims too many and, in times past, used to be far more brutal (though, unfortunately, with this pandemic, we're getting a taste of what that used to be like - as we can't just ignore "the Winter viruses" this time around, as we've got an aggressive new one that is "culling" far too many people. In the past, all of that was present and amplified, but without any jabs or the possibility of "work from home" over the Internet. I've said before that the past was a shit hole of a place, and we're unfortunately getting a bit of a "taster" of that - as this kind of "we could be killed off by disease any second" was, like, an ever-present feature of their past lives. Their "mental health" was under never-ending assault. Things have greatly improved, believe me, even if we've got so much further to go and it's still far from perfect).

And, as I say, it's less that all these cultures and religions were "hijacking" each other's festivals. But rather that this underlying pragmatism was common, and you've got different variants of how to approach the same problem. And, as I say, it's less that the Christians "stole" the heathen festivals - it's that they used to be those heathens before conversion, and they're "re-interpreting" it religiously, so that they don't have to let go of it (or moving to new lands, they "fit in" with what's going on there and adapt it to their religious views). The underlying pragmatism remains there, but how you religiously interpret it and name it is more flexible.

The big one, on the other side, is Easter. That one really gives the game away, as, in English, they didn't even bother with a name change. "Ēostre" is the Germanic Spring goddess, so "Easter" was not even renamed in English and remains (a distorted version of) her name. Eggs and bunnies and things are symbols of fertility. It's a "nature's becoming fertile and productive again" Spring festival. In a sense, the "promise" that Christmas made - that the Sun, and therefore the crops and the harvest, will be returning next year - is fulfilled by Easter.

Winter is "the death of nature" and Spring, therefore, is the blossoming of new life.

But, like, you'll find Christians reinterpreting that egg symbol in their own context. So, yes, it's "new life" but they read that as "the resurrection" and the "rebirth" of Jesus Christ. But, like, it's really the rebirth of nature - because, after all, the "fucking like rabbits" symbolism doesn't quite work for the Christians, does it? But the Easter Bunnies are still in the canon of symbols. A left-over from the less prudish pagan way of seeing things.

And, like, as I say, this one doesn't even hide the evidence with a re-brand - it's still named after "Ēostre" in the English (though other languages have renamed it to something "passover" related - Welsh: "pasg", Spanish: "pascua", French: "Pâques", Italian: "Pasqua"... but note that German: "Ostern", so named after Germanic goddess "Ēostre" again).

Don't get me wrong. I actually like the myths and legends - the story-telling and symbolism - of these things. But the problem with metaphors is that they eventually break, if you push the analogy too far. And why talk about the metaphor, when you could just talk about the actual thing you're making a metaphor of? Yes, eggs and bunnies and things - we get the gist of the symbolism - but you could also just openly admit "yeah, this is a celebration of the return of fertility to nature, as that means the crops will be growing this year and we need a good harvest to eat over the coming harsh Winter". That's what's really going on. And I find no shame in just saying so.

The metaphors, as I say, just dilute the underlying message.

I like stories and fiction and stuff. But let's not pretend Captain Kirk or Harry Potter is a real person, yeah? Understand the metaphor as a metaphor.

[gilesgoat]

... Easter Bunny and eggs ... NOT SAFE FOR CHILDREN !

[Harlequin]

… I almost wanted a little reaction, just to reassure me that the vaccine was doing its thing!

Like me with my second AZ.

Interesting thing that "seems repeating itself" like "there appears there could be a correllation" .. "most of people complaining about strong side effects where of female sex" .. maybe there's something that affects more females than males ?

The example I gave, at least, is male.

[merman]

So Boris the Chicken pre-recorded his pompous address to the nation broadcast last night.

Two problems with it.

1. He didn’t give the NHS any extra notice or resources to deal with the booster deadline being brought forward a month. GPs and pharmacies found out at the same time as everyone else. So that means they need to do a MILLION jabs a day for the rest of the month - when the current rate is just over 400,000 and large swathes of the country don’t have any booking capacity or walk-in centres. Predictably the website crashed.

2. It was a POLITICAL broadcast not an official Government statement. Which meant the Opposition had the right of reply (played out at 7pm tonight) and the key people Boris was trying to appeal to weren’t even bothered by it (the 60+ backbenchers who are planning to vote against the Government on Tuesday).

Starmer is doing the right thing by backing the restrictions/Plan B, and in his measured, careful tones he pointed out the REAL key to slowing the spread is schools. Vaccinate pupils and ventilate classrooms, make them safer before term starts again in January.

[Cloudane]

Moderna update: it didn't stay mild 12 or so hours later the shivers kicked in and I didn't get a wink of sleep. Still suffering it now plus headache, muscle aches etc.

Okay, thats interesting because thats the reaction I had after the 1st dose of AZ. For me today, I have a mild whole body ache and possibly a little fatigue but otherwise fine.

Yeah my reaction was identical to the first AZ jab.

Not being an expert on these things, I'll wildly speculate that as it's been 5 months since my second dose, the antibodies had all but fucked off and this is the process you go through when building them back up again. As IIRC it's pretty variable from person to person how long they stick around for.

[KlaxonCow]

QI just posted this on their YouTube channel, and it fits with what I was talking about earlier:



Though, Stephen is less kind than me, and is pointing out how obviously plagiarised a lot of "Christian" beliefs about Jesus are from Mithras. Indeed, there's a lot of that about, as many Old Testament stories were clearly "lifted" from the Epic of Gilgamesh and Babylonian beliefs.

But, as I said, if you rather see this as just the "shifting sands" of humanity, then there's no real surprise or mystery. People moving around, carrying their cultural stories with them. People converting from one religion to another - but not quite letting go of everything they once believed. These mythologies collide, hybridise, get "re-interpreted", or "remixed" with the same basic story but with all the names changed.

Like, if you look at the Greek gods and the Roman gods, then they're basically the same gods. But they got renamed by the Romans - with the odd little bit of changes here and there. Because Roman culture grew out of Greek culture. The cultural centre moved over to Rome.

Or America. Populated by migrating Europeans (mostly). Different people, or a different branch of the same people? Carrying over the European traditions and holidays, albeit that, yeah, the Americans have mutated some of those (and then that cultural influence - e.g. "trick or treat" - then even feeds back into Europe again).

Because we're all bred into the "Noble Lie" of nationality, we perhaps take the concept too seriously and fail to see just how actually "fluid" humanity and its various cultures and beliefs actually are.

The Catholics, these days, are seen as the "conservative" ones, compared to the more "liberal" Protestants. But, yeah, originally, a total role reversal. The Protestants were the "Puritans", demanding a more literal Biblical interpretation, as they felt the Catholic church weren't sufficiently fundamentalist. That they'd become "corrupt" from metaphors here, bending the rules and traditions there, being too non-Biblical in some other aspect. The Protestant Puritans were protesting that the Catholic Church just wasn't fundamentalist and puritanical enough!

(Cromwell, a Puritan, actually banned Christmas. Well, it's all too pagan and not Christian enough!)

Like, we might see Muslims today going on an "idol purge" of folks making Mohammed cartoons as a bit extreme, but nowhere near as extreme as the Catholic "idol purge" in the Reformation. Smashing up Catholic churches, burning them down, hounding Catholic priests into "priest holes" and, like, it was a proper "no graven images / false idols" purge too. Crosses were confiscated - as that's an "idol". Indeed, as I've pointed out before, these Puritan Protestants are quite literally following the exact same Commandment - no false idols / graven images - as we see the Muslims following today.

Indeed, Judaism -> Christianity -> Islam. It's the same religion with the same god, innit. But just big disagreement about what that god said and did, with extra bits added on each time.

Again, another example of this "fluidity". Same stories, same people, same mythology. Just moved around, changed a bit, suffering from some "Chinese Whispers" from culture to culture, one set of people "merging" into another then maybe breaking off again.

In a single human lifetime, all this stuff might seem very solid and immutable. The English are the English, the French are the French, the Muslims believe this, the Christians believe that. And it's all neatly divided up.

But, in the historical perspective, it's actually all fluid and sloshing around. The English are, in part, Norman French. But also, at their root, German - and a bit Danish, as it was that sort of area that the Angles, Saxons and Jutes came from. With a sprinkling of Viking and Celt (and the Celts came from France / Germany originally themselves too). The Islamic Empire used to be the more secular champions of science, while Europe was a big superstitious theocracy - since, they've decided to swap positions there.

Humanity is really a fluid, that's sloshing around on the surface of the Earth - and always has been - but you possibly can't see that it's moving - and wrongly think it's all very solid, and everything all very rigidly defined into neat groupings - as it's shifting around on historical, not "human lifetime", scales. It's a fluid, but a vicious fluid that you can't easily see "flow" on non-historical scales.

[Barney]

Just had my Booster on saturday. Pfizer after 2xAZ. Was fine (sore arm) for about 8 to 10 hours, then sweating, fever, shortness of breath - the works. Downed 60mg of codeine and 1g of parrots, proper knocked myself out for the night. Woke up next day, arm still sore as buggery but flu symptoms gone and just tired for 24 hours. Now back to normal.

[KlaxonCow]

In Greek alphabet news, the Omicron variant should really have been the "nu" variant, but this was skipped, due to "nu variant" and "new variant" potentially being confused in conversation.

You know, "the nu variant" / "There's a new variant?" / "no, the variant named nu".

Makes sense. But then the next letter after that is "xi" and they skipped that one as well because, well, the Chinese President's name is Xi Jinping, of course. So, they skipped that one to avoid any diplomatic problems - also remembering the virus started in Wuhan and Trump was calling it "the Chinese 'Flu", which is why they started being given Greek alphabet names to stop idiots trying to pin the blame on particular nations - and we're now on Omicron.

If the pessimistic experts, who're saying we'll be dealing with this - on and off, in some regard, even if it's not full blown restrictions or lockdowns - for the next 5 years, are right, then I wonder if we'll actually make it all the way to "Omega" and then have to come up with a new naming system beyond Greek letters?

[KlaxonCow]

Now while there are news - IN ENGLAND - that "you can book via NHS portals" and/or "you can walk in certain vaccination centers and get an appointment/jabbed" NOT HERE IN WALES.

Yeah, looking on the BBC website, I found this about what's going on in Wales:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-59637275

Unlike England, Wales is not running walk-in centres where people can simply show up for their jab.

Instead its official advice is to wait for your appointment, with health boards giving priority to older adults or those in an at-risk group.

So far 51% of those eligible have received their third dose or booster, compared to 56% in Scotland, 53% in England and 45% in Northern Ireland.

Currently the programme in Wales is still calling people, in order, for appointments who are six months from their second dose, and Wales has now reached 80% of those.

So, yeah, in Wales, it seems that it's a strict "don't call us, we'll call you" system.

The Welsh government has called this an "improved" system from before, but I don't know that it is any improvement at all. It actually sounds worse, if the aim is to scale this up massively, as decentralised systems - like walk-in centres - do that way better than centralised systems do (horizontal vs. vertical scaling and all that).

It's also not responding quickly enough to the situation, if it's still only contacting people 6 months after, rather than the now reduced 3 months after. Keep up, Drakeford, shit has changed in the meantime.

To be honest, though, it really should have always been 3 months. That's always what the science said, even before we had the vaccines, as studies spotted antibodies waning after about 3 months from natural infections, then it was confirmed to be much the same with the vaccines (though it was very unlikely to be that much different, because the whole point of a vaccine is to mimic the virus and engender the same immune response - so, sure, it had to be confirmed, but it was always going to end up being essentially the same "wanes after 3 months" like natural infection).

I'm thinking it was only 6 months, as a "compromise" between scientists saying it really needs to be 3 months and the treasury trying to save money and wanting 12 months - an annual jab, like the 'flu - and 6 months was the "split the difference" compromise in-between.

It's not "following the science" as that's always said 3 months. Indeed, we covered it on this thread what must be at least a year or more ago. Those facts never changed, so 6 months was clearly a case of "ah, if we can compromise to 6 months, then it'll be half as expensive to buy all the jabs".

Yet again, the government failing to understand that it's NOT "the economy vs. public health" but you need public health to keep the economy going. After all, this lands just before Christmas - the most economically active time of year, where many business survive the whole year because of Christmas sales - so being a cheapskate on the jabs there has basically been an "own goal" for the economy. Well done, Boris. And I'm sure you're still too blinkered to even understand how you fucked up - and gave us an economic self-inflicted wound to save a few bucks - that you'll do it again, at least another 3 times before this is all finally over.

If you hadn't cheaped out on us, then every adult would already have that 70% protection that you're racing to try and get by the end of December (and, from the sounds of experts in the NHS, good luck with that, as they don't think it's remotely practically possible).

And we'd be going for a fourth jab - the second booster - to top up our antibodies again, and would probably confer even better protection again (because I read an article on this, and the gist is that the immune system refines its response every single time it's exposed to the vaccine or virus - it keeps getting better, as it learns more about "the enemy" each time, picking up on other facets of possible attack, refining the mix of its antibody / immune cell "cocktail". Basically, when you get jabbed, your immune system finds a response to the vaccine. But if you keep jabbing, then it finds more responses. It tailors the response better and quicker each time. That's really why we all had to get two jabs in the first place. It's diminishing returns - you can't just keep jabbing all the way up to 100% protection - but it is generally "the more, the better").

Over the Christmas period, the economy makes billions. Tell me, Boris, do the maths actually add up there? Because I'm pretty sure they don't. That you've risked billions to save only millions. What a clown.

Anyway, yeah, Wales seemingly had this plan to do it all with a "don't call us, we'll call you" system, where they'd call on people, in order, to come get jabbed. This isn't looking quite so clever anymore, with the Omicron wave threatening. But they're carrying on with it, it seems, but are just trying to do it a bit quicker.

I'm not sure this is the "improvement" they promised. It worked okay last time, so why "experiment" with a new type of booking system now? Now is not the time to be trialling it and discovering where it doesn't really work so well. I think it was probably well-intentioned... but we all know what the road to Hell is paved with, right?

[lazerwalker]

To be honest, though, it really should have always been 3 months. That's always what the science said, even before we had the vaccines, as studies spotted antibodies waning after about 3 months from natural infections, then it was confirmed to be much the same with the vaccines (though it was very unlikely to be that much different, because the whole point of a vaccine is to mimic the virus and engender the same immune response - so, sure, it had to be confirmed, but it was always going to end up being essentially the same "wanes after 3 months" like natural infection).

I'm thinking it was only 6 months, as a "compromise" between scientists saying it really needs to be 3 months and the treasury trying to save money and wanting 12 months - an annual jab, like the 'flu - and 6 months was the "split the difference" compromise in-between.

It's not "following the science" as that's always said 3 months. Indeed, we covered it on this thread what must be at least a year or more ago. Those facts never changed, so 6 months was clearly a case of "ah, if we can compromise to 6 months, then it'll be half as expensive to buy all the jabs"

Are you sure about that? The way vaccines set up our immune response is very complex so yes, the levels of antibodies in the blood drops fairly rapidly after the primary course, but in the same way that there is a necessary delay between the first two doses of the vaccine, I've read (but Google is failing me in finding it) that a longer gap between the primary course and the booster *might* produce a better long-term response in terms of the memory cells which last years, rather than antibody levels which drop post vaccine.

Obviously it looks like the emergence of Omicron changes the cost-benefit analysis, so a massive increase in short-term effectiveness likely outweighs a possible decrease in long-term effectiveness but I don't remember a huge clamour from public health scientists in the past agitating for vaccines ever 3 months, here or in any other country.

[gilesgoat]

So, yeah, in Wales, it seems that it's a strict "don't call us, we'll call you" system.

NO, from my understanding is "WORSE THAN THAT" is "Call US to request to be vaccinated ( and get an appointment ) OR we'll NEVER call you".

I was wondering if "that's because vaccine is not compulsory" or such ?

Took me about 30 mins at the phone waiting in line to ask "do you have a place I can be vaccinated ?" .. the first option was over 40 miles away ( Aberystwyth ) then they gave me another closer option Newcastle Emlyn ( which is still a 20 mins drive ) ..

The first time was "don't call us we'll call you" and actually they sent us some letters, but this time really seems "say if you want to be vaccinated or nobody is going to get in touch with you" .. OR .. "they are incredibly slow" I don't know but our local suregery told us "if you don't see anything coming around X, it did NOT COME, then call this number ... " ..

I called the number, took me a number of tries before to get the lines and over 30 mins waiting in a queue to talk to someone.

And there's very little info/etc. about "how you should get in touch with them", you have to dig a bit to find it.

[Ratsoap]

If the pessimistic experts, who're saying we'll be dealing with this - on and off, in some regard, even if it's not full blown restrictions or lockdowns - for the next 5 years, are right, then I wonder if we'll actually make it all the way to "Omega" and then have to come up with a new naming system beyond Greek letters?

Don't you read sci-fi books? If it makes it to the Omega variant, we are all fucked...

Managed to book a booster for Friday, but my wife and siblings who are in their 30s all have to wait until the end of the month, with some not available till January.

[KlaxonCow]

On Radio 4's Today Programme, Justin Webb asked Sajid Javid whether the NHS would struggle to cope with the increased jab workload and, therefore, more people could die of non-Covid diseases.

His response was perplexing: "People who feel they have cancer will be treated".

You what, mate?

This is worrying. We have a Justice Minister who has declared that the police don't investigate past crimes. And now we have a Health Secretary who seemingly reckons that cancer is a "hoax" or something, that people are just making up and "feel" they have cancer, rather than, you know, actually provably having it, with scans showing it and everything.

The clown has apparently surrounded himself with jesters.