It is amazing that some people are “unwilling to take” one of the safe and relatively effective vaccines available…
against COVID-19; some have legitimate medical reasons, others have strong beliefs of various natures and some don’t want to get vaccinated. It is important to note that 1) for the most susceptible people full vaccination can literally save your life, 2) there are important public health aspects – our best bet to control the virus is vaccination (even though with current vaccines there is still a possibility you can still get infected), and 3) we want to avoid any new variants emerging in unvaccinated people (although, again a potential vaccine-resistant strain may arise in vaccinated people). So, although not absolutely perfect, vaccination is easiest, cheapest and most effective method for controlling COVID-19. Given the delta variant and an R0 ~5-6; >85% of the population needs to be vaccinated to reach “herd immunity”… theoretically – again, more complicated given breakthrough cases in vaccinated people.
Anyway, despite vaccination being critically important – vaccine mandates have serious ethical implications – collecting and sharing people’s medical records is not a good thing. This has lead to a fresh round of demonstrations in Australia over the weekend; some people are very frustrated and IMO we can’t punish or discriminate against the people that don’t want to get vaccinated – especially, now in Melbourne, they represent a small (but significant) minority (~90% fully vaccinated in our state and anticipated to reach up to 95% in the coming weeks)…. We need to leave the 5-10% that don’t want to get vaccinated alone. In particular, we have mandated vaccination and not immunity; immunity is a more important measure; some people, especially most children have “good immune responses”, and can easily fight SARS-CoV-2 infection, we know immunity (and B cell memory), varies in people, and we need to properly understand what is going (wrt immunity), in people that have already been infected with COVID-19; need to think about what exactly we are mandating. In the meantime, a thing called “schoolies” is going ahead this year – basically, it’s a travelling party for kids finishing high school – could have many super-spreader events… Schoolies as event is about is important as “National cashew and espresso day” (which is today btw).
In Europe, the situation is currently looking grim as winter approaches. Austria has toughened laws against unvaccinated people, in Germany it looks like there will be at least partial lockdowns and cases are increasing across the continent. By the way, I read somewhere, that in Germany there have been reports of an unusually large number of soccer players collapsing on the field – not sure, sounds like a conspiracy but I will look into such incidents in detail when there’s time… Anyway, the current surge, represents the 4th COVID-19 in Europe and most countries (with Sweden being a notable exception), are following the typical pattern with this delta-variant driven surge being the most severe, in terms of cases, since the start of the pandemic – Sweden is so interesting, again something for me to study in more detail when there is time. Like Australia, parts of Europe (Austria, Netherlands), saw large demonstrations against lockdowns and mandates over the weekend – they looked like they for a bit more “lively” compared to the very peaceful events in Australia.
Winter surges are also anticipated in the US and with Thanksgiving coming up this week there are risks. The US has other big happenings this week – the VP got elevated to “President” for 90 minutes – some people say it marked the First female President in the US … but let’s be honest … not really. That guy in Kenosha received a not guilty verdict for killing a couple of people with an assault rifle – not sure about the legalities and technicalities of the verdict but I do understand energies … he went from walking the streets like “Rambo”, to a little b*%ch in the courtroom and when the verdict was being delivered; I don’t like any of it. In more interesting news, NASA is going to smash an asteroid – dimorphos – in double ateroid redirection test smash; following the smash (at 6.6km per second!), the orbit of dimorphos will be altered – hopefully it doesn’t crash into the nearby large didymos (twin) rock. We’ll see what happens but important step in potentially protecting from any rogue ateroids in the future.
Uncle Jeff – Blue Origin is going back up into “space” in a few weeks (December 9) in his specially shaped (J)… New Shepard craft … Michael Strahan flying up – he’s pretty cool!
Until next time …