In Australia, the Health Kommissar for New South Wales Forbids People From Talking to Other People Outside the Home
Plus: New Study Says Pfizer's Effectiveness At Fully Stopping the Delta Variant Falls to Only 42%

At the beginning of the month, the Authoritarian Australians sent soldiers (not militarized police, soldiers) to patrol the streets of Sydney to make sure no one escaped from the prisons of their homes.

The Australian military began helping to enforce Australia’s strictest COVID-19 lockdown Monday, as a surge in delta variant cases in Sydney continued to cause problems.

About 300 troops have been sent to Australia’s largest city to help overstretched police monitor home quarantine for coronavirus patients, and potentially set up roadblocks. The troops will help the police on a door-to-door search to check if people who have contracted COVID are isolating, police commissioner Mick Fuller told reporters during a press conference.

Senior officials have said the soldiers will not be armed, and do not have special enforcement authority, but will be assisting the police. However, counsellors have said that the sight of the military in multicultural areas of Sydney could be distressing for some refugees and migrants.

Might be distressing for native citizens, too, but who cares about them?

And now, the New South Wales health kommissar forbids conversation outside the home.

Meanwhile, a not-yet-peer-reviewed study says that the Pfizer vaccine is only 42% effective at stopping the Delta virus completely.

A new preprint study that raises concerns about the mRNA vaccines' effectiveness against Delta -- particularly Pfizer's -- has already grabbed the attention of top Biden administration officials.

What they're saying: The study found the Pfizer vaccine was only 42% effective against infection in July, when the Delta variant was dominant. "If that's not a wakeup call, I don't know what is," a senior Biden official told Axios.

Driving the news: The study, conducted by nference and the Mayo Clinic, compared the effectiveness of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines in the Mayo Clinic Health System over time from January to July.

Overall, it found that the Moderna vaccine was 86% effective against infection over the study period, and Pfizer's was 76%. Moderna's vaccine was 92% effective against hospitalization and Pfizer's was 85%.

But the vaccines' effectiveness against infection dropped sharply in July, when the Delta variant's prevalence in Minnesota had risen to over 70%.

Moderna was 76% effective against infection, and Pfizer was only 42% effective.
The study found similar results in other states. For example, in Florida, the risk of infection in July for people fully vaccinated with Moderna was about 60% lower than for people fully vaccinated with Pfizer.

Note this article doesn't state that the Pfizer vaccine's ability to ward off serious, hospitilization-level infections has dropped.

posted by Ace at 02:17 PM

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