caretaker

Vaxxy McVaxface. AZ is a lot easier to remember and say than Vaxzevria, but it's just a name. I see Miami has working covid detector dogs now; any idea if and when we'll be using them?

Jerseygirl

Siouxie

They are already in use in Canada
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/briti...dogs-1.6139254
http://www.vch.ca/about-us/news/news...cting-covid-19
Knowing that dogs can catch covid, I wonder how at risk they are?

caretaker

I remember that CBC article about their training, but when I was looking for a Canadian reference to sniffer dogs in use all I could find was Miami airport.
edit; We seem to be about a year behind the Finns on this: Coronavirus

scrubbedexpat091

Dogs are wonder animals, they can probably do so much more than we even know yet.

There have been some studies where dogs have even successfully sniffed out some cancers in humans.

Zoetis a veterinary vaccine pharma company has an animal COVID vaccine in trials, its been used in some zoo animals such as big cats and great apes, but its only been approved by the USDA for use on a case by case experimental basis so not widely available yet, but looks promising.

27 states have allowed the veterinary vaccine to be used, so far seems to work in 100 mammalian species its been given to.

Being how great apes are fairly closely related to humans, I would have thought human vaccine would be better option for them, but then it would probably been very bad PR when the media reports Gorillas and Chimpanzee's get human COVID vaccines while humans die, but the animal vaccine seems to work decently enough in the great apes, guess us mammals are not so different in some ways at the biological level such as triggering immune responses.

scrubbedexpat091

I knew Alberta was bad, but had no idea they were as bad as they are, they went Texas style and Texas style don't work.

scrubbedexpat091

I still see people on Twitter claiming if vaccines work why are there so many people in ICU, well its because well see below.

These were patients in ICU as of Friday 9/17

136 people in ICU in total

121 NOT Vaccinated

8 Partially vaccinated

7 fully vaccinated.

Well a vaccine can't work in someone who hasn't gotten it, and pretty clear for the most part if your vaccinated you wont end up in ICU, always exceptions, but its very clear what the problem is, the anti-vaxx

Even just one dose is keeping people out of the ICU

Almost 88% of those eligible (everyone 12 and over) have at least 1 dose and 79.953% full vaccinated

scrubbedexpat091

Gotta love when anti-vaxx conspiracy types are arguing with someone on Twitter who is using their name has MSc PhD behind it, in her bio lists she is an immunologist, and her linked in says her PhD is from UBC in microbiology and immunology and her supervisor at UBC is listed as one of Canada's leading microbiologists who led the SARS Accelerated Vaccine Initiative, but tommy from the Interior said he googled and did his research and they are all wrong.

caretaker

BristolUK

Here it is.
People with chronic conditions among most at risk from Covid even after jabs
Your money is safe, JG.

Jerseygirl

Thanks. TBH I couldn’t be bothered to reply.

caretaker

Saskatchewan's number continue to get worse, the worst, actually.
https://globalnews.ca/news/8202985/c...ember-19-2021/

We set a new record and at the same time someone is leaving anti-vax papers by apartment mail boxes. Somebody posted this on Reddit:

Former Lancastrian

So the land border remains closed until at least 21 October 2021. You can still fly to the US but not drive unless exempt. I am a 2 hour drive to the nearest US town where Canadians go shopping or a weekend getaway. This state has a 7 day average of 463 positive cases. If I want to go to a larger city in a different state then 7 day average is 2160 cases.

Think I will pass.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/united...avel-1.6182300

scrubbedexpat091

As I expected. I doubt it will open this year going that direction.

BristolUK

For most of the pandemic, we in NB have escaped the worst. We shut down early and the borders were closed except for essential crossings. Most daily new cases in the early months were in single digits, including noughts.
My stepdaughter's store - HomeSense - was closed for something like the first 6 weeks and reopened May 2020, whereas Ontario's HomeSense stores only reopened in the last few months. Or perhaps that was just Toronto, I can't remember.

I don't think we had more than a dozen in hospital at any one time.

We did have an increase in cases just after Christmas when the restrictions for family gatherings were relaxed - far too generously I felt - and we were regularly hitting something like 20 a day for a month or so before it fell back to more normal levels.

All restrictions were lifted end of July, by which time we had around 70% fully vaccinated.

Delta took its time in reaching us, apparently it's the main variant in the north while Alpha is still dominant in the south. That may be about to change.

Last week, after increasing daily numbers we hit a record for one day. 66. Don't laugh. Less than a week later and we hit 75 in one day.
We now have 23 in hospital including 14 in ICU.

So we have more people in hospital/ICU with almost 80% fully vaccinated than we had when nobody had even had a first jab and tons more daily cases than even at the post-xmas peak with nobody jabbed at all.

More than 80% of those hospitalised have not been vaxxed. It's reasonable to assume that had the restrictions remained in place - and remember, those restrictions didn't so much stop people doing stuff, they just affected the way they did them - the hospitalisations wouldn't have happened and the daily case count wouldn't have increased or at least nowhere near as much.

This is why many of us felt the mask mandate should have continued for the time being. And it's coming back tomorrow.