That sucks BreakForTheLight. Here a lot of curfew violations are for superspreader parties, but crime seems to be on the rise too. There has been a spate of home invasion robberies past curfew in the capital, for example. A few homeowners defended themselves. One killed one of the criminals.

At least I am pretty removed from it too. Our area is peaceful and we have 24 hour security in my neighborhood. A friend that lives not far from where I used to live in Santiago says the city feels less safe these days.

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And now for my rant:


If anyone else that lives in a country that has ordered decent vaccines and whose government is carrying out vaccinations efficiently tries to tell me it will be all over soon, we see the light at the end of the tunnel. I will scream. Here nearly all of the vaccines that have been ordered are Sinovac, which recently only had 50.3% efficacy in trials in Brazil. Basically, a lot of people still get sick. The only advantage is that they generally don't need hospitalization. We will be more likely to get to herd immunity from people still getting sick than from the vaccine itself. Vaccination is going extremely slowly as well. I feel like the pandemic is probably going to last a lot longer here and we could even face travel bans by countries that have it better under control at some point.


Frontline healthcare workers and those over 60 were initially promised the Pfizer/Biontech vaccine. But, due to delays on Pfizer's part, the government now wants to start giving the Sinovac vaccine to some hospital workers. At one hospital, so far, the employee association has come out to say they will refuse the Sinovac vaccine; they want the Pfizer/Biontech vaccine. Our public health institute has NOT received safety data from the manufacturer yet, but still approved it for emergency use. They had the spokesperson for the hospital workers on TV and the program hosts were criticizing her for turning people against the vaccine, even though she said clearly that her reason is that they have not been able to see the data that was used to decide to approve it. Basically it's an issue of sunk costs, the government has spent the money and now they have to try and sell it to the population with the help of the media.


Just one example of why I don't have confidence in this vaccine Like it or not, China does not have a good record of safety or transparency for vaccines:

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/l...695-7/fulltext

In July, China experienced its “worst public health crisis in years” as stated by South China Morning Post. Chinese vaccine maker Changsheng Biotechnology was found to have fabricated production and inspection records and to have arbitrarily changed process parameters and equipment during its production of freeze-dried human rabies vaccines. Furthermore, substandard diphtheria, pertussis, and tetanus (DPT) vaccines produced by Changsheng Biotechnology were administered to 215 184 Chinese children; and 400 520 substandard DPT vaccines produced by Wuhan Institute of Biological Products were sold in Hebei and Chongqing.

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And this is what the New York Times is saying:

China Wanted to Show Off Its Vaccines. It’s Backfiring. - The New York Times

In the Philippines, some lawmakers have criticized the government’s decision to buy a vaccine made by a Chinese company, Sinovac. Officials in Malaysia and Singapore, which both ordered doses from Sinovac, have had to reassure their citizens that they would approve a vaccine only if it had been proved safe and effective.

“Right now, I would not take any Chinese vaccine, because there’s insufficient data,” said Bilahari Kausikan,an influential former official at Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He added that he would consider it only with “a proper report.”

At least 24 countries, most of them low and middle income, signed deals with the Chinese vaccine companies because they offered access when richer nations had claimed most of the doses made by Pfizer and Moderna. But the delays in getting the Chinese vaccines and the fact that the vaccines are less effective mean that those countries may take longer to vanquish the virus.

Meanwhile, we have this going on:

With First Dibs on Vaccines, Rich Countries Have ‘Cleared the Shelves’ - The New York Times

The U.S., Britain, Canada and others are hedging their bets, reserving doses that far outnumber their populations, as many poorer nations struggle to secure enough.

As a growing number of coronavirus vaccines advance through clinical trials, wealthy countries are fueling an extraordinary gap in access around the world, laying claim to more than half the doses that could come on the market by the end of next year.

While many poor nations may be able to vaccinate at most 20 percent of their populations in 2021, some of the world’s richest countries have reserved enough doses to immunize their own multiple times over.

Rant over for the day!