But he was not alone, Bolsonaro in Brazil, Modi in India, Johnson in Britain, etc. — Manuel
Admitting that you were earlier wrong is a sign of strength in my view.The head of the World Health Organization acknowledged it was premature to rule out a potential link between the COVID-19 pandemic and a laboratory leak, and he said Thursday he is asking China to be more transparent as scientists search for the origins of the coronavirus.
In a rare departure from his usual deference to powerful member countries, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said getting access to raw data had been a challenge for the international team that traveled to China earlier this year to investigate the source of COVID-19.
Tedros told reporters that the U.N. health agency based in Geneva is "asking actually China to be transparent, open and cooperate, especially on the information, raw data that we asked for at the early days of the pandemic."
He said there had been a "premature push" to rule out the theory that the virus might have escaped from a Chinese government lab in Wuhan — undermining WHO's own March report, which concluded that a laboratory leak was "extremely unlikely."
"I was a lab technician myself, I'm an immunologist, and I have worked in the lab, and lab accidents happen," Tedros said. "It's common."
Interesting to see what the outcome is of this...Zeng Yixin, the vice minister of China’s National Health Commission (NHC), told reporters he was “shocked” by the plan to investigate the lab leak hypothesis and said “it is impossible for us to accept such an origin-tracing plan.”
According to the Associated Press, Zeng dismissed the theory as a rumor “that runs counter to common sense and science.”
Responding to the WHO’s earlier statement about the investigation being hampered by the lack of raw data from Chinese authorities, Zeng reiterated Beijing’s stance that some data could not be completely shared due to privacy concerns.
Zeng insisted that the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s labs have no virus that can directly infect humans and noted that a WHO-led team of experts had visited the lab earlier this year and concluded that a leak was highly unlikely.
The vice minister also dismissed media reports that staff and graduate students at the institute had fallen sick due to the virus and then transmitted it to others.
I guess Norway could... and then lose their Sovereign Wealth Fund (from Oil Revenue) by paying Corona-related indemnities.The thing is, would any state ever admit that they're the ones responsible for a pandemic? — Manuel
(BBC) Trump gloated at a rally in Ohio on Saturday evening, and said he had been proved right.
He spoke of his belief that the coronavirus was scientifically engineered, in a laboratory in the Chinese city of Wuhan."I said it comes out of Wuhan - it comes out of the lab," he told his supporters, men and women dressed in red Make America Great Again hats, gathered at the rally, southwest of Cleveland.
Well, we should add that many people don't care what happens outside their imminent neighborhood. Americans aren't the only example of this.But many Americans just really don't seem to care about the world outside the US. — Manuel
Under-resourced communities frequently have less access to high quality health care, and suffer from more illnesses that are associated with high mortality, such as diabetes, heart disease, and pulmonary issues (Link and Phelan, 1995; Braveman et al., 2005; Lutfey and Freese, 2005; Adler and Rehkopf, 2008; Elo, 2009; Williams et al., 2010; Oates et al., 2017). Therefore, a higher presence of Covid-19 within this population could be particularly disastrous in terms of mortality. Research examining the relationship between poverty and influenza has demonstrated that vaccinations in particular are less available to residents of poorer counties within the United States, than those who live in more affluent areas (Lee et al., 2011).
Such numbers in deaths does in my view show that you are talking about a risk group. And hence the paper continues:COVID-19 has disproportionately affected non-Hispanic Black or African American (Black) and Hispanic persons in the United States (1,2). In North Carolina during January–September 2020, deaths from COVID-19 were 1.6 times higher among Black persons than among non-Hispanic White persons (3), and the rate of COVID-19 cases among Hispanic persons was 2.3 times higher than that among non-Hispanic persons (4).
And do note that after increased efforts the vaccinated increased "approaching the population portion".On January 14, 2021, the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (NCDHHS) implemented a multipronged strategy to prioritize COVID-19 vaccinations among Black and Hispanic persons. This included mapping communities with larger population proportions of persons aged ≥65 years among these groups, increasing vaccine allocations to providers serving these communities, setting expectations that the share of vaccines administered to Black and Hispanic persons matched or exceeded population proportions, and facilitating community partnerships. From December 14, 2020–January 3, 2021 to March 29–April 6, 2021, the proportion of vaccines administered to Black persons increased from 9.2% to 18.7%, and the proportion administered to Hispanic persons increased from 3.9% to 9.9%, approaching the population proportion aged ≥16 years of these groups (22.3% and 8.0%, respectively). Vaccinating communities most affected by COVID-19 is a national priority.
Pale Death beats equally at the poor man's gate and at the palaces of kings. — Horace
SYDNEY — Thousands of people took to the streets of Sydney and other Australian cities on Saturday to protest lockdown restrictions amid another surge in cases, and police made several arrests after crowds broke through barriers and threw plastic bottles and plants. " -- NPR
Plants? — frank
Again, a hard lockdown, early, is effective. — Banno
How sick are they getting from it? Are you less sick when vaccinated? — Benkei
About three-fourths of people infected in a Massachusetts Covid-19 outbreak were fully vaccinated, according to new data published Friday by the CDC.
The new data, published in the U.S. agency’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, also found that fully vaccinated people who get infected carry as much of the virus in their nose as unvaccinated people.
The state has seen a rise in its COVID-19 infection rates in recent weeks, driven, according to Gov. Charlie Baker and public health officials, by the super-contagious Delta variant and gatherings held around the July Fourth holiday.
Provincetown has seen a surge of hundreds of cases, many among fully vaccinated individuals. New data from that outbreak, which showed individuals who were vaccinated were transmitting the virus to other fully vaccinated people, was one of the factors for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updating its guidelines for indoor mask use earlier this week, the Washington Post reports.
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