Video:
From the Lincoln Project:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OdpHtZ1YmQ
Oh dearā¦ here we go again.
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Oxford vaccine triggers immune response
A coronavirus vaccine developed by the University of Oxford appears safe and triggers an immune response.
Trials involving 1,077 people showed the injection led to them making antibodies and T-cells that can fight coronavirus.
The findings are hugely promising, but it is still too soon to know if this is enough to offer protection and larger trials are under way.
The UK has already ordered 100 million doses of the vaccine.
How does the vaccine work?
The vaccine - called ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 - is being developed at unprecedented speed.
It is made from a genetically engineered virus that causes the common cold in chimpanzees.
It has been heavily modified, first so it cannot cause infections in people and also to make it ālookā more like coronavirus.
Scientists did this by transferring the genetic instructions for the coronavirusās āspike proteinā - the crucial tool it uses to invade our cells - to the vaccine they were developing.
This means the vaccine resembles the coronavirus and the immune system can learn how to attack it.
What are antibodies and T-cells?
Much of the focus on coronavirus so far has been about antibodies, but these are only one part of our immune defence.
Antibodies are small proteins made by the immune system that stick onto the surface of viruses.
Neutralising antibodies can disable the coronavirus.
T-cells, a type of white blood cell, help co-ordinate the immune system and are able to spot which of the bodyās cells have been infected and destroy them.
Nearly all effective vaccines induce both an antibody and a T-cell response.
Levels of T-cells peaked 14 days after vaccination and antibody levels peaked after 28 days. The study has not run for long enough to understand how long they may last, the study in the Lancet showed.
Prof Andrew Pollard, from the Oxford research group told the BBC: "Weāre really pleased with the results published today as weāre seeing both neutralising antibodies and T-cells.
"Theyāre extremely promising and we believe the type of response that may be associated with protection.
āBut the key question everyone wants to know is does the vaccine work, does it offer protectionā¦ and weāre in a waiting game.ā
The study showed 90% of people developed neutralising antibodies after one dose. Only ten people were given two doses and all of them produced neutralising antibodies.
āWe donāt know the level needed for protection, but we can maximise responses with a second dose,ā Prof Pollard told the BBC.
Is it safe?
Yes, but there are side-effects.
There were no dangerous side-effects from taking the vaccine, however, 70% of people on the trial developed either fever or headache.
The researchers say this could be managed with paracetamol.
Prof Sarah Gilbert, from the University of Oxford, UK, says: āThere is still much work to be done before we can confirm if our vaccine will help manage the Covid-19 pandemic, but these early results hold promise.ā
What are the next steps in the trial?
The results so far are promising, but their main purpose is to ensure the vaccine is safe enough to give to people.
The study cannot show whether the vaccine can either prevent people from becoming ill or even lessen their symptoms of Covid-19.
More than 10,000 people will take part in the next stage of the trials in the UK.
However, the trial has also been expanded to other countries because levels of coronavirus are low in the UK, making it hard to know if the vaccine is effective.
There will be a large trial involving 30,000 people in the US as well 2,000 in South Africa and 5,000 in Brazil.
There are also calls to perform āchallenge trialsā in which vaccinated people are deliberately infected with coronavirus. However, there are ethical concerns due to a lack of treatments.
When will I get a vaccine?
It is possible a coronavirus vaccine will be proven effective before the end of the year, however, it will not be widely available.
Health and care workers will be prioritised as will people who are deemed at high risk from Covid-19 due to their age or medical conditions.
However, widespread vaccination is likely to be, at the earliest, next year even if everything goes to plan.
Boris Johnson said: "Obviously Iām hopeful, Iāve got my fingers crossed, but to say Iām 100% confident weāll get a vaccine this year, or indeed next year, is, alas, just an exaggeration.
āWeāre not there yet.ā
What progress is being made with other vaccines?
The Oxford vaccine is not the first to reach this stage, with groups in the US and China also publishing similar results.
The US company Moderna was first out of the blocks and its vaccine can produce neutralising antibodies. They are injecting coronavirus RNA (its genetic code), which then starts making viral proteins in order to trigger an immune response.
The companies BioNtech and Pfizer have also had positive results using their RNA vaccine.
A technique similar to the Oxford one, developed in China, also also seems promising.
However, all these approaches are at the absolute boundary of science and have not been proven to work before.
More traditional methods of vaccine development are also being investigated. The company Valneva is taking the whole coronavirus, inactivating it and then inject it.
In total there are 23 coronavirus vaccines in clinical trials around the world and another 140 in early stage develoment.
Will the UK get a coronavirus vaccine?
The UK government has struck deals for 190 million doses of different vaccines.
This includes:
- 100 million doses of the Oxford vaccine made from a genetically engineered virus
- 30 million doses of the BioNtech/Pfizer vaccine, which injects part of the coronavirusā genetic code
- 60 million doses of the Valneva inactivated coronavirus
These have been paid for even though it is uncertain which, if any, of the vaccines may prove effective for immunising a nation with 66m people.
Kate Bingham, chairwoman of the UK Vaccine Taskforce, told the BBC: "What we are doing is identifying the most promising vaccines across the different categories, or different types of vaccine, so that we can be sure that we do have a vaccine in case one of those actually proves to be both safe and effective.
"Itās unlikely to be a single vaccine for everybody.
āWe may well need different vaccines for different groups of people.ā
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The state is grappling with a significant surge in coronavirus cases, reporting upwards of 10,000 new cases on Monday alone.
The largest teachersā union in Florida filed a lawsuit Monday against Gov. Ron DeSantis over his administrationās push to fully reopen all public schools next month ā even as coronavirus cases in the state are spiking.
The Florida Education Association (FEA) accused DeSantis and other state officials of violating a state constitutional mandate to keep public schools āsafe and secure.ā The union asked a state court in Miami to halt the governorās reopening edict, according to a copy of the suit obtained by NBC News.
The lawsuit, filed in circuit court, names several defendants: DeSantis, Florida Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran, the Florida Department of Education and the Florida State Board of Education. The legal filing is sure to escalate a nationwide political debate over school reopenings amid the pandemic.
āGov. DeSantis needs a reality check, and we are attempting to provide one,ā FEA President Fedrick Ingram said in a statement announcing the lawsuit. āThe governor needs to accept the reality of the situation here in Florida, where the virus is surging out of control."
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It only took Trump six MONTHS and nearly 150k dead Americans to decide that face masks just might be patriotic.
But of course, he had to get some more racism in in the process.
I hate him.
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We blew it
Pretty much
America spent the spring building a bridge to August, spending trillions and shutting down major parts of society. The expanse was to be a bent coronavirus curve, and the other side some semblance of normal, where kids would go to school and their parents to work.
The bottom line: We blew it, building a pier instead.
There will be books written about Americaās lost five months of 2020, but hereās what we know:
We blew testing. President Trump regularly brags and complains about the number of COVID-19 tests conducted in the U.S., but America hasnāt built the infrastructure necessary to process and trace the results.
- Quest Diagnostics says its average turnaround time for a COVID-19 test has lengthened to āseven or more daysā ā thus decreasing the chance that asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic carriers will self-quarantine.
- The testing delays also make it harder for public health officials to understand current conditions, let alone implement effective contact tracing.
- Speaking of contact tracing, it remains a haphazard and uncoordinated process in many parts of the country.
We blew schools. Congress allocated $150 billion for state and local governments as part of the CARES Act, but that was aimed at maintaining status quo services in the face of plummeting tax revenue.
There was no money earmarked for schools to buy new safety equipment, nor to hire additional teachers who might be needed to staff smaller class sizes and hybrid learning days.
- U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos was not among the 27 officials included in the White House Coronavirus Task Force, and rarely appeared at Task Force press conferences.
- The administration insists that schools should reopen this fall because kids are less likely to get very sick from the virus, but it has not yet offered detailed plans to protect older teachers, at-risk family members, or students with pre-existing respiratory or immune conditions.
- Silicon Valley provided some free services to schools, but there was no coordinated effort to create a streamlined virtual learning platform. There also continue to be millions of schoolkids without access to broadband and/or Internet-connected devices.
We blew economics. The CARES Act was bold and bipartisan, a massive stimulus to meet the moment.
- Itās running out, without an extension plan not yet in place.
- Expanded unemployment benefits expire in days. Many small businesses have already exhausted their Paycheck Protection Program loans, including some that reopened but have been forced to close again.
- There has been no national effort to pause residential or commercial evictions, nor to give landlords breathing room on their mortgage payments.
We blew public health. Thereās obviously a lot here, but just stick with face masks. Had we all been directed to wear them in March ā and done so, even makeshift ones while manufacturing ramped up ā you might not be reading this post.
We blew goodwill. Millions of Americans sheltered in place, pausing their social lives for the common good.
- But many millions of other Americans didnāt. Some were essential workers. Some were deemed essential workers but really werenāt. Some just didnāt care, or didnāt believe the threat. Some ultimately decided that protesting centuries of racial injustice was a worthy trade-off.
- All of this was complicated by mixed messages from federal and state leaders. Top of that list was President Trump, who claimed to adopt a wartime footing without clearly asking Americans to make sacrifices necessary to defeat the enemy.
- Five months later, many of those who followed the ārulesā are furious at what they perceive to be the selfishness of others.
The bottom line: America has gotten many things right since March, including the development of more effective hospital treatments for COVID-19 patients.
- But weāre hitting daily infection records, daily deaths hover around 900, and many ICUs reports more patients than beds. It didnāt have to be this way.
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Everyone is concerned that Covid-19 is very contageous and potentially deadly for certain parts of the population.
Article in fullā¦
Six months into the pandemic, researchers are homing in on an answer to one of the basic questions about the virus: How deadly is it?
Researchers, initially analyzing data from outbreaks on cruise ships and more recently from surveys of thousands of people in virus hot spots, have now conducted dozens of studies to calculate the infection fatality rate of Covid-19.
That researchāexamining deaths out of the total number of infections, which includes unreported casesāsuggests that Covid-19 kills from around 0.3% to 1.5% of people infected. Most studies put the rate between 0.5% and 1.0%, meaning that for every 1,000 people who get infected, from five to 10 would die on average.
Covid-19 Fatality: Analyzing the Evidence
A comparison of 26 studies that estimate the diseaseās infection fatality rate* found varying results but pinpointed an overall rate of around 6.8 deaths per 1,000 infections.
Link to article for chart.
*The infection fatality rate measures deaths out of total estimated infections as opposed to confirmed cases
Note: Studies not identified by author names were led by governments or local authorities.
Source: Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz, Lea Merone
The estimates suggest the new coronavirus is deadlier than the seasonal flu, though not as lethal as Ebola and other infectious diseases that have emerged in recent years. The coronavirus is killing more people than the deadlier diseases, however, in part because it is more infectious.
āItās not just what the infection-fatality rate is. Itās also how contagious the disease is, and Covid is very contagious,ā said Eric Toner, an emergency medicine physician and senior scholar at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, who studies health-care preparedness for epidemics and infectious diseases. āItās the combination of the fatality rate and the infectiousness that makes this such a dangerous disease.ā
Health authorities and researchers have been working to gauge the death rate from the coronavirus to better understand the risk of the disease, estimate how many people might die and respond with the necessary public-health measures.
Pinpointing that rate has been challenging, however, because a significant chunk of cases have few to no symptoms or havenāt been tested. The rate also varies depending on factors such as a personās age and the strength of a jurisdictionās health-care system.
āItās very difficult to measure, but robust studies are finding a clear signal in the noise,ā said Timothy Russell, a research fellow at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
A study by Dr. Russell and colleagues published in February that examined data from China and an outbreak on the Diamond Princess cruise ship put the infection-fatality rate at around 0.6%.
Whatās News
More than 14.7 million people have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 across the globe, and over 609,000 people have died, with nearly a quarter of the fatalities in the U.S., according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. That means that among confirmed global cases, roughly 4.2% of those people died.
The percentage of deaths among people with confirmed infections is higher than the percentage of deaths among infections overall, researchers say, because so many milder and asymptomatic Covid-19 cases go missed.
**The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated that for every known case of Covid-19, roughly 10 more went unrecorded** through the beginning of May. From March to early May, the total number of infections was likely six to 24 times greater than the number of reported cases depending on the state, the agency said Tuesday in a paper published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine.
āThe hard bit really is to work out how many people have been infected,ā said Lucy Okell, who alongside colleagues at Imperial College London estimated the infection-fatality rate in China at 0.66% in a paper published in March.
To come up with an estimate for the fatality rate, some researchers take the known cases and numbers of deaths, then estimate the proportion missed or asymptomatic cases. Death tallies, however, might also miss undetected Covid-19 fatalities, and researchers must adjust for that as well.
Other researchers develop estimates based on results from antibody test surveys, which scan the blood of participants for signs of past infections.
Yet antibody testing data has its own flaws, as scientists work to understand the immune response to the virus. The researchers must also tweak their estimates to compensate for the risk of faulty test results or delays between infection and death.
No matter their approach, the researchers use complex mathematical models and statistical techniques to fine-tune their estimates.
An analysis of 26 different studies estimating the infection-fatality rate in different parts of the globe found an aggregate estimate of about 0.68%, with a range of 0.53% to 0.82%, according to a report posted in July on the preprint server medRxiv, which hasnāt yet been reviewed by other researchers.
āTo say that we will ever have one absolute true estimate is erroneous. We can get an idea of a trend, but we need to be mindful that this can change and vary,ā said Lea Merone, a public-health physician and health economist at James Cook University in Australia who co-wrote the paper. āIt is context dependent.ā
The CDC is now using the report as the basis for its own best-estimate for the infection-fatality rate in its pandemic planning scenarios. The agencyās estimate is 0.65% as of July 10, higher than its previous estimates.
The fatality rate for an individual varies, sometimes markedly, depending on factors such as age, sex and the presence of pre-existing medical conditions, studies show.
Researchers in the U.S. and Switzerland examined data from the Swiss city of Geneva to calculate fatality rates for different age groups. They found those over 65 had an infection-fatality rate of 5.6%ā40 times the risk of someone in their 50s.
Quality and access to health care and treatment could shift the mortality rate. Better treatment in the future could push the rate down, but a situation in which a hospital system is overwhelmed can drive the rate up, said Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz, an epidemiologist at the University of Wollongong who co-wrote the July medRxiv paper.
An infection-fatality rate of roughly 0.6% is six times greater than the 0.1% estimate for seasonal influenza, which is based on CDC data. Though researchers point out the estimates are calculated in different ways and the flu estimate doesnāt take asymptomatic cases into account.
Diseases such as SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome; MERS, or Middle East respiratory syndrome; and Ebola are much deadlier, with case fatality rates ranging from roughly 10% to 50%.
There have been far fewer deaths from those diseases than the new coronavirus and even the seasonal flu because they arenāt nearly as infectious or widespread.
SARS and MERS have killed 774 and 858 people, respectively. More than 11,300 people have died from Ebola.
Also, many doctors worry Covid-19 might result in longer-term complications for some patients, especially those who have spent weeks in the hospital before being discharged.
āThereās this narrative I think a lot of people have that you get the disease and you die, or youāre fine. And thatās not true,ā Dr. Toner said. āThereās a large range of health-care consequences for people who get severely ill, not just death.ā
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This 
impacts our long-term health and our economy. The more people get sick the more people canāt work. You canāt separate those facts.
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Turns Out Mass Death Is Bad For The Economy
Republicans spun a false tale about sacrificing people for the economy. Democrats shouldnāt have believed it.
My two cents: I donāt know any Democrats who did believe it.
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I have a relative that is presumed to have had covid19. Mid March had terrible back pain & headache. Never had chills, fever or loss of smell. Still battling fatigue & irregular heartbeats 4 months later. There is a big group on fb of long term survivors that are having relapses.
We need to spread the knowledge that even if you only get mild symptoms, you might be facing long term health issues. And who knows if asymptomatic people will have future health problems.
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Iāve been seeing how it can leave lasting neurological, organ, and nerve damage. We just do not know the full extent yet. So many who have recovered continue to have issues.
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https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/2944635/
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Project Lincoln hits Ron DeSantis with a āCurb Your Enthusiasmā video:
Fauci responds to Trump: āI consider myself more a realist than an alarmistā
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Alarming report on calls that Dr. Birx has made to 11 US cities to warn them that they better do major mitigation NOW because their Coronavirus numbers are too high right now.
These are the cities - Baltimore, Cleveland, Columbus, Indianapolis, Las Vegas, Miami, Minneapolis, Nashville, New Orleans, Pittsburgh and St. Louis.
As seen on Maddow tonightā¦
video 
New red flags about the severity of the coronavirus outbreak come after Trump focused on upsides in televised briefing
Dr. Deborah Birx, a leader of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, warned state and local leaders in a private phone call Wednesday that 11 major cities are seeing increases in the percentage of tests coming back positive for COVID-19 and should take āaggressiveā steps to mitigate their outbreaks.
The cities she identified were Baltimore, Cleveland, Columbus, Indianapolis, Las Vegas, Miami, Minneapolis, Nashville, New Orleans, Pittsburgh and St. Louis.
The call was yet another private warning about the seriousness of the coronavirus outbreaks given to local officials but not the public at large. It came less than a week after the Center for Public Integrity revealed that the White House compiled a detailed report showing 18 states were in the āred zoneā for coronavirus cases but did not release it publicly.
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Marine assigned to Trumpās helicopter squadron tests positive for Covid-19
A Marine assigned to the military helicopter squadron responsible for transporting the president has tested positive for Covid-19, a Marine Corps spokesperson told POLITICO.
Marine belonging to Trumpās helicopter squadron tests positive for COVID
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Wearing masks could help you avoid major illness even if you get coronavirus, experts say
As health experts urge the public to wear masks to slow the spread of the coronavirus, they continue to get pushback. Among the arguments of skeptics: If masks canāt fully protect me against COVID-19, what is the point of wearing them?
Scientistsā counterargument is that masks can help reduce the severity of the disease caused by coronavirus even if you get infected.
Thereās now mounting evidence that silent spreaders are responsible for the majority of transmission of the coronavirus ā making universal masking essential to slow the spread of the highly contagious virus, experts say.
This makes the coronavirus different from the seasonal flu. With seasonal flu, peak infectiousness occurs about one day after the onset of symptoms. But with the coronavirus, even among people who do end up becoming visibly sick, peak infectiousness can occur before they show symptoms.
In fact, experts say, significant amounts of virus can start coming out of peopleās noses and mouths even when they feel well.
This is a key reason, they say, why tactics to deal with the coronavirus must be markedly different than with the seasonal flu. And the universal wearing of masks is key. Hereās a Q&A based on research and interviews with medical experts.
Whatās the point of wearing a cloth face covering if it doesnāt filter out everything?
Cloth face masks still provide a major protective benefit: They filter out a majority of viral particles.
As it turns out, thatās pretty important. Breathing in a small amount of virus may lead to no disease or a more mild infection. But inhaling a huge volume of virus particles can result in serious disease or death.
Thatās the argument Dr. Monica Gandhi, UC San Francisco professor of medicine and medical director of the HIV Clinic at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, is making about why ā if you do become infected with the virus ā masking can still protect you from more severe disease.
āThere is this theory that facial masking reduces the [amount of virus you get exposed to] and disease severity,ā said Gandhi, who is also director for the Center for AIDS Research at UC San Francisco.
What evidence supports this theory?
The idea that a lower dose of virus means less severe illness is a well-worn idea in medicine.
Even going back to 1938, there was a study showing that by giving mice a higher dose of a deadly virus, the mice were more likely to get severe disease and die, Gandhi said.
The same principle applies to humans. A study published in 2015 gave healthy volunteers varying doses of a flu virus; those who got higher doses got sicker, with more coughing and shortness of breath, Gandhi said.
And another study suggested that the reason the second wave of the 1918-19 flu pandemic was the deadliest in the U.S. was because of the overcrowded conditions in Army camps as World War I wound down. āIn 1918, the Army camps [were] characterized by a high number of contacts between people and by a high case-fatality rate, sometimes 5 to 8 times higher than the case-fatality rate among civilian communities,ā the study said.
Finally, a study published in May found that surgical mask partitions significantly reduced the transmission of the coronavirus among hamsters. And even if the hamsters protected by the mask partitions acquired the coronavirus, āthey were more likely to get very mild disease,ā Gandhi said.
What happens if a city dramatically masks up in public?
If Gandhi is right, it may mean that even if thereās a rise in coronavirus infections in a city, the masks may limit the dose of virus people are getting and result in less severe symptoms of illness.
Thatās what Gandhi says she suspects is happening in San Francisco, where mask wearing is relatively robust. Further observations are needed, she said.
Thereās more evidence that masks can be protective ā even when wearers do become infected. She cited an outbreak at a seafood plant in Oregon where employees were given masks, and 95% of those who were infected were asymptomatic.
Gandhi also cited the experience of those aboard a cruise ship that was traveling from Argentina to Antartica in March when the coronavirus infected people on board, as documented in a recent study. Passengers got surgical masks; the crew got N95 masks.
But instead of about 40% of those infected being asymptomatic ā which is what would normally be expected ā 81% of those testing positive were asymptomatic, and the masks may have helped reduce the severity of disease in people on board, Gandhi said.
What has happened in other countries where residents have masked up?
The protective effects are seen in countries where masks have been universally accepted for years, such as Taiwan, Thailand, South Korea and Singapore.
āThey have all seen cases as they opened ā¦ but not deaths,ā Gandhi said.
The Czech Republic moved early to require masks, issuing an order in mid-March, Gandhi said; thatās about three months before Gov. Gavin Newsom did so statewide in California.
But in the Czech Republic, āevery time their cases would go up ā¦ their death rate was totally flat. So they didnāt get the severe illness with these cases going on.ā
By May, the Czech Republic lifted its face mask rule. āAnd theyāre doing great,ā Gandhi said.
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The scope of the rapid spread of Covid-19 is astounding. And here are some graphs to review the areas on the map of where the hot spots are.
The COVID Tracking Project Covid Tracking Project Website
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Seems like the states that had the shortest lock-downs and politicized mask wearing are now being hit the worst. This is terrifying, weāve social distancing and wearing masks since March and the Seattle area is still on the rise. I canāt imagine living in the red zone right now. 
Found this gem of a risk chart on my hometown countyās website, wish all the health departments would put these up everywhere. People do not understand the risks.
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What an excellent graphā¦Am keeping distances, masks and potential viral loads in mind always.
Am in a red zoneā¦
California had done a lot right, but the experts are all saying that once restrictions were lifted, people were ādoneā with the masks and confines of staying apart.
Simple - wear a mask folks.
Yes, the hardest hit have been essential workers, congreagate living groups and others are lax unfortunatelyā¦and leaning towards believing it is a hoax or confines their liberties. 
Two words: global pandemic.
So it aināt over 'til its overā¦and that we know will be more than likely next yearā¦
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Yeah at least. This is going to be quite the challenge but we will adapt. I will say that I am now repulsed by the idea of indoor dining with strangers. I havenāt even invited the neighbors over to the back-yard for a cook out. Iāve just decided not eat with people I havenāt through quarantine with and I donāt even know when that happened. I now own a mask for everyday of the week and even horded several non-sterile n-95 masks for woodworking, just in caseā¦
Weāve been strict with hand washing and sanitizer at the grocery store. I feel like weāre being vigilant but this is hard. I just wish others would take this more seriously and stop gathering unmasked for those who need to take this seriously and are actively trying not to get infected or spread the disease. Itās really maddening to experience.
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