'Nocebo' would be good for crosswords or Scrabble ...
There's also an article among the links I've been collecting. Evidently arm pain, headache, and fatigue are the symptoms most likely to appear with or without a real vaccine dose. I didn't actually expect any of those particularly, so I was more than a little surprised by the fever and severe chills I experienced briefly myself after the 3rd Pfizer dose, something like 9 months after the first two. (But as someone else reported earlier, I actually found the side effects a little cheering, as it seemed to prove that the vaccine was doing something, that my body had noticed it was there. I understand that's not scientific, but still. (-: )
Sorry if any of these are now too far behind the discussion, which I admit I can no longer follow daily in detail.
_________________
A shot in the arm
Do vaccine mandates actually work?
The Canadian and European experiences suggest they do ...
On August 5th 2021, Quebec became the first Canadian province to announce a vaccine requirement to enter bars, gyms and restaurants. In the following months other Canadian provinces followed suit. That variation created a natural experiment: comparing provinces with these requirements to those without provided a way to estimate how effective they actually are.
Four economists—Alexander Karaivanov, Dongwoo Kim, Shih En Lu and Hitoshi Shigeoka, all of Simon Fraser University in British Columbia—ran the calculations. In the week after the announcement of pass-sanitaire requirements, first-dose vaccinations increased by 42% over the previous week; and by 71% over two weeks. They estimated that 287,000 more people were vaccinated within six weeks as a result.
In the summer of 2021 France, Germany and Italy all introduced similar, nationwide vaccine mandates for non-essential activities. The authors calculated that these were effective, too. By the end of October 2021, more than 85% of Italy’s eligible population had been jabbed, an estimated 12 percentage points more than if the rule had not gone into effect. In France the policy was credited with an eight percentage-point increase; in Germany with five.
Another working paper, by Miquel Oliu-Barton and his colleagues, corroborates these findings. They found that requiring evidence of vaccination in France, Germany and Italy not only increased jab uptake but also prevented 46,000 hospital admissions, €9.5bn ($11.2bn) in economic losses and 6,400 deaths.
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2022...
It’s a Terrible Idea to Deny Medical Care to Unvaccinated People
Omicron is pushing hospitals to their limit, but the medical system still has an ethical responsibility to all patients—no matter the choices they make. ...
Unlike vaccine mandates, which limit the jobs unvaccinated people can hold or the spaces they can enter, withholding medical care would be a matter of life or death. And in such matters, medical care should be offered according to the urgency of a patient’s need, not the circumstances leading up to that need. People whose actions endangered themselves, like smokers with lung cancer or drivers who crash while not wearing a seatbelt, still get treated. Those whose actions endangered others, like drunk drivers or terrorists, also get treated. “We are all sinners,” Carla Keirns, a professor of medical ethics and palliative medicine at the University of Kansas Medical Center, told me. “No one has made all the perfect decisions, and any of us could find ourselves in a situation where we are sick.” ...
As historical examples show, the most privileged people usually benefit when care is allocated. ...
A person’s choices are always constrained by their circumstances. Even now, unvaccinated people are not all refusers. ... unvaccinated Americans are disproportionately poor—and within the lowest income brackets, people who want or would consider a vaccine outnumber those who would never get one. ... People who earn hourly wages might not have time for a vaccination appointment, or paid sick leave for weathering any side effects. ...
Moral arguments aside, withholding care from unvaccinated people is also logistically unfeasible. No one I talked with could imagine a patient arriving in need and having to wait while a health-care worker checks their vaccine card. But if the hospital crisis gets worse, the urge to conserve resources may force health-care workers to make tough choices. Vaccinated patients are more likely to survive a coronavirus infection than unvaccinated ones, and health-care workers might give them more attention as a medical judgment rather than a moral one. ...
COVID remains a collective crisis—and one driven more by political inaction than personal irresponsibility. It’s the result of an earlier administration that downplayed the pandemic; the current one that went all in on vaccines at the expense of the layered interventions necessary to control the virus; justices and lawmakers who have made it harder, if not impossible, to enact policies that protect people from infection; news sources that seeded misinformation; and social-media platforms that allowed it to proliferate. Blaming or neglecting unvaccinated people won’t save the health-care system or end the pandemic. It will just be the latest manifestation of America’s instinct to punish individuals for societal failures.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/20...
Overworked Sydney paramedics take ambulances home to be ‘on call’ during Omicron surge
Paramedics are ‘drunk on fatigue’ as many work 13-hour shifts then respond to emergency calls after they clock off, union says ...
Australia records highest daily death toll since beginning of pandemic
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/20...
Defying Dutch Lockdown, with Scissors and a Baton
Dozens of theaters and museums in the Netherlands planned to open as hair salons and gyms on Wednesday in what was billed as a playful protest over a continued nationwide lockdown in the arts sector even as restrictions on some businesses were reduced.
The country entered a full lockdown in December, fearing that a rise in cases would overwhelm its relatively small intensive care capacity. And although the government relaxed some of the measures last week — reopening nonessential shops until 5 p.m. as well as gyms, hairdressers, nail salons and brothels — Prime Minister Mark Rutte said that cinemas, museums, theaters and concert venues would remain closed.
In response, dozens of arts organizations joined a protest that they named “Theater Hairdresser,” in which theaters open as hair salons and some museums are opening their doors as gyms. The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam was offering beard trims, haircuts and manicures, with an option of “Van Gogh inspired nail art.” ...
People even received haircuts while listening to classical music at Amsterdam’s royal concert hall.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/19/world/euro...
A South African study of infected zoo lions spurs worries about the virus spreading in the wild. ...
Lions at a South African zoo that caught the coronavirus from their handlers were sick for more than three weeks and continued to test positive for up to seven weeks, according to a new study that raised concerns about the virus spreading among animals in the wild.
It is not clear how much virus the lions were carrying or whether they were actively infectious for the whole period that they tested positive. But prolonged periods of infection in big cats would raise the risk that an outbreak in the wild might spread more widely and infect other species, researchers said. That might eventually make the virus endemic among wild animals, and in a worst case, give rise to new variants that could jump back to humans.
The study at the University of Pretoria
( https://www.mdpi.com/1999-4915/14/1/120 )
is likely the first of its kind in Africa.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/20/world/anim...
‘Nocebo effect’: two-thirds of Covid jab reactions not caused by vaccine, study suggests
US researchers show negative version of placebo effect behind many symptoms such as headaches and fatigue ...
Scientists in the US examined data from 12 clinical trials of Covid vaccines and found that the “nocebo effect” accounted for about 76% of all common adverse reactions after the first dose and nearly 52% after the second dose.
The findings suggest that a substantial proportion of milder side-effects, such as headaches, short-term fatigue, and arm pain are not produced by the constituents of the vaccine, but by other factors thought to generate the nocebo response, including anxiety, expectation and misattributing various ailments to having had the jab. ...
Writing in the journal Jama Network Open, the researchers describe how after the first injection more than 35% of those in the placebo groups experienced so-called “systemic” side-effects, such as headache and fatigue, with 16% reporting site-specific ailments including arm pain or redness or swelling at the injection site.
As expected, those who received a first shot of vaccine were more likely to experience side-effects. About 46% reported systemic symptoms and two-thirds experienced arm pain or other localised symptoms at the injection site.
When the researchers looked at side-effects after the second jab, they found the rate of headaches or other systemic symptoms was nearly twice as high in the vaccine group compared with the placebo group, at 61% and 32% respectively. The difference was even greater for local ailments, reaching 73% among those who had the vaccine and 12% in the placebo group.
Overall, the researchers calculate that about two-thirds of common side-effects reported in Covid vaccine trials are driven by the nocebo effect, in particular headaches and fatigue, which many Covid vaccine leaflets list as the most common adverse reactions after a shot.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/jan/...
Texas scientists’ new Covid-19 vaccine is cheaper, easier to make and patent-free
A new Covid-19 vaccine is being developed by Texas scientists using a decades-old conventional method that will make the production and distribution cheaper and more accessible for countries most affected by the pandemic and where new variants are likely to originate due to low inoculation rates.
The team, led by Drs Peter Hotez and Maria Bottazzi from the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development at Baylor College of Medicine, has been developing vaccine prototypes for Sars and Mers since 2011, which they reconstructed to create the new Covid vaccine, dubbed Corbevax, or “the world’s Covid-19 vaccine”.
Although more than 60 other vaccines are in development using the same technology, Bottazzi said their vaccine is unique because they do not intend to patent it, allowing anyone with the capacity to reproduce it.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jan/...
What is Biological E, the Indian company producing Corbevax?
The Hyderabad-based company says the vaccine will provide ‘sustainable access to low- and middle-income countries’
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/jan/...
Americans are just learning what people in East Asia already know about masks.
In some parts of Asia, surgical masks became commonplace during SARS epidemic of 2002-2003.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/15/world/chin...
Free rapid tests are about to roll out in the U.S. In other countries, they’re already part of daily life. ...
... while up until now, home tests have been expensive and hard to find in much of America, in other countries — Britain, Singapore and India among them — rapid self-tests have been widely accessible for some time. And people have incorporated them into their everyday lives.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/01/...
In Sewage, Clues to Omicron’s Surge
Tracking the virus in wastewater is helping some cities and hospitals respond to the most recent wave of the coronavirus, but a more coordinated national effort is needed, experts say. ...
According to Biobot Analytics, a company tracking the coronavirus
( https://biobot.io/data/ )
in wastewater in 183 communities across 25 states, viral levels have already begun to decline in many big cities but are still rising in smaller communities. ...
The C.D.C., which is now funding sewage surveillance efforts in 43 states, cities and territories, plans to add wastewater data to its online “Covid Data Tracker” within the next few weeks, Dr. Kirby said. And the agency is in the process of adding about 500 testing sites across the country to its surveillance system.
Wastewater surveillance is already informing local pandemic responses. City officials are using it to funnel resources into neighborhoods where the virus is surging, and hospitals are using it to make life-or-death decisions about which treatments to administer. ...
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/19/health/cov...
A passenger refused to wear a mask on a London-bound flight. The pilot turned the plane around.
The flight returned to Miami about two hours after its departure ...
No one was hurt, and the Boeing 777 landed safely at Miami International Airport at 9:24 p.m. ...
Officers with the Miami-Dade Police Department escorted the passenger, a woman believed to be in her 40s, off the plane without incident. ... a department spokesman ... said the passenger was not arrested and police treated the incident as a disturbance call.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/01...
