Coronavirus and Walt Disney World general discussion

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MisterPenguin

President of Animal Kingdom
Premium Member
Who's got two vaccination today and five thumbs?! This gluypth!
The muscle that was jabbed is a bit sore, like a knot. It feels a little better when I massage it. So, I've a clever plan for relief.

1. Put a section of a fake lamb skin blanket over the muscle.
2. Wait for a random cat to show up and knead it.
3. Problem solved, and I've got biscuits for days to boot!!!
 

CLEtoWDW

Well-Known Member
Germany and Italy set to announce those unvaccinated will be put into a lockdown - not even able to go to work.

Austria which has gone into lockdown - implemented a similar policy this week, but does allow unvaccinated to go to work.


All round this is very grim.
A very unique mixture of lunacy, insanity, and nonsense in Europe. I’d argue that the policy decisions have been more damaging than the virus itself.
On a side note… the US is preparing for the busiest holiday travel season in years. Once again, the US will continue to lead the post-COVID recovery as Europe continues to falter.
 

DisneyDebRob

Well-Known Member
Who would have thought, more U.S. Covid fatalities in 2021 than in 2020
Its surprising and it’s not.
People surprise me every day with what they do. Not just with what’s happened the last 2 years but in all choices of things.
We have a vaccine, you might think, and rightfully so that cases will start to plummet but the decisions of people not to get it.. along with others that want”everything back to normal”, the constant political fights over mandates and masked kids in school and here we are. Let’s not forget one of the biggest reasons being Delta.
People just, to steal a line , threw their hands up in the air and waved them like they just don’t care.
 
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Its surprising and it’s not.
People surprise me every day with what they do. Not just with what’s happened the last 2 years but in all choices of things.
We have a vaccine, you might think, and rightfully so that cases will start to plummet but the decisions of people not to get it.. along with others that want”everything back to normal”, the constant political fights over mandates and masked kids in school and here we are. Let’s not forget one of the biggest reasons being Delta.
People just, to steal a line , threw their hands up in the air and waved them like they just don’t care.
The reason there are more deaths in 2021 than 2020 is because January- March of 21 were the worst months of the whole pandemic. The vaccine hadn’t even had a chance at that point and Delta wasn’t even here yet. Stop with the nonsense.
 

seascape

Well-Known Member
The reason there are more deaths in 2021 than 2020 is because January- March of 21 were the worst months of the whole pandemic. The vaccine hadn’t even had a chance at that point and Delta wasn’t even here yet. Stop with the nonsense.
I disagree. The cause of more deaths in 3021 versus 2020 is the group most at risk are not taking the vaccine. The reasons for that cant be discussed here as its political. I support everyones right to not take the vaccine but I think everyone should take it. My wife and I have taken not only the 2 shots but also the booster.
 

DisneyFan32

Well-Known Member
In the Parks
Yes

seascape

Well-Known Member
Florida continues to have the lowest rate of Covid19 staying at just under 7 per 100k. The most intesting fact is that the lowest 5 states of the lower 48 are Florida, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia and Texas. Yes, the Gulf coast. Further, it is not just the South because New Mexico and Arizona are going though the roof.
 

DisneyFan32

Well-Known Member
In the Parks
Yes

The US government’s chief medical adviser Dr Anthony Fauci warned on Sunday that time was running short to prevent a “dangerous” new surge of Covid-19 infections from overwhelming the upcoming holiday season.

Coronavirus cases across the US are rising again for the first time in weeks, and approaching 100,000 per day. Experts fear that this week’s Thanksgiving holiday, for which tens of millions of Americans will travel for indoor celebrations with family and friends, will fuel a further surge.

Related: ‘Zero-Covid is not going to happen’: experts predict a steep rise in US cases this winter

Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said it was not too late to avoid a significant worsening of Covid-19 rates leading up to Christmas and New Year if the public acted now on new measures to subdue the virus, such as Friday’s approval of booster shots for adults and the recent opening up of vaccinations to children aged five to 11.

“We still have about 60 million people in this country who are eligible to be vaccinated who have not been, and that results in the dynamic of virus in the community that not only is dangerous and makes people who are unvaccinated vulnerable, but it also spills over into the vaccinated people,” Fauci said on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday.

“We have a lot of virus circulating around. You can’t walk away from the data, and the data show that the cases are starting to go up, which is not unexpected when you get into a winter season. People start to go indoors more and we know that immunity does wane over time.

“The bottom line is get vaccinated if you’re not vaccinated, and boostered if you have been vaccinated. Since we can vaccinate children from five to 11, you start vaccinating them now [and] they will be fully vaccinated by the time we get to the Christmas holidays.”

The numbers of Americans traveling for Thanksgiving this year will be close to pre-pandemic levels, the federal Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has predicted, raising fears at a time when the Biden administration has struggled to get its vaccination message across.

The daily average of new cases has risen 29% in the last 14 days, analysis by the New York Times shows, while fewer than 60% of those eligible are fully vaccinated. Meanwhile, the 2021 US death toll from Covid has surpassed that of 2020, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Additionally, Joe Biden’s efforts to improve those figures through compulsory vaccination have stalled. The requirement for businesses of more than 100 employees remains blocked by the courts while Republican leaders in some states have kneecapped the president by enacting laws specifically outlawing such mandates.

Disney, one of Florida’s biggest employers, announced on Saturday it would no longer insist cast members be vaccinated, after the governor, Ron DeSantis, signed sweeping legislation on Thursday countermanding Biden’s order. In a move that many saw as infantile, DeSantis chose the unincorporated Florida community of Brandon for the signing – “Let’s Go Brandon” has become an offensive anti-Biden rallying call of the right in recent weeks.

In a later appearance Sunday on ABC’s This Week, Fauci was cautious over suggestions by vaccine manufacturers that annual boosters might be necessary to keep Covid-19 at bay.

“We would hope, and this is something that we’re looking at very carefully, that that third shot with the mRNA [vaccine] not only boosts you way up, but increases the durability so that you will not necessarily need it every six months, or a year,” he said.

“We’re hoping it pushes it out more. If it doesn’t and the data show we do need it more often then we’ll do it.”

Dang, we will never ending the pandemic now....

And even worse like this:


A steep rise in Covid-19 cases in Europe should serve as a warning that the US could also see significant increases in coronavirus cases this winter, particularly in the nation’s colder regions, scientists say.

However, there is more cause for optimism as America enters its second pandemic winter, even in the face of likely rises in cases.

Evidence shows vaccine-conferred protection against hospitalization and death remains high several months after inoculation, vaccines for children older than five can reduce Covid transmission, and new antiviral medications hold the promise of making Covid-19 a treatable disease.

“I do expect to see cases increasing – we’ve started to see this in the last week or so,” said Dr David Dowdy, an associate professor of epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University. “I don’t think what we’re seeing in Europe means we’re in for a huge surge of serious illness and death as we [saw] here in the US,” last winter.

In the last three weeks, new cases have increased in several cold weather states across New England and the midwest. However, vaccines remain roughly 85% effective at preventing hospitalization and death.

“Even if cases go up this winter, we’re very unlikely to see the overcrowded [intensive care units] and morgues of a year ago,” said Dowdy.

Vaccine-conferred immunity against infection may allow cases to rise, he said, but far fewer people will need hospitalization. The vast majority of people who were hospitalized or died from Covid-19 this summer, more than 90% in one CDC study, were not fully vaccinated.

“People can still get Covid, there can still be breakthrough infections, but the great news is if you have been vaccinated you are very much less likely to be hospitalized or have severe infection,” said Rupali Limaye, an associate scientist at Johns Hopkins University and an expert in vaccine communication.

Nevertheless, vaccine distribution is highly uneven across the US. Just 58.6% of the nation is vaccinated, lower than vaccination rates in some European nations now struggling with an increase in Covid-19 cases, such as in Germany and France.

“I’ve been predicting a pretty bad winter wave again, and it looks like it’s starting to happen,” said Dr Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine and co-director of the Texas Children’s hospital’s center for vaccine development.

“There’s just too many unvaccinated and too many partially vaccinated [people]” to stop the “aggressive” Delta variant, Hotez said.

What’s more, even if the impacts of Covid-19 are dampened this winter, there still could be a devastating loss of life. A prediction from among the most respected long-term Covid-19 forecasters in the country found an additional 100,000 people may die between November 2021 and March 2022.

“We see increasing evidence in the northern hemisphere that the expected winter surge has started to unfold,” said Dr Christopher JL Murray, lead modeler at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington, as he introduced a new forecast. “Reductions in cases and new infections and hospitalizations have stopped in the US and started to turn around.”

IHME’s projection, which Murray described as “optimistic”, forecast 863,000 cumulative deaths from the pandemic by March 2022. Already, more than 765,000 people in the US have died from Covid-19.

IHME’s worst-case scenario predicts hundreds of thousands more deaths, for more than 1m pandemic deaths by March 2022.

“Many countries in western Europe are even farther ahead of us in the sense that the numbers are going up quite quickly in the places like the Netherlands and Denmark, but also in Germany now and a number of other countries,” said Murray. Nearly two-thirds of the 1.9m new infections globally are on the European continent, the World Health Organization said.

Further, there are few calls and little appetite to reinstate social restrictions. The promise of vaccines that could reduce transmission of Covid-19 prompted local governments around the country to drop social distancing and mask restrictions.

That trend has held even as an emerging body of evidence showed the vaccine’s ability to prevent infection with Covid-19 waned over time, and the focus of vaccine efficacy shifted to the steady protection conferred against hospitalization and death.

The risk of a “fifth wave” and waning immunity has now prompted a call for “booster” shots, or third vaccine doses, for everyone who received mRNA vaccines, those developed by Pfizer or Moderna.

The Food and Drug Administration has already authorized booster doses for people older than 65 or who work in high-risk settings. Everyone older than 18 who received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is eligible for a second dose, as evidence shows its effectiveness against serious disease may wane over time.

Booster doses are effective at increasing antibody levels, but are not the most effective way to curb transmission of Covid-19. The best way to curb transmission, experts have said repeatedly, is to get new people vaccinated. Experts now widely believe Covid-19 will be endemic and circulate for decades to come, though the severity of infection may wane over many years.

The Covid-19 pandemic may never be “over”, as many conceived early in the pandemic, Dowdy said. “The point is – when can we get this to a point where it’s tolerable to us as a society? And I think we may be closer to that point than we imagine.

“Zero-Covid is not going to happen.”

The pandemic will never be ending EVER as MANY YEARS! NOOOOOOO!!!:cry::cry::cry::cry::cry::cry::cry::cry::cry:


The recent authorization of a COVID-19 vaccine for children 5 to 11 and the emergence of two promising pills for treatment of the virus have been major steps in the fight against the pandemic. But as winter approaches some experts are worried that another surge is likely as people gather inside in cooler weather, and immunity wanes among those who were vaccinated months ago.


  • Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Sunday he didn't anticipate the federal vaccination mandate to impact travel.
  • Federal workers, including those who work for the TSA, are required to be vaccinated by Monday.
  • The TSA told Insider it didn't anticipate disruptions to Thanksgiving travel because of the mandate.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Sunday he's seen "no indication" that the looming COVID-19 mandate for federal workers, which is slated to go into effect Monday, would create travel issues.

"I have seen no indication the vaccine requirements are going to impact travel in any way, certainly in terms of our ability as a federal administration to provide the services that are needed," Buttigieg said Sunday during an appearance on NBC News' "Meet the Press."

The vaccine mandate for federal workers, which includes religious and medical exemptions but does not include a weekly testing alternative, will go into effect Monday, just three days before Thanksgiving.

The transportation secretary said about 99% of people in his department, which does not include the Transportation Security Administration, had been vaccinated for COVID-19, were in the process of getting vaccinated, or were submitting a request for an exemption to the mandate.

About 60% of workers at the TSA were vaccinated by last month, TSA Administrator David Pekoske told CNN in an October interview.

The agency told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution later in October that the number of vaccinated employees may have been greater than 60% of its workforce because some vaccinated employees hadn't yet submitted their paperwork confirming their vaccination status.

"We do not have full data to share however what I can tell you is that our compliance rate for the federal employee vaccine mandate is very high," a TSA spokesperson told Insider on Sunday.

"TSA does not anticipate that the federal employee vaccine mandate will in any way impact the agency's ability to staff for Thanksgiving travel," the spokesperson added. "We continue to work diligently to implement the vaccine requirement, including by promoting vaccination and ensuring every TSA employee is uploading their attestation information."

The TSA has 273 employees with active COVID-19 infections, according to the agency's website. Since the beginning of the pandemic, TSA has had 11,171 employees test positive for COVID-19, 32 of whom died, according to the agency.

"Let's remember what this is about fundamentally, which is ending the pandemic," Buttigieg said on Sunday. "All of us are ready to be done with this pandemic. To be done, not just with the death and the hospitalization and the grim headlines, but also to be done with the restrictions and the requirements and the masks. Putting all that behind us means getting everybody vaccinated."


COVID-19 cases are climbing nationally as the U.S. barrels into its second holiday season during the pandemic, with most families planning this year to gather for Thanksgiving.

The U.S. is in better shape than at this point last year, when authorities confirmed well over 160,000 COVID-19 cases every day.

The daily average of new cases stands below 100,000 and almost 200 million Americans are fully vaccinated. They can "feel good about enjoying a typical" holiday season, top infectious diseases expert Anthony Fauci said this week.

But with millions still unvaccinated and cases rising, experts are urging Americans, particularly the unvaccinated, partially vaccinated and vulnerable, to exercise caution when gathering with others.

"There is concern that the rate of infection spreading is already so high as we head into the holiday season," said Amber D'Souza, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

"We're definitely headed into our next surge," she added.

Nationally, the seven-day average for new COVID-19 cases is nearing 95,000, a 33 percent increase from two weeks prior, according to data from The New York Times. In the past two weeks, cases have increased in 39 states and D.C., and they have doubled in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

Certain areas like the Midwest, New England and the Southwest in particular are dealing with surges.

The daily average of about 48,000 hospital admissions is flat from two weeks ago, while the 1,100 fatalities per day has dipped by 1 percent.

The case upticks come as many across the country plan for intergenerational gatherings next week, prompting public health experts to call on Americans to consider safety measures for their events.

The risk of different Thanksgiving gatherings vary, as indoor events are more dicey than outdoor and including unvaccinated guests poses more danger than limiting to fully vaccinated attendees. In the end, experts said it ultimately depends on how much risk individuals want to take.

Researchers, including Joshua Weitz, a professor of biological sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, have developed a tool to help figure out the localized risk that at least one infected person will be at an event.

For events with 50 people, the calculator shows eight states have counties with an at least 95 percent risk level.

"Even if we are fatigued, the reality is that cases are rising, and there remains far too many individuals who are unvaccinated, and that is contributing to increased spread as well as severe outcomes," said Joshua Weitz, a professor of biological sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

"I think we should all be concerned that the things that we hold dear, that we enjoy doing may inadvertently lead to increases in cases and severe outcomes," he added.

About 57 million people aged 12 and older remain unvaccinated and at higher risk of contracting and spreading COVID-19, in addition to ending up hospitalized or killed by the virus.

Still, experts don't expect any potential surge to reach the levels of last year with the majority of the country having immunity against the virus.

Almost 196 million Americans are fully vaccinated, and 32 million have received a booster dose, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data. Among adults aged 65 and older who are more at risk for severe illness, 86.2 percent are fully vaccinated and 38 percent have gotten their booster.

Even with most Americans protected with the vaccine, however, the shots are not 100 percent effective, meaning breakthrough cases can still emerge. Experts also said waning immunity from the vaccine over time and high community transmission could lead to more breakthrough cases.

Although it's too late to initiate any vaccinations to be fully protected by Thanksgiving next week, experts said hosts and visitors can still take precautions to mitigate spread during the holiday, including having attendees take rapid tests, hosting events outdoors and increasing ventilation.

Justin Lessler, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina's Gillings School of Global Public Health, said even people going to fully vaccinated events can take steps to protect attendees.

"I think that extra layer of doing a rapid test or something or other activities to try to help you make doubly sure that your dinner doesn't become a superspreading event is - still worth doing," he said.

Older, immunocompromised and other vulnerable people should "really consider a safety plan," he said, while adding "but I don't think that safety plan has to be: call off the gathering altogether."

The U.S. has already made booster shots available to these at-risk populations in recent months, and the Food and Drug Administration expanded booster authorization for all adults on Friday.

The CDC's holiday guidance updated last month suggests for all eligible people to get vaccinated in order to protect those who can't, such as children, and those at risk.

For children aged 5 to 11, the Pfizer vaccine recently became available earlier this month so a vast majority will not be fully vaccinated by next week. Children younger than 5 are still not eligible for a shot.

To protect these children, Lori Handy, the medical director of infection prevention and control at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, recommended implementing additional "layers of protection" and ensuring that those with exposures or symptoms do not attend.

For children at risk due to medical conditions, she said it's "time to kind of be mama bear and protect your kids for a bit more this pandemic."

"I would recommend people be as cautious as possible," she said. "Find ways to get joy and happiness in the holiday season, but don't overdo it with very large gatherings where you could regret that event."
 
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